Cheers to 2012!

Are you missing your family on New Year’s?  Here are some ideas to still have fun and ring in the New Year with a smile. 

• Put together a New Year’s Eve party for others. Gather your closest friends who are in the same boat and enjoy the celebration together.
• Call an old friend or your family. Spend some time talking on the phone, watching New Year's Eve specials together, and reminisce on the year gone by and discuss what's ahead.
• Cook a great dinner. Just because you're alone doesn't mean you have to dine on bad food. By cooking a swanky meal, you can enjoy the holiday and put a little spectacular into the everyday.  Consider combining this cooking experience with calling an old friend/family via Skype. 
• Indulge in your favorite hobbies or interests. If you're a reader, curl up with a novel. If you're a film buff, have an all-night marathon of your favorites. The possibilities are endless - just enjoy yourself.

Also, check out these funny New Year's superstitions.  Did you know that one superstition says the first person to enter your home at the stroke of midnight will influence the year you are about to have?  Preferably, *the superstition says*, the person should be a dark haired, tall, good looking man – bearing gifts….hmm…interesting.

 

Happy New Year!

Home for the Holidays

Thank you to everyone who attended Diplomacy and Home for The Holidays and we hope you all had a great time.  Sherri and I really enjoyed meeting everyone!  We hope to be receiving additional photos soon, but here are a few shots FLOsters Liz and Lycia took for us.

A glimpse of the beautiful hors d'oeuvre table

One of the most impressive gingerbread houses I've ever seen...

Frosty!

UT Team saying goodnight and handing out Hallmark Recordable Storybooks

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas! 

Today's Event: Diplomacy at Home for the Holidays

Today, The Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, will host Diplomacy at Home for the Holidays for 350 unaccompanied tour family members.  For those who are able to join us, we look forward to seeing you today.  For those who are unable to join us, we want to invite you to take part in some of the exciting virtual opportunities offered by our partnership with Skype and the Department of State.  If you have any questions about how to join via Skype please contact FLOaskUT@state.gov

You can learn more about starting to use Skype at http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/support/user-guides/start-skype/. You can also find more info about making video calls using Skype at http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/support/user-guides/video-calling/.

'Tis the season to...

...be stressed!  Being apart from loved ones during the holidays isn't always easy.  Take a look at this website with five tips about how to manage stress from separation and stay positive during the holidays.

Where in the world is Santa?

Track Santa this year here. 

How about a trip to Rome?

Planning your next R&R?  Check out Yahoo's article about the top five holiday destinations.

Or, maybe Paris?

Check out these hooches...

These hooches have a had a facelift.  Check out these creative contructions here. 

Take ten minutes...

...to watch this video.  We received an email from a UT daughter who wanted to share the video with fellow UT family members, and said, "for all the families out there who aren't physically together -we still share the same sky, the same earth".  

A nice thought for Thanksgiving...

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. 

One thing leads to another...click-click...

...and that is what makes the internet so entertaining.


I'm always interested in staying current with vast collection of Foreign Service blogs, so I make an effort to check out the official State blogroll.  After a few clicks here and few scrolls there, I landed on the well-known Life After Jerusalem blog.  This blog includes the longest list of Foreign Service blogs I've seen so far.  The list just keeps going...and I keep clicking...


What I found: 


A blog I'd never seen before- all about life in Kabul as a Cultural Affairs Officer.  It has some interesting pictures.  Click here.


Another find:  A NY Times article about biometric data collection in Afghanistan.  If you are an EFM, and have worked in a consular section before capturing fingerprints, you will appreciate this article.  Click here.  

Wing Tips On The Ground, one of our favorites, includes a packing list and tips (including some great pictures) before heading to Iraq.  Click here.  

                      

Happy Monday!

Quick Tuesday tip!

Getting ready for the holidays?  Click here for a well organized checklist to help you manage your time. 

4 days remaining...

...Until the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) which will take place at 2:00 PM EST on Wednesday, November 9, 2011.  The test should last about 30 seconds and will transmit via TV and radio.  For more information, click here.  Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and thank you to everyone who RSVPed to this year's Holiday Party.

Tricking and treating...

                                                              ...Outside the box...

To show our support, we are collecting leftover candy from our colleagues in DC to send to our colleagues serving unaccompanied tours around the world to celebrate a belated Halloween - because a chocolate bar tastes good anytime of year...

                                              
                                             ...Inside the box... it is filling up quickly!

If someone asked you...

Would you be able to come up with a list of "life lessons?"  What would they be?  I found the essay, 30 Lessons I’ve Learned In 30 Years, and thought it had some really interesting points.  I've just pasted the first five, and will add another five next week, but if you can't wait click here to see all thirty. 

1. We must love. You know the saying, “tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” right? I know, such statements sound so banal and vapid on the surface that we often dismiss them with a waive of the hand. But it’s the cold truth, a truth so profound that perhaps we can only discuss it with little clichéd statements. But we must love, even if it breaks our hearts. Because unless we love, our lives will flash by.

2. Love isn’t enough. Although we must love, love is not enough to survive. We must take action to show others that we care, to show them that we love them.

