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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.

Chinese with Max


Owing to a bit of laziness and lack of motivation (and the fact that it is just plain hard) learning Chinese has not exactly been going as quickly and easily as hoped initially. Fortunately, Sean and I have some new helpers this semester: Qin Chen and Max. Qin Chen comes over on Sunday afternoons and evenings to help us with some common words and phrases. It is a lot of fun and she is a good teacher because she is tough on pronunciation and using the correct tone which is really, really hard to do. Sometimes we meet in a tea house or we all go out to dinner together and practice. Tonight she came over and we had a good time hanging out and practicing Chinese over sushi and Japanese rice bowls. Confusingly, the word "dorm" in Chinese sounds like "sue-shuh" which makes me think of "sushi" but the word "sushi" in Chinese sounds like "show-suh". Ahh!


On Thursdays, Jordan, Sean and I head over to a small classroom across the street with a senior student, Max. Max is another good friend and fun guy to be around. He is interested in teaching Chinese because he is looking to gain work experience as a teacher to foreigners as a possible job after graduation. Max is a fun teacher as well and uses games and music a lot during the class which can get a little overwhelming after 2 hours. While Qin Chen is a stickler on pronunciation, Max is a taskmaster about the characters. Jordan, being an artist, is really good at Chinese handwriting. I find it a little maddening because not only do you have to remember what it means and what each character looks like, you are supposed to remember the ORDER in which to draw each stroke (and it is not the order in which a westerner would necessarily think to do either).


Learning Chinese is a long, slow and frustrating process, but having teachers like Qin Chen and Max make it a lot more fun. The cool thing about learning Chinese in China is that you can practice it all the time! Though it seems impossible to remember everything, a previous teacher (Dave) and current teacher (Ken) are evidence that you can do it as they speak Chinese very well just after one year of living and teaching in China. Perhaps this means I should devote more than a few hours on Sunday and Thursday each week to this monumental task. It will be worth it!

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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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    Sarah and Sean
    Grateful for my very tolerant, supportive and easygoing husband who's always game for a new adventure

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