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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.

Dinosaur Park

On Sunday night Sean, Zhao Min, Qin Chen, Qin Chen's cousin and I went to the Dinosaur Park. The Dinosaur Park is one of Changzhou's most popular attractions and is basically an amusement park with the theme of dinosaurs. In addition to the rides there were random dinosaurs towering above the trees around the park.


There are also many displays and information on bones and archaeology as well. During Halloween weekend the park adds decorations, a haunted house, parades and a concert with a Halloween show complete with Korean pop singers.


Upon entry, everyone was given a mask to wear and we were impressed by the amount of people in costume. We had a lot of fun with the masks/hats/costume as shown below.

Qin Chen and Zhao Min were adorable in their bat ears.


There were a lot of people in the park, however, and the lines were long for all of the rides. For this reason we waited until the concert started and after the first five minutes we bailed to ride the coasters line-free.
One of the floats in the parade - it was pretty elaborate with moving, animatronic parts

It was fun trying the "junk food" that the theme park had to offer. Instead of elephant ears, fries and pizza there were kebabs, popcorn chicken, noodle bowls and chicken wings on a stick. The night was pretty chilly and we all opted to buy the rain poncho for the log ride. We all pretty much got soaked anyways.

The Halloween pop concert with fire, fog, flying ghosts on wires, and dancing Halloween characters in full costume


All in all our first visit to the Dinosaur Park was fun - thanks Qin Chen for buying us the tickets in advance! We arrived home tired, cold, hungry and completely pooped. But the memories of a Halloween adventure in a Chinese in the unexpected place of a dinosaur theme park made it all worthwhile.
Read More 1 Comment | Posted by Sarah Sanderson edit post

1 Comment

  1. Chen on November 2, 2009 at 8:20 PM

    That was great fun to me because last time when I went to dinosaur park, I just tried several items in the park. But this time I tried most of the items. It's a shame that we didn't have time to go into that haunted house.

     


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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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