Aug 20th, 2012 at 10:00AM: There was a grown man crying at my visa window. It was my first week interviewing visa applicants at the American embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, and before I'd even had a chance to ask this man why he was applying to visit the U.S., he was sobbing uncontrollably on the other side of the bulletproof glass window.
"Why are you crying?" I asked, in Albanian.
The man said that his son in the U.S. ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
atravelerintheforeignservice posts
A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Playing The Role Of Gatekeeper To America
Aug 20th, 2012 at 10:00AM: There was a grown man crying at my visa window. It was my first week interviewing visa applicants at the American embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, and before I'd even had a chance to ask this man why he was applying to visit the U.S., he was sobbing uncontrollably on the other side of the bulletproof glass window.
"Why are you crying?" I asked, in Albanian.
The man said that his son in the U.S. ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: How To Avoid Posts Where You Might Get Eaten Alive
Aug 8th, 2012 at 10:00AM: Have you ever received a phone call from someone who was hoping to entice you to live in a country where cannibalism is still practiced? I have.
"I have a great opportunity for you in Port Moresby," said Hollis, my State Department Career Development Officer (CDO)/used car salesperson.
I Googled Port Moresby from my office at the American Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, and the results weren't ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: A Globetrotting USAID FSO Serving in Afghanistan
Aug 2nd, 2012 at 10:00AM: USAID Foreign Service Officer David Thompson has lived in eight countries in the last 15 years and has visited countless others, but at 46, his adventures are far from over. He helped reconstruct homes in the immediate aftermath of the war in Bosnia, worked to restore democracy in Honduras after a coup, and has lived through attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul while serving there as the head of ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Making Peace With Malta (Mario Speaks!)
Jul 21st, 2012 at 12:00PM: Regular readers of this column will recall that I created a diplomatic incident with Malta by dressing up like Colonel Gaddafi in a grammar school model U.N. in Buffalo, New York, in 1986. A photo of me in Arab garb made it into The Buffalo News and once the Maltese got wind of it, they were none too pleased. In their indignant response, Mario Cacciottolo, the private secretary of the Prime ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: No Passport? No Honeymoon
Jul 6th, 2012 at 11:00AM: The day after I got married, I spent much of the day nursing a hangover. And when I was finally ready to emerge from my bed, in the middle of the afternoon, I told my new bride that I was going out to rent "Braveheart" and "Rob Roy" to get us geared up for our honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands. But when I returned from the video shop, I had some bad news for her. Our first full day as man and ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Queue Jumpers and Diplomatic Parking Scofflaws
Jun 25th, 2012 at 9:00AM: The line of cars waiting to cross the border was, in fact, no line at all. It was an unruly scrum of cars, wide at the back end yet narrowing into a single line near the immigration booth, with battered old Yugos and brand new BMWs jockeying ahead, inch-by-inch, for supremacy.
We were waiting to enter Macedonia – Greek Macedonia, from Macedonia – Macedonian Macedonia, as in The ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Inconsiderate Chadian Rebels Fail To Scuttle My Holiday Plans
Jun 15th, 2012 at 10:00AM: The Foreign Service isn't a normal, 9-5 occupation, where one can check out after leaving the office each day. The benefits outweigh the negatives for most, but almost every Foreign Service Officer (FSO) faces moments when they're forced to decide if they want to prioritize their career at the expense of their personal life.
Most who want to become an Ambassador or Deputy Chief of Mission at an ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Rooms By the Hour In Belgrade And An Insane Taxi Driver from Novi Sad
Jun 1st, 2012 at 11:00AM: Have you ever met a taxi driver who was more interested in showing you staged photos of him with his cars than getting you to the airport to catch a flight? No? Well, you've probably never met Novica Jurisic, a Serbian taxi driver from Novi Sad, whose most prized possessions are kept in the trunk of his Mercedes Benz taxi.
When I worked at the American Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia in the early ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: A 'Trailing Spouse' Speaks Out
May 24th, 2012 at 11:00AM: One of the most common questions I receive about life in the Foreign Service is: what will my spouse do? With that in mind, I invited my wife, Jennifer, who worked while I served overseas in Macedonia, Trinidad and Hungary, to offer her thoughts on what it's like to be a "trailing spouse."
