Book Review: Am I Going to Starve to Death?

This is my review as it appeared on Goodreads.

Am I Going to Starve to Death?: A Survival Guide for the Foreign Service Spouse by Donna Scaramastra Gorman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For anyone interested in living overseas at all, this book is valuable even if some of the agency specifics don’t apply. There are questions you have to ask yourself and discuss with your partner and family before making the decision to live and work overseas. Although I don’t agree with every single piece of advice, Ms. Gorman is honest and it’s important to hear what worked and what didn’t work for others if nothing else than to know you’re not alone.

We are ten-year veterans with the Foreign Service, so this book was less how-to for me and more nodding my head with recognition. Mix up with my birth control prescription causing me to go without for several months? Resulted in a wonderful daughter a few years before we’d planned to have kids, plus the fun of being pregnant in Burundi.

My wedding ring accidentally packed into the shipment for the slow boat? When my husband went to training and I decided to spend the summer at the beach with our daughter instead of hot and humid D.C., single dads practically fell out of the sky every time I appeared in public.

Losing a pet overseas? That happened to us, too.

Watching my husband pack a bag before leaving for work in case he had to sleep at the consulate because local authorities wanted to arrest him for doing his job? Living in fear that we’d be PNG’d any day because he continued to do his job, even after they decided not to arrest him?

Worrying about terrorist attacks, malaria, ebola, food riots, etc., have all become so much a part of my daily life that I’m almost completely desensitized to them. When they happen (when, not if, in the countries we live in) we’ll deal with it. Oh, and have you heard of acid bugs?

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro? Seeing the Taj Mahal? Taking a three-year-old hiking through Bhutan? Having a five-year-old whose French is better than mine? Eating great new foods? Making friends all over the world? Yup, all that great stuff happens, too. (We’ve also wrangled three assignments in a row on or near the equator, so the endless summer is pretty nice, too.)

These are the experiences that happen to all of us and you can either learn to roll with them or not. You’ll be happier if you relax and roll. I eventually learned that I’m going to make a fool of myself somehow every time I go out so I may as well be resigned to it.

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Condition Baby Imminent

It's our last child-free day! I'm going to the hospital tonight to be induced. My blood pressure is high and my blood sugar has gotten harder to control, so the doctor said it's time to come out. And we agree. The last week or so has not been easy for me.

It's a day of final preparations. I'm making cupcakes to eat post-delivery. I've been craving cupcakes for months, but being on a no-sugar diet for the pregnancy made cupcakes an impossible dream. (I wasn't willing to try cupcakes that are both sugar-free and gluten-free. That seems like a huge waste of cupcakes to me.) We're also making sure cell phones, camera batteries, the ipod, the Kindle, etc., are all charged up. We have bags packed and lots of snacks. We have scouted out the Dunkin Donuts nearest to the hospital so Mike can make post-delivery coffee runs. (I've been mostly caffeine-free for the last nine months because caffeine makes the baby jumpy, which makes me even more uncomfortable.) Oh, and the car seat, bassinet, and all that baby stuff is ready to go, too.

We start at four o'clock this afternoon and hopefully by that time on Friday, we'll have a little baby on our hands.

The Lotus Flowers

My dad saw a photo in the newspaper and then Mike happened to run by. About a mile from our house there's a small water garden filled with large flowers:

(Click images to see them larger.)

My 39 weeks pregnant self walked the mile to the pond, sat on a big rock to rest, took photos, and walked the mile home. And then I slept for the rest of the day.

Delay

Mike's flight out of Buj tonight was cancelled. So rather than waiting for him to arrive on Thursday afternoon, constantly updating the flight status on the websites of the various airlines he was supposed to be flying, I'm waiting for him to find out his new itinerary and let me know what it is. Worst case scenario is he's on the exact same itinerary starting on Thursday night instead of tonight. But I'm hoping he can find an earlier flight because I'm selfish and anxious and ready for him to be home now. (And I know he's ready to be home now, too.)

Pregnancy update: 37 weeks, 3 days. The doctor is confident the baby will wait until Mike's here, even if he arrives Friday or Saturday instead of tomorrow.

One Week

One week from right now I'll be at the airport getting ready to board my flight, the first, and the longest, in a series that will have me traveling for approximately thirty hours. I have my cat's reservations made. I've requested aisle seats and gluten-free meals for all my flights. I have my Kindle loaded with plenty of reading material. I've packed quite a few things. I've got detailed lists of the things I want Mike to send to the United States and things that can be forwarded on to India from here when he does our packout.

This week, other than get health certificates for both me and the cat, all I have left to do is say good-bye to everyone. I'm sad. I've had so much fun here and met so many great people. I'm not ready to leave it all behind. And I'm especially sad that Mike's going to miss the next few weeks of the pregnancy. Separations we are used to, but separations while pregnant are all new to us.

