Misha returned to Japan for almost two weeks to celebrate Halloween and attend the Marine Corps Birthday Ball. After a costume party for Halloween, we returned to Kyoto and Osaka to see some sights we missed the first time around, then tacked on two nights of glamping at an olive farm on Awaji Island. It required many train rides and schlepping our luggage and Mochi. It was a great, if not exhausting, trip across the Kansai region.
Back in August, I made my first trip to Vietnam to visit Misha. We spent a week together, and though the timing wasn’t great (there were tsunami warnings and a lot of rain), it was still enough time for me to form an initial impression of the city.Â
If you follow the Beer and Diplomacy Instagram, you may have been a bit confused about some of my recent content. Didn’t you say you were going to Vietnam next? What’s this about Flag Day? I have purposely delayed writing this blog for a variety of reasons, including the uncertainty surrounding my own employment and the typical delay for security reasons. Some answers to the above questions can also be found in my OMS post, but the main thing to know is: I finally accepted the offer!
Home Leave is a State Department mandated vacation that occurs between tours. Our leave happened to be the maximum time allotted to us, or 30 days, plus a week of Annual Leave tacked on at the end. We used this time to travel around the country, visit with family, renew our licenses, attend medical appointments, and try to relax despite the near constant stream of activities we attempted to squeeze in. Here's a quick recap of our first home leave.
What a whirlwind the last year has been. It feels like only yesterday Misha got the call to join the Foreign Service. It's crazy to think that only a year ago Misha was going through A-100 in DC while I was planning my Massachusetts exit strategy.
I received a request for more about our dog, Mochi. I post about her fairly often on Instagram, but have only mentioned her briefly on here so far. She has a led a pretty interesting, if not challenging, life so far. For those who have yet to meet her, here's a little more on our... Continue Reading →
One of the cool things about living in Virginia is the proximity to Civil War and other historical sites. I come from Massachusetts, where Revolutionary history abounds and everyone who grew up there has been beaten over the head with this history from a young age. However, having only traveled to DC once when I was in high school, I never really got a chance to see much from the Civil War period. Living down here gives me the rare chance to visit these sites, and I chose the Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland as my starting point.
Beer and Diplomacy 
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