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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.

A visit from Sean's sister



After the holidays and the chaos of ski camp was over, the next big highlight that we looked forward to was a visit from Sean's sister, Jen. Jen currently teaches at a university Saudi Arabia and we always look forward to a visit from her during one of her breaks between courses. Having visitors is always such a fun excuse to plan activities that we might normally do and this trip was no exception. We kept Jen busy with quite the packed agenda of things to do both inside and outside of Tokyo - it was so much fun!

After she arrived, we hit up Shake Shack, a Western restaurant in the trendy part of Tokyo that we had been wanting to try for awhile and then on the next day (Friday), we left for a weekend ski trip to Shiga Kogen resort - the largest winter ski area in the whole of Japan. The weather was great for skiing and at night we enjoyed soaking in the hot pools (onsen) of the hotel along with a hot pot dinner. The next day we traded skiing for a tour to the snow monkey onsen park and then rode the bus back to Tokyo. On Monday we had a long and elaborate cooking class which involved first learning how to cut and prepare fish for sushi and then making a few different kinds of sushi. The class was topped off by eating the finished product and washing it down with homemade plum wine.




Later that afternoon, we made a visit to the hedgehog cafe where we each had 30 minutes to play with our own, individual prickly creature. I would definitely go back for a second or third visit! We concluded the already long day with a free lecture at United Nations University and then joined Sean's frisbee friends for an all-you-can-drink sake event at Kurand Brewery.


We took Tuesday completely off and recovered from the previous days' activities by hanging out at our neighborhood onsen before spending the evening with my Rotary host counselor for a sushi dinner and then a night of tea, dessert and karaoke. On Wednesday, Jen spoke in one of the undergraduate classes that I'm observing, which was a lot of fun - I was so excited about the chance for Japanese undergraduate students to learn from her experience living and working in the Middle East. We celebrated her last night with us by having fancy drinks at the New York Bar at the top of the Park Hyatt building in the center of the city. Jen, thanks for your up-for-anything attitude, your humor, your generosity and for bringing me a ton of new baking supplies! Please come and visit again so we can plan more fun things to do!


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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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