Consular Report of Birth Abroad

It's a boy! (ok ok, we've known that for months). We knew we'd be having the baby here and in fact we moved to Argentina the day before my wife's no-fly date. However, the baby was due in late June approximately a full month from now, but he decided to come (very) early. This was quite the surprise to us, as we'd packed all of our infant supplies in our UAB... which hasn't arrived yet (but should be here long before late June!) Fortunately, we got some loaners from another family who had a baby recently. Even more of a surprise was that my wife spent the last week hospitalized on bed rest. So... needless to say, we've had an interesting transition to living in Buenos Aires. This also partially explains my blog-silence. On the plus side, she did meet an OB that she liked several days before being hospitalized and the hospital is less than 2 blocks from our house.

Anyway, onward to the next big adventure in our lives. Buenos Aires didn't have a long run in terms of being our "current big adventure." We sure are glad to be living downtown though, where we can walk everywhere!

PS: Fun fact, when she leaves the hospital, my wife will have spent more than 50% of her time in this country... in that hospital room.

PPS: She does not have internet.

PPPS: Everyone speaks Spanish.

PPPPS: She does not speak Spanish.

PPPPPS: Everyone is healthy and happy!

PPPPPPS: Now comes the fun part of obtaining all the appropriate official documentation for our newest little American diplomat.

The Trials and Tribulations of a Pet Owner

This isn't my cat, but I think mine would hate this just as much.

Just a quick reminder, if you've been thinking about getting a pet while in the Foreign Service. Go ahead and don't do that. We love our cat, but... she won't be replaced when she eventually passes. Transferring our cat between posts has been a challenge.

Vet in Chennai: $40
Quarantine office expediter in Chennai: $200
Pet in cabin fee for flight to US: $150
Vet in US for vaccine + health certificate (two visits): $150
Pet in cabin fee for flight to BA: $125

That's $665 to move the pet, which isn't so bad. The real pain came from the side consequences.

Since I was travelling with the cat, we didn't want to take Consultations at the beginning or end of home leave (cat-hotel-fees are often vary expensive and would be a hassle), so we agreed to cost construct our flights to take my consultation days in the middle of home leave. What we didn't realize (at the time) was that choise locked us in to flying to post from DC (or cost-constructing our flight based on that value). We've since learned that it costs half as much for the government to fly us from DC to Buenos Aires as it does from our home leave location in Florida. Cost construct flights would have cost us almost $550 extra per person, on top of the $55 fee for doing so. Looking at $1700 to split the fare from Florida to Buenos Aires... we decided to book our own flights. I mean heck, for $2000 we could fly direct on Areolineas Argentinas (which we couldn't do using government tickets, due to the Fly America Act). It sucks to shell out for our own flights, but maybe in some twisted way it'd be worth it to cut our flight time from 15 hours to 9.5. Or so we thought. Unfortunately, that airline (and almost every airline) doesn't allow pets in cabin to travel to Argentina. Cargo travel is notoriously bad for animals, so we're back to looking at 15 hour connecting flights. The only saving grace was that we were able to use credit card points to book our flights (90,000 Chase Sapphire points, transferred to United + $250 for taxes). That's slightly cheaper ($1150 dollar value, since the Sapphire points could have been redeemed for one cent each of cash).

Running total: $1800

Now, some of that cost is obviously due to my mistake and lack of understanding how my flights would work if I split my home leave... Still, it never would have come up, if I hadn't had the cat, because we would have scheduled our consultations at the end of our home leave, thus negating the problem all together. As I said, we love our cat... and although transferring and home leave have been stressful for all of us, she's the only one that has no understanding of what's happening or why. (Not that our three year old fully grasps the concept either.)

First Love Tap, Driving in India

I guess it was bound to happen. Driving to work today I got into my first "bang" or fender-bender, as non-Indian's call it. Of course, neither of our fenders were bent... so "bang" is probably a more accurate term. It was completely my fault, I was looking at the side of the road at the group of personal drivers from the Consulate, who were getting breakfast at a food stand. The car two cars in front of me slammed on his breaks for no reason and caused a mild '3 car pile up.' In the end, we all got out, the personal drivers came over, and everyone agreed (in Tamil, without me having any clue what was going on) that there was no damage to any of the vehicles. The other two cars drove off... and I finished making my way to work. The only real damage done was to my reputation as a driver in the eyes of the personal drivers. I'm pretty sure they were shaking their heads and saying, "Silly American, this is why you hire a professional!"

I was quite lucky; had there been damage, I could have spent several hours at the police station. At least, that's what has happened to other officers in the past.

Note: The pictured car is not mine, but is the same make/model and is just as (un)damaged.

Under Attack

It's 3:50am... And we just had a temple procession pass by that literally was launching fire works at our window height. The drums were fairly loud... But the cracks of fireworks (every 100 ft or so) sounded like gunshots. Every third or fourth one was a big one, sounding like a cannon. Scared the heck out of everyone in the house.

Note: I was told in the morning by our housekeeper that it was the end of Krishna Janmashtami. One of the local temples paraded their deity around at 12:00-3:00am. I'd say they were running a little behind!