Two Weeks

Two weeks from now, I'll be at the airport getting ready to board my plane and leave. Hopefully the cat will be loaded up as well. Hopefully there won't be ash clouds or civil unrest or any other reason for cancellation. If all goes according to plan, twenty-four hours later I'll be home.

The pregnancy is making it hard for me to do all the things I want to do one last time before I leave. I'm too hot, too slow, and too tired. That and I have less time to do those things than I thought I did a month ago, thanks to my departure date moving up a few weeks.

I don't want to leave yet. It's so final. All of our friends here who have seen me through the pregnancy won't get the reward of seeing the baby, since I won't be returning.

Travel Time Again

Now that a date is set for my departure, it feels too real and I'm not ready to leave yet. Eight weeks from today I'll be taking off.

Not to mention the fact that when I get home I have to give birth to and start taking care of a baby. Don't get me wrong, we're thrilled about that. It's just not the way we'd originally planned on spending our summer vacation and some days we haven't fully adjusted to that yet.

Now that we have a date set, we can't procrastinate too much longer on the departure preparations. We have to decide what goes into my suitcases, what gets forwarded from here to India, what goes back into storage, and what comes with Mike later on in his suitcases.

We have to get the cat her rabies vaccination and health certificate and pray that the airlines will let her on the plane with me, because by the time Mike flies home it will probably be too warm for excess baggage pets. (She's too big for in-cabin, and she's a huge pain; I wouldn't want her in the cabin with me.)

I have to gather up my detritus of medical information, from all the different doctors and nurses I've seen here, scan and or copy it onto standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper (my papers from the local doctors are all different sizes) and forward it all to my doctor at home. And get this, she won't accept emailed PDFs! I tried to tell her that never in the history of this country has a fax successfully been sent, even though they have several fax machines and try real hard, but her office refuses to give me an email address. I'll have to find one of those online PDF-to-fax services. (But really, who doesn't email PDFs these days? Or at least make an exception every now and then? And isn't a PDF scan better quality than a printed out faxed version of a PDF scan? I'd think that you'd want the best quality you can get for things like ultrasound images.)

Like with every move, I know all this stuff will get taken care of somehow. I always get to the point where I resign myself to knowing that no matter how crazy it gets, the stuff will get packed up and sent somewhere, I have plane tickets (miraculously for this early in the process), and I have a place to live when I get to my destination. I know by now that no move is perfect so I like to aim low, in the region of not disastrous.

Online Language Studies for High School Students

I came across this recent article in the New York Times, Middlebury to Develop Online Language Venture. Middlebury College, known for its language program, is investigating the realm of online language courses. They want to specifically target high school students who are preparing for college but may not have great language programs at their schools or are homeschooled. I’m thinking it could also be good for students who are headed overseas with their parents and want to get a jump on a language before they arrive in-country. By the time our little Sharkbait is old enough to need high-school level classes, this online program should be well-established.

Yeah, college has already crossed our minds. Do we get residency in Virginia to take advantage of in-state tuition for UVA or Virginia Tech or in California for the UC system? I’m also partial to small, prestigious private schools or Ivy League schools, as long as they’re in New England. No pressure, Sharkbait.

Mr. and Mrs. Gray Sparrow Expect a Family

Shortly before we left for vacation, we had the fun of watching our terrace become a singles bar for gray sparrows. For several days we spent our lunch time watching the pudgy little males puff their feathers up in hopes of attracting the slender females. There was lots of chirping going on, so much that we could hardly talk between ourselves while we were out there. We assumed that our presence on the terrace would scare the birds off, but they didn't seem to care. I counted up to 6 or 7 sparrows at once, chirping and flaunting.

When we returned from vacation, it was evident that one couple in particular had hit it off and chased away all the other sparrows in order to call our terrace "home." For the last few days I've been watching them make a nest, wondering if I should deter them or let them go. They're making the nest in a corner of the terrace we really don't use, so I'm not too worried about the mess. The noise of chicks won't bother me too much; I've heard it before, plus we have the noise of a hundred other birds competing each day and night. For now we've decided to let Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow continue with their nesting.

They aren't the only ones expecting a family. I now feel comfortable sharing my news with the blogosphere. I'm 15 weeks pregnant. We're expecting a baby in August. I've been torn about going "live" with the news online. On one hand, I've always not really been that interested in babies that I don't know personally and I don't want to bore others who aren't that interested either. On the other, it certainly affects my life here, and my life here is what the blog is about. So expect occasional mentions of "Sharkbait" from time to time.

As long as Sharkbait and I stay healthy, I'll stay here until pretty close to our originally scheduled leave time this summer. And, as long as we're healthy, it will be no problem for us to continue on to India this fall. It's just one more part of the adventure!