One experience the State Department offers that allows for a change of pace is a temporary duty assignment, or TDY. Back in February, I had my first of many such opportunities as I traveled to the city of Sapporo for its annual Snow and Ice Festival. The 2026 festival featured 136 unique sculptures spread across Odori Park and Susukino Site. It was a fun, busy week that took to me to the northern island of Hokkaido for the first time.
Guatemala is now several months in the rearview mirror, which has given me plenty of time to reflect and reminisce. Our tour ended up being shortened by over seven months of cancer treatment to start and an early departure of ten weeks to accommodate Vietnamese language training and home leave. By the end, we spent only 14 of the 24 months we were originally assigned to the country physically in Guatemala. That left us with plenty of missed tourism opportunities, but we feel like we saw enough of the country to say that we got a full Guatemalan experience.Â
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