Today marks one year since we arrived in Cyprus. It’s also the longest I’ve ever been away from the United States; my previous record was 9 months away.
It’s been a good year. I will be honest, for me the highlight of being here has really been getting to ride regularly again for the first time in a decade (and the first time at all in eight years). I will be forever grateful to Cyprus for reminding me how happy being around horses makes me. Because we are almost always posted in large capital cities, there aren’t many places in the world where I could work until 6:30 or 7 pm and still fit in a ride. While this is a blessing for me, I think Nicosia’s smallness and emptiness is definitely Severin’s curse. But he’s managed to have fun here too, and has gotten some good mountain biking and windsurfing in.
Work has been an equal mix of rewarding and frustrating. Rewarding because there aren’t many places in the world where we get to follow old-school diplomatic negotiations. Before I came I thought Cyprus would be a small and inconsequential post where I would work my eight hours a day and go home. I’ve ended up working a lot but there is satisfaction in knowing my cables are read at pretty high levels in Washington. We’ve had four Assistant Secretary-level visits and one SecState visit since I’ve been here, as well as many other folks. And much to my disbelief, I’ve secured a full-time position to continue my work for another two years. When we arrived, I was planning to transition to leave without pay right about now. Now, it’s Severin who will prepare for leave without pay a year from now. I’m not going to lie, with the security of having a great barn to ride at and an easy place to live, I did mourn the loss of my year of freedom a little bit. But working will be better for my savings accounts and student loan payments!
Travel-wise, we’ve taken in a fair chunk of Cyprus. We’ve struggled a bit to get to more far-flung destinations, as it is not that easy to board Popeye. We’ve found a decent place, but the lady who runs it is a bit of a flake and is only there at very specific times of the day for drop-off and pick-up, which is a bit annoying to work around. We’ll try a new boarding place soon and hopefully get to experience more of Cyprus. It’s also been hard to get out because we’re not on vacation here, and on the weekends we just want to veg.
We’ve also gotten to see a fair bit of Europe. In addition to Cyprus, I’ve added four new countries to my list this year: Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, and Greece. I actually visited Germany three times– Berlin and Frankfurt for training, and Dresden, Nuremburg, and Munich on vacation. I finally got to visit German Christmas markets– on my bucket list since returning to Ecuador.
On my bucket list for next year, I hope we will re-double our efforts to explore this corner of the world. We’re off in two days to visit Scotland & Ireland. I’d like to take advantage of weekend flights to Romania or Hungary, maybe around Christmas time to take in a little bit of Christmas weather. I’d like to break out of Europe and visit Israel or Jordan. I’d like to visit Turkey, too (so much shopping to do there), but since the flights are such a pain in the ass and it continues to be so unstable there I’m not sure that we’ll make it this year. The good thing about having two more years is that’s two more years of European travel adventures. Since we’re still on the fence about whether this is the last Foreign Service hurrah for us, I want to make sure we take full advantage.