Friday, May 28, 2010

This Week's State Department Blog RoundUp


I have to start out by reiterating the slow move east's comment that these Weekly State Blog Roundups take a lot of work! A big round of applause to A Daring Adventure for putting these roundups together in the past.

The big news this week is that Muttering Behind the Hardline decided to hang up the spurs for a while. We will miss you and hope to read more from you soon.

And we were very happy that I’ll take mine… to Go, please! decided to continue on…

A common theme this week and for more weeks to come is PCSing or summer travel. Is it summer yet? Not officially, but it sure feels like it in Kolkata, India.

Traveling and enjoying the good weather was:


Foreign Service Specialist was allowed back home in Thailand;

Diplodocus is having readjustment pains;

Minnesota Gal explored beautiful Cebu. Her adventures around Manila make me want to put the post on our “must bid” list;


 the world we live in described their recent travel to Eilat and an explosive experience;





and Cyberbones went camping with the Cub Scouts;

Prepping for the big PCS were:

Find out how Email from the Embassy lost 30lbs in one day!;

The Perlman Update was able to sell (and buy!) some things before PCSing;

and Beyond the cornfields was moving to Miami - now its Bangladesh, but does their UAB know?

Enjoying the simpler things in life were:

Life is a bowl of cherries and Lack of Tacos decided to make juice;

place2place is enjoying the dandelions;

Lindsey Mae and company enjoyed peanut butter pancakes;

at post continues to treat us to unusual shopping adventures around the world;

Tuk & Tam is enjoying her recent change of perspective on her mother’s blankets;

and well, not really enjoying and not simple at all, but Life After Jerusalem is still experiencing her EER;

The last few A-100 classes and aspiring Foreign Service are full of active bloggers:


The B Files received her security clearance in three months! Congratulations!;

Fawda Munathema added some additional thoughts to The Hegemonist’s legendary post on the Foreign Service application process;

and Something edited this way comes was able to get a lot of things done.

And in the Now for Something Completely Different Category:

Even though EF’M: The Life of an FSO Spouse wrote about the heat in Hermosillo, it is the photos of Tiffany’s teeth cleaning that I can't get out of my mind;



And finally, awards of the week so that I can use some alliteration:

This week’s Best Bawdy Banter award goes to Hick/Hitchhiker/...Diplomat for his pictorial essay “Angles.”;



and the Deeply Definitely Defining Domicile award goes to EF'M: The Life of an FSO Spouse as he pondered “Home is Where…?”

Next week’s Weekly State Department Roundup will be hosted at Wife-Mommy-Woman. Sign up for your turn at A Daring Adventure.

Enjoy!


Image from The World That We Live In

11 comments:

Camille said...

Love it! Great job :)

David L. said...

Thanks for the award! First, I'd like to thank all of my loyal readers for putting up with my typos and overall poor grammar...

Daniela Swider said...

Terrific RoundUp, Natalie! I especially liked the alliteration in the awards. Thanks for the mention! So glad you decided to take the FSOT. Best of luck!

Natalie Buda Smith said...

Thanks so much. I had so many typos in this post, it took at least four revisions. At least it is done!

A Daring Adventure said...

Awesome job, Natalie! You are so witty!

I love the way you organized it, and I'm really grateful because I've been off the internet a bit this week, so it's been great to have all this to click on so that I could catch up and not feel so behind and out of the loop!

I've updated the link to you on the RoundUp page- thanks so much for taking this on this week!

Brian... said...

Really liked the format-good work! And I probably would have said that even if I hadn't received an award...

TSB said...

I'm another big fan of alliteration! Thanks for doing all this work. It's much appreciated.

ata' allah at-talib said...

thanks for the link and thanks for doing the roundup!

Bfiles said...

this was great! thank you so much for the mention and congrats!

I'll Take Mine... said...

Great job putting together the roundup!

I imagine it takes lots of time.

And thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it.

Brooke S. said...

Ditto - good job!