Field Trip to the Diplomatic Pouch Warehouse!

As part of DoS applied systems, we had the fantastic opportunity to go on a handful of field trips to see local facilities that support us while we're overseas.

By far the most interesting was our trip to the diplomatic pouch facility. The diplomatic pouch is the service that handles all official (and some unofficial) mail handling to our overseas posts. In addition, it provides an address in the DC area that people can send letters and packages to using domestic rates. This turns out to be a lot of mail to sling around. 

Having never been to a mail processing facility before, it was quite entertaining to see the process involved. Even more interesting were the safety procedures to check incoming mail for threats (bombs, anthrax, et cetera). These processes aren't much (or possibly any) different than those taken by the USPS, but having never seen anything like it, it was quite the experience. 

Anyway, we also got a chance to learn the difference between Army Post Offices (APO), Diplomatic Post Offices (DPO), and the Diplomatic Pouch. It was nice to see how my future mail will be handled, since Chennai is a 'Pouch only' post, so all my mail (and more importantly, Amazon packages) will be going through there for the next couple years.

A bunch of mail!