The Foreign Service (FS) Specialist Spouse/Partner Orientation was held yesterday from 8-5 pm. Billy and I woke up early and decided to take the shuttle from the apartment to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). Before arriving my image of FSI was a 3-5 story brick building, but boy was I wrong. It's a huge training campus with several buildings, library, cafeteria, visitor and child care center. This is truly a college campus for the Foreign Service Agents as well as for other agencies who have a need for knowledge of foreign languages, cultures, or international affairs.
"FSI offers both online and traditional classroom sessions to the Department of State and to employees from over 60 other government entities in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government. FSI provides both mentored and self-paced distance learning products developed by FSI." USALearning Webpage
We arrived at the Visitor Center and there was a "Welcome" get together for the specialists and their spouses/partners. After socializing and sipping coffee for 30mins, the spouses/partners were escorted to the classroom. I knew we were off to a good start when the FSI Transition Center Coordinator introduced herself and said, "what I first would like you to do is breatheeeee". I took comfort in knowing that she understood how overwhelmed and anxious we are to begin this new chapter of our lives.
Through out the day several senior specialists spoke to our class. A few of the specialists were women who had started out as a Foreign Service Spouse (FSS) and now are FSO's, which made it even more interesting and insightful. A list of acronyms (which I'm slowly memorizing) were handed out, power point presentations, and casual talks about living overseas, service for family members, the ups and downs of diplomatic life as well as breaks and an hour lunch consumed our day.
At the end of the day, I walked away very impressed on how the Foreign Service includes the spouse/partner, and how they go out of their way to make this new "lifestyle" transition as smooth as possible for us.
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