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U.S. Foreign Service Officer headed to Wuhan, China

The mission of a U.S. diplomat in the Foreign Service is to promote peace, support prosperity, and protect American citizens while advancing the interests of the U.S. abroad. The work that diplomats do has an impact on the world as they serve at one of any of the more than 270 embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions in The Americas, Africa, Europe and Eurasia, East Asia and Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia.

The duties of a Consular Officer include to provide emergency and non-emergency services to American citizens and protect our borders through the proper adjudication of visas to foreign nationals and passports to American citizens. We adjudicate immigrant and non-immigrant visas, facilitate adoptions, help evacuate Americans, combat fraud, and fight human trafficking. Consular Officers touch people’s lives in important ways, often reassuring families in crisis. They face many situations which require quick thinking under stress and develop and use a wide range of skills, from managing resources and conducting public outreach to assisting Americans in distress.

Brazilian Easter


If you are tall, one of the first things you will notice in Brazil during Easter is the quantity of low-hanging giant chocolate eggs in every store that knock you on the head.  Buying these eggs for friends and family is a delicious (and also expensive) tradition here.  The price of the chocolate egg depends on the size and brand along with what's inside.  Some eggs contain other types of candy or chocolate and many have toys and trinkets in the middle.

Our "Bis" chocolate Easter egg

It even comes with a little stand so you can admire it

Last year I really wanted to buy an egg but I didn't because they were so expensive.  This year I'd been bugging Sean about wanting to get one and so we went the day after Easter hoping they'd be on sale.  They weren't.  Instead, we paid the same price (about 20 USD) for one of the eggs that nobody wanted.  I learned my lesson.



We bought a smaller egg of a medium quality brand of chocolate with "Bis" candy inside.  "Bis" is kind of like a Kit Kat but not as good.  In any case, I was still very excited to have bought a Brazilian chocolate traditional egg and I was even more excited to open and eat it.  It was definitely not $20 delicious but the whole experience was fun nevertheless and it will be cool to talk about it with my students.

The biggest challenge is eating it before it melts in the hot weather!
 
Though holidays like Easter make me miss my family back home, we had a really fun international celebration at the house where I live.  We got together and prepared dinner and drinks that was made even more entertaining by the fact that there were people from the U.S., Germany, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.  There wasn't one language that we all had in common so there were always several different translations going around the table at the same time.  I loved it! 

Dinner at the house
Missing these beautiful faces back home along with the tulips!
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    Sarah Sanderson
    I am currently in Mandarin language training as a new diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. Sean and I depart for Wuhan, China in November 2019 for my first tour in consular affairs.
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    Grateful for my very tolerant, supportive and easygoing husband who's always game for a new adventure

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