3. Happiness is not for sale in any store. We can’t buy happiness. It sounds cliché to even say that, and yet we search the aisles and shelves and pages on eBay in search of something more, something to fill the void. But we can’t fill the void with stuff. It doesn’t work that way, no matter how hard we try or how much stuff we buy, because that stuff won’t make us happy. At best it will pacify us momentarily.

4. Success is perspectival. I used to think I was successful because I had a six-figure job that my friends and family could be proud of. I thought the house with too many bedrooms would make me look even more successful, and so would the luxury car and the tailored suits and the nice watch and the big screen TV and all of the trappings of the material world. But I got all of that and I sure didn’t feel successful. Instead, I felt depressed. So what did I do? I bought more stuff. And when that didn’t work I figured out that I had to do something else with my life, that I had to stop living a lie and start living my dreams.

5. You must make change a must. I knew that I wanted to change my life for the longest time. I knew I was unhappy, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled. I knew I didn’t have freedom. Not real freedom. The problem was that I knew these things intellectually but not emotionally. I didn’t have the feeling in my gut that things must change. I knew they should change, but the change wasn’t a must for me, and thus it didn’t happen. Anthony Robbins has a good aphorism to describe all these shoulds in your life: he says “after a while you end up shoulding all over yourself.” But once you understand these things on an emotional level you are able to turn your shoulds into musts. I believe that that is the pivotal point, that is when you get leverage, that is when you are compelled to take action. Thus, a decision is not a real decision until it is a must for you, until you feel it on your nerve-endings, until you are compelled to take action. Once your shoulds have turned into musts, then you have made a real decision.

                           What are some lessons you've learned so far?  Please share...

Holiday Party at the State Department

The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, will host Diplomacy at Home for the Holidays, a reception for family members of unaccompanied tour employees this December at the Department of State. This is a wonderful opportunity for family members in the Washington D.C. area to get into the holiday spirit and to honor the work, service and sacrifice of State Department men and women that are currently on unaccompanied tours.

In order to receive an official invitation, please contact FLOaskUT@state.gov for details within the next week.  Please note that ‘Family’ is defined broadly to include spouse, partner, fiancé, parent, sibling, and children of anyone under Chief of Mission at an unaccompanied tour posting.

And you thought your hooch was small...

Check out these international hotels!

Are you in the D.C. area on November 30th from 6pm-9pm?

Learn how to nurture and strengthen relationships during unaccompanied tours with FSI's Long Distance Relatioships class, MQ801.  This class is open to all foreign affairs agency employees and adult EFMs.  To register, email FLOaskUT@state.gov to find out how to register.  I took the class last year and thought it was well worth it!

Enjoy the weekend! 

FOUR QUICK STRESS BUSTERS

Use these quick techniques whenever you feel
stressed at work or home:

1.  Count 10 slow, deep breaths.
2.  Do five slow, small circles with your head,
stretching out your neck muscles.
3.  Stop what you are doing and get up. Walk
around your office or go to another room for
just a few minutes.
4.  Picture yourself in a place you find relaxing





Kerri's Corner

Apples, apples, come get your apples!  Fall is my favorite season.  My number one reason for loving Fall is because Honeycrisp apples are out.  Every Sunday we go to the local neighborhood market and buy no less than 3 pounds of apples for the week.  A relatively new variety, Honeycrisps have a sweet, mellow flavor. They're very juicy and full of flavor.  You can eat them raw or make an apple crisp with them.  Some people enjoy their Honeycrisp with a dollop of yogurt.  There is no wrong way to eat a Honeycrisp.  Go get one!

Try Honeycrisp Apple Bread

2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup sour milk (add 1 teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice to fresh milk)
1 teaspoon soda
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups chopped Honeycrisp apples
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Mix together all ingredients. Divide batter between 2 greased loaf pans. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees (at times I have to bake the loaves for 10 or 15 minutes more until they feel set when tapped).  Note: Batter will be stiff. 

Enjoy!
-Kerri

Employees headed to hooches...

Items you might want to include in your consumables shipment...

Soup mixes/cans

Any speciality food items you like, Thai Mexican, Indian...

Tea, coffee, coffee filter

Crackers and snack food

Laundry soap, dryer sheets, bleach, spot remover

Towels and washclothes
Bedding (beds are twin size), pillows
Small pastic container with drawers
Clorox wipes
Bath soap
Swiffer wet/dry ones (for the kitchen floors)
Small pastic bags (for the wastebaskets)
Dust cloths (it is very dusty and dirty)
Good quality air purifier and humidifier
Shampoo, conditioner, hair spray, hair color
Cosmetics you like...very little available, even the basics like mascara
Toothpaste, mouthwash
Contacts and lens cleaners, Visine
Calendars, family photos
Candles
Holiday decorations, birthday candles
Greeting cards
Any hobby items that you want to work on (in moments you have some free time)
Toilet paper, Kleenex, paper towels, napkins

220 Volt Coffee Pot, Tea Kettle

Bed risers to maximize storage under the bed (you can buy these at Bed, Bath and Beyond)

Dishes (if you don't want to eat off paper plates), flatware, glasses, mugs, plastic storage bowls with lids

Adaptors, batteries

Small stereo system

Hooches are provided with TV/DVD, microwave, small refrigerators, telephone and shower curtain