Jennifer Seminara
I really had no idea what I was getting into when I agreed to be a Foreign Service ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Making Peace With Malta (Part 2)
May 17th, 2012 at 10:00AM: I was sitting aboard a battered old bus in Valletta, Malta's capital, on my way to search for Mario Cacciottolo, a retired Maltese diplomat who sent me a gentle rebuke after I misrepresented the country by dressing up like Colonel Gaddafi in a grammar school model U.N. in Buffalo, New York, in 1986. It was an insane quest, but I felt like I had to try to find him, so I could apologize in person, ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Making Peace With Malta
May 16th, 2012 at 10:00AM: I've felt an odd kinship with Malta ever since I created a minor international incident with the tiny island nation by dressing up like Colonel Gaddafi in an 8th grade model U.N. exercise in 1986. When my teacher decided to throw me a curveball by assigning me the task of dressing up like a citizen of Malta, I was initially displeased. In the pre-Internet age, it wasn't easy to ascertain how the ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Bulgaria Is The Place To Break Down
May 11th, 2012 at 10:00AM: Foreign Service Officers (FSO's) know how desirable their post is upon discovering how many houseguests they receive. If you live in Paris, people who you once shared a peanut butter sandwich with in grammar school and long lost cousins you don't like to begin with will come out of the woodwork looking for a free place to stay. But friends who are willing to come visit you in Niger or Kazakhstan ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: You Say You Want a Revolution? We All Want To Change The World
May 2nd, 2012 at 10:00AM: When I meet people who are interested in joining the State Department's Foreign Service, I always ask them why they're motivated to serve. Everyone has their own reasons, but one common motivation shared by many is a desire to help shape U.S. Foreign Policy. Many of these same people are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs and how we conduct ourselves on the global stage, and believe ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: The World Of Foreign Service Nationals
Apr 25th, 2012 at 10:00AM: Imagine working in an office where all of the most experienced employees with the most seniority and institutional knowledge were the underlings. And what if all the chiefs were foreigners, many with a dodgy command of the local history, language and culture? That's a bit what it's like to work at an American embassy overseas.
State Department Foreign Service Officers, (FSO's) generally spend ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Get Paid To Learn Languages
Apr 12th, 2012 at 10:00AM: Americans are often criticized for our inability or unwillingness to learn foreign languages. I didn't even have the option to study a foreign language until I was 14 years old and while kids these days start learning languages – usually Spanish – much earlier, most Americans never achieve true proficiency in a second language. But in the world of diplomacy, no other country invests as ...A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Meet An Intrepid Diplomat
Apr 4th, 2012 at 10:00AM: In our ongoing attempt to demystify the Foreign Service, we're going to occasionally introduce you to diplomats living in various parts of the world. Amy Tachco is a 36-year-old Foreign Service Officer (FSO) originally from Southern California and Central Ohio who joined the Foreign Service just over ten years ago.
Amy and I joined the Foreign Service at the same time and were part of the same ...A Traveler in the Foreign Service: Get paid to travel as a diplomatic courier
Mar 22nd, 2012 at 9:00AM: If you see an advertisement offering a chance to get paid to travel, odds are it's a scam. But there are a few legitimate jobs that actually pay you to travel and the diplomatic courier profession is one of them. The Foreign Service has two main branches -- generalists and specialists.
Generalists serve in more traditional diplomatic functions, and specialize in one of five career tracks: ...A Traveler in the Foreign Service: My Secret Foreign Service Wedding
Mar 19th, 2012 at 11:30AM: Today is my ten-year wedding anniversary, sort of. Does it make sense to celebrate a wedding that was a secret, five-minute affair that was capped off at a nearby Taco Bell over chalupas and 99-cent churros?
I asked my wife to marry me just days before joining the Foreign Service in 2002 and we had to set a wedding date without knowing what country we would be moving to or when we would depart. ...A Traveler in the Foreign Service: Help us get away with murder
Mar 13th, 2012 at 11:00AM:
For Bashkim, a 25-year-old Albanian-American dishwasher, the trouble all started after he started having an affair with his boss's wife. When his boss heard the rumors, he immediately confronted his wife.
Luljeta claimed that Bashkim, who was nearly 20 years younger than her, had raped her in the diner, after hours, on several occasions. Her husband, Illir, called the Anchorage police, who ...A Traveler in the Foreign Service: Even corpses get bumped from flights
Mar 3rd, 2012 at 10:00AM: I was standing over a coffin that contained the corpse of a 76-year-old American missionary whom I was supposed to help repatriate to the U.S., trying to figure out why he was naked. After a long consultation with Stevcho, a sinister-looking funeral parlor boss, my local colleague at the American embassy in Skopje concluded that the man's clothes were "probably" at a forensics lab.
"Well, is he ...
