Amanti amans amoris viridiatem

The two excitements in my life over the last week: I was rotated off visas and am now working American Citizen Services (ACS); I’ve fielded six phones calls in the middle of the night from a concerned British citizen who does not think highly of US foreign policy in Iraq, and expresses his discontent through the liberal sprinkling of expletives in his phone calls to me, a total stranger and perhaps the lowest person on the embassy totem poll. If he gave me a chance to speak, we might find we had some things in common. At least he would discover that it isn’t worth the price of the phone call to repeatedly tell me to “piss off.”

The switch to ACS work is not actually an excitement, just a change. Frankly, I knew my visa portfolio quite well, and worked with a couple of people in Washington whom I had really come to enjoy, but can recognize the importance of cross-training, especially in a place such as this, where staffing and stability are uncertain. The job is not much more than a glorified administrative assistant. I help people apply for passports; find vital records offices in their home states; explain how to get visas to visit other countries during their leave (three most popular places for soldiers seem to be Australia, Thailand, and Ireland); provide notary services for people buying homes, getting divorced, getting married, giving various people in their lives the power to make decisions for them; help parents claim citizenship for their newborn children; deliver the bad news to many Legal Permanent Residents (LPRs) that they have lost status in the US having stayed out of the country too long; and make sure the public announcements in our waiting room are up to date. My big project before my next holiday is to produce a contact list and clean up our registration system. Doesn’t it sound like a great summer internship for a college kid?!?

I’ve been here five months now, with essentially one week off, at Thanksgiving. Otherwise, I have gone to work everyday except Christmas and New Years. It can be done, but my attitude has most definitely suffered. Particularly now, with a break just a few weeks away, I am finding my patience running short. I’ve mentioned before how difficult it has been for me to make friends here, in part because of the unusual dynamics, but also because I forget sometimes that not everyone defines friendship in the same way I do. It is a good reminder in the struggle to be less selfish, we cannot offer something with the expectation of something equivalent in return. I trust my friends will benefit from my current missteps!

They are reducing our security posture within the Green Zone. Over the last month, cement walls have come down, marine checkpoints have disappeared, and talk of replacing our “professional” security guards with Iraqi police officers has begun to surface. This at a time when insurgent and resistance attacks have increased--which is news that is apparently not making an impression on large parts of the American public, as the number of people expressing a desire to come here for tourism purposes is growing daily. If the threat of death at the hands of insurgents doesn’t keep them away, perhaps our recent outbreak of Avian Flu will.

Went to a Valentine’s Day card making party. Haven’t made or given Valentine’s Day cards for close to fifteen years. I was clearly not the craftiest person there, but contributed by coming up with environmentally appropriate sentiments for the cards, things such as: “Kiss My Kevlar”, “You’re manifested on my convoy of love”, “Be my bunker buddy”, “You light up my life like celebratory fire on New Years”, “I’m stuck on you like trash on razor wire”, “Like a mortar, you’ve exploded into my life”, “Locked and Loaded”, "I'll be your duck & cover". My higher degree at work. A more poetic scribe composed the title of this entry. The Latin phrase translates as, "To a lover, from a lover, I send love’s fresh green branch", and was the opening of a letter written by Abelard to Heloise (see reading list on the right).

May your life be full of love offered without stipulations and accepted graciously.