flu and FS culture

Doug and I are valiantly battling the flu bug, but I am afraid that I, at least, will be its next victim. I hope that Doug will not because he actually got the flu shot. Of course, that may have been total crap; they may have given us some stupid north american shot from last fall while some super virulent strain massively annihilates the southern cone. Did I mention in my last blog that 17 out of 23 students in Aidan's class had become sick? Luckily, Aidan seems to be recovering: he is still coughing and above average temp, but he says he feels more than 100% better than he did earlier this week. He even put on clothes today (sweats and a t-shirt).

I had a really nice morning. I have met a couple of friends (one who leaves forever in three weeks) and we occasionally go out for morning coffee or shopping. Sounds so blase and middle class. It is super fun. This morning we talked about acculturating to the foreign service -- is its own culture. Ellen got me thinking about this when she said that FS folks often have a particular type (very nice) of art collection (third world art gallery, I think she called it). I love you Ellen. (Ellen is an anthropologist.) Anyway, Julie and Shelly and I got to talking about what we are noticing about our new culture (as all relatively recent to the service, although this is Julie's second post). We talked about things that distinguish this culture from other cultures - both experiences and constraints. Ellen, please feel free to comment as I have forgotten the vocabulary of anthropology. Some of the things we came up with include:

• we all have the same furniture (thus the art collections)
• the experience of arrival in a new place with just the nuclear family unit, over and over (tight family units result)
• the language of FS -- yes, the acronyms, but also all the different community members we have: there is a whole set of roles (filled by different individuals in each place) in the community that we all depend upon -- people who fix things, people who acquire the things, people who set up the social gatherings
• everyone in the community knows people all over the world
• normalcy around family separations - of up to or more than a year
• social gatherings where at least 3 first languages are present

I am sure we could come up with a LOT more. We also talked about how the culture of the FS is even more distinct for our kids than it is for us -- babies growing up in this could be said to be "from the Foreign Service" more than from any one place. I shared that this has been the bigger cultural adaption for me -- much bigger than adapting to the San Diegoan culture of Santiago. Anyway -- I invite your comments. It was great to be out with girlfriends waxing philosophic.

Gotta' go -- Doug made a lovely pot of tea!