 |
| Protesters at U.S. Embassy Sana'a, Yemen |
Most of that has been on purpose. Once I was assigned to Yemen, I needed to keep a lower profile. Yemen is a critical threat assignment Unfortunately there are bad people who want to blow up people like me. For a variety of reasons, the details of what I do and where I do should really be left off the public internet.
The other reason is that I have had so much go in a short amount of time. I had a ton of extra training and preparation before I left for Yemen. Sana'a is an unaccompanied post which means you can't bring family members with you and friends can't visit. On top of that, the situation here isn't normal and I had to plan my life around having basically all my effects stored for two years. I am living with what I could bring in suitcases. In a lot of ways, this assignment is very similar to being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. The security situation has much to be desired but our mission here is absolutely important to keeping Americans safe.
I want readers to know that this isn't normal for the Foreign Service. If you are interested in this as a career, these types of assignments are far from the norm and you basically have to volunteer for them. My situation is something I more or less choose. Then again, it wasn't my first choice. Joining the Foreign Service is about being flexible. You can end up in fabulous places. You can also end up in places where you get on the news for the wrong reasons. It's about going abroad to serve your country. Service isn't always easy.
In other news, I have been learning Arabic. While I still wanted to pursue Chinese, the situation has changed obviously. So I am going to try to learn as much Arabic as I can while I am here. Maybe I can get back on Chinese my next Assignment. I'll find out my next assignment this summer... so I have time.
Good to hear from you. I was wondering how things were going with your first assignment. Glad to hear you are doing well!
ReplyDeleteGood morning how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Yemen? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Yemen in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez