Sixth Week of A-100

This was probably the most difficult week of our Foreign Service Generalist Orientation Course. Not because of language testing (although I did have a tough German exam on Thursday) or trying to keep track of the plethora of information in our classes (although we did have some important meetings this week, including one at the Pentagon and one with the Deputy Secretary of State), but mostly because of the anticipation for Friday, which was "Flag Day"!

I really like the Flag Day tradition. The A-100 class gathers in the gym at FSI, along with many of their spouses, parents, children, friends and others, plus other FSI students who have the free time to attend. All our class coordinators and CDOs are also there, and they get a round of applause. For every post on our final bid list, Amb. Joe Mussomeli, Director of Career Development and Assignments, held up the flag of the country and said a word or two about the particular posting, then called out the name of the person being assigned to that post. There was applause as the winner walked to the front of the room to receive the flag from our class mentor, Amb. Michael Polt (PDAS in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs).

Bongsu and I had prepared a paper showing the flags of all the posts ranked High, Medium-high and Medium on our list. At the beginning of the ceremony, it was announced that no one from our class had received a Low bid, so that meant that Bongsu and my dad (who were in attendance) could be confident that one of the flags on that paper would end up in my hands. It was quite an emotional experience for about the first half of the ceremony, as every now and then one of the flags from the "High" column would come up and go to another classmate.

Eventually they reached the Dannebrog, the flag of the Kingdom of Denmark, for one Consular-Political rotation (meaning that the incumbent works a year in each of those two sections) in Copenhagen. This was one of our top top choices, and one we had talked about at length in the interview with the CDO. When Amb. Mussomeli called my name, Bongsu leapt out of her chair and I had a huge smile as I walked up to receive my flag. Bongsu tried to send a text message to my mom (who was traveling for work and couldn't be there) which ended up as a text saying "Denm" and a second saying "Denmark" (the response was "www").

All in all, a good day!