Saturday, September 10, 2011

Embassy Family

I consider myself to have two families sometimes. There's the blood-related family that I live with, and then my embassy family. You see, the embassy in Jordan is huge, with about 300 families working in it. But it's also a very close community, where everyone knows everyone, and all the kids are friends. It's also kind of like a middle or high school. With the different groups that usually hang out together.  Those kids will all know each other, and the parents will all be friends.

I don't know every single person at the embassy, but I know quite a lot of people. If someone usually goes to the pool or the restaurant, I'll know their name. It's kind of interesting actually, how connections are made over here. You could know someone from another post, from school, from work, from training. In the foreign service, it really is a small world. Even though we're living all over it.

I especially know my parents very close friends and their kids. They're like my second family. And the kids in this "group" have all different age ranges. But somehow all of us clicked together. The parents from work and stuff, but what really amazes me is how us kids did.

We range from 3 to 12 years old. There's Sa, from a differnt blog post, who's three years younger then me, but really mature for her age. We really are like sisters, and then her brother and his friend. His little brother who's one of my brother's best friends, and then even more.

We've been to the Dead Sea and Red Sea together, we've been to practcally every embassy event together. All of us really could pass as siblings, if we didn't look so different. (We probably could pass anyway, Sa and I have convinced people that we were sisters before.) And then there's everyone else at the embassy, who I also know, even if not as close.

So during the year, it's like coming to a big house when I go to the embassy, escept for the summer.

In summer, people leave. They move on to other countries, other adventures, and new people take their place. Now when I walk through the embassy, I don't know half the people, and it's kind of confusing at first, when you realize that you haven't seen someone in a while, until you learn that they're gone.

But by winter break, I'll adjust, I'll know for sure who's gone, and who's here, I'll know everyone again.

We really are like a family. A diverse, odd, smart, and very, very interesting one.


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