Pearl #12 ~ Excerpt from Walking With Inkas

This is an excerpt from my travel blog, Walking with Inkas, and was originally written on May 23, 2006

The First Week, Part I

SUMMARY:

Have to relearn the alphabet with all the acronyms at the Embassy, but I got a "@state.gov" email address, so that's pretty neat. Jared, the other intern was a great host and we mainly spent our first weekend sitting around getting to know each other. The security on the house and at the Embassy is intense! It's fun having classified access to certain places, though. On my first morning, I got to attend a meeting at none other than the Ambassador's house! I enjoyed the coffee and banana bread and stole a napkin with the official Department of State seal as a souvenir. In general, I'm getting settled in and am learning fast, even getting used to the traffic!

FOR DETAIL LOVERS, ONLY:APHIS
CLO
CONS
DEA
DHS
ECON
FAS
FCS
FMO
GSO
HR
HU
IRM
MAO
NMRCD
NAS
PAS
POL
RSO

There you have it. In less than a week, I have become proficient in a new language we at the Embassy like to refer to as Alphabet Soup. The place is filled to the brim with acronyms. The ones listed above refer to the various departments housed at the embassy, with MAO (pronounced "mow", like cow with an "m") being the most important in my opinion. But that's just because I'm the MAO intern, so I'm a tad biased. MAO stands for Management Affairs Office, and is one of the more confusing acronyms because it's apparently unique to our Embassy. Most other places refer to this department as MA/C (Management Affairs Consular) or simply Admin. But it's all the same. I know some of meanings behind the other acronyms, too, but it's less important to know what the acronym stands for than what it does, since nobody uses the full title anyway. Knowing the individual words of the title is just showing off.

My first couple of days here were mainly spent learning all about the Embassy and visiting the various offices to get all kinds of information, ranging from the proper procedure during an earthquake (a common occurence, I'm told) to how to access my new "@state.gov" email address. Oohlala! No worries, I'm only be using my State Department email for work purposes, so you can all continue sending messages to my gmail account. I don't know how quickly I'll respond, since I have limited personal Internet time at work and no Internet access at home, but I'll do my best to be prompt.

When I first arrived at the intern house, I was greeted by Jared, the only other intern here at the moment. It was Friday afternoon, but since I was tired from the trip down and he was tired from work, we decided not to go out and explore too much that night. He only speaks a little bit of Spanish, and I wasn't familiar with Lima or the culture, so after running to the grocery store so I could get the essentials, we settled down for the night and chatted until bedtime. He's more of a talker than I am (I know it's hard to believe), so it didn't take long to get to know one another. We were going to go down to Miraflores (the upscale, touristy part of town, right on the coast) on Saturday, but Jared hadn't stocked up on soles (the local currency), and I only had dollars, so we just stuck to wandering around our neighborhood, San Borja, which was fine with me. I later learned that we could have paid with dollars, since they're accepted it all the parts of Lima that Americans frequent, but it was good to scope out where I live, too. It's a nice neighborhood with plenty to do: Malls, shops, bowling alleys, theaters, you name it, they've got it.

 

After the week of graduating and moving from Winona to Milwaukee, and then packing up to fly down to Lima for three weeks, an utterly relaxing weekend was welcome. I got settled into my new house, which is very nice and practically a fortress. The Embassy is big on security, go figure. With a twelve-foot wall tops by iron barbs and electric fencing, not to mention the five keys required to enter through the two front doors and the iron gate (there are about 12 more keys to get in and out of the other house entrances, and to open the iron gates on the windows), we're pretty cozy. That didn't stop me from having a bad dream about someone breaking into the house the other night, though! Every time I started to fall asleep, I thought I heard a creak and got nervous all over again!

The house itself has four bedrooms and two bathrooms, not including the maid's quarters located off the back yard (No, we do not have a maid, although we could hire one if we wanted to. I'll do my own dishes, thank you very much.). There are beautiful gardens that come complete with the saguaro cacti that are prevalent throughout the city! I haven't seen any tarantulas yet, but I did watch a hummingbird and a sparrow-like bird fight over a hibiscus (I think), even though there was plenty to go around!

continued in Pearl #13 . . .