2016 Ends

Colonia Tovar Venezuela

Could you have guessed that Venezuela has a German alpine village founded by immigrants in 1843? Colonia Tovar is about 2 hours away from Caracas so it's a great weekend getaway. It's a nice retreat from the tension of living in a high crime city. Tovar is the kind of village where people gather at the town square on a Saturday night and walk home after the party.

Tovar has a variety of restaurants with decent German food. There's plenty of the local German-style Tovar beers which is also a good brand to get in Caracas. There's lots of interesting little shops and food market stands with fresh produce. We also stocked up on fresh baked bread which we haven't seen in Caracas.

Tovar is higher in the mountains so the temperature was in the 60s F. We didn't plan for it, but we were there for the first lighting of the Christmas lights in the town square so that was a happy accident. It wasn't enough to make it feel like a wintry Christmas, but it wasn't an entirely tropical Christmas feeling either. Here's some pictures:

Strange Things Afoot - Inflation

2 1/2 months at post and "strange things are afoot at the Circle K." (Circle K is a convenience store chain founded in Texas and referenced in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Be excellent to each other!)

It's already hard to find some items like milk, sugar, toilet paper, deodorant, or other various imports people actually need for a normal life. Regardless of their lack of Circle K stores, I have a feeling strange things are afoot here. Prices are all over the place from really cheap to expensive when I compare them to home.

There's 3 different exchange rates at play. It makes it harder to understand why anything is priced the way it is. I'm sure a lot of the pricing troubles are caused by these various exchange rates.

Caracas Apartment

I finally moved out of the hotel and into the apartment after 6 weeks at post. I came in at the end of the summer rush and post had to expand their housing pool again, so my assigned apartment was still being renovated when I arrived. It might be another 3 weeks until our stuff arrives including a much delayed Unaccompanied Air Baggage (UAB), so living out of 2 suitcases continues. It's good that my wife was held up with a visa issue and doesn't arrive until tomorrow.

Let's see, pack out was 1 week before departure, 6 weeks of home leave, 4 weeks in DC for training, and now 6 weeks at post to get into an apartment. That's 17 weeks of feeling homeless since the end of June. I've never lived out of 2 suitcases for so long and I'm still doing it! Well, at least we have a nice apartment to start feeling like home again. We'll get more familiar belongings delivered and then it will be a home for 2 years. After that, it's time to start the whole process all over again. :-)

Here's a few pictures of the nicely renovated and furnished place. The bed will be replaced with our own, but otherwise the rest of the furniture is here to stay. The first picture is the very important water tank added because of frequent water outages, which should really hit hard during the dry season in the spring. There's also a filter for the sink because of quality issues. We may get power outages but not enough to justify a generator... yet. Otherwise, it should be a nice apartment to live in while avoiding all of the crime outside.

Sambil Mall and Hard Rock Cafe

I finally ventured out and went to a big mall to see how it is here in Caracas. Sambil may be the biggest with plenty of American and local stores. There are American fast food places like KFC, Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, Quiznos, and a few others I'm probably forgetting. There's 3-5 floors to this place depending on which area. There's a really nice Hard Rock Cafe on the 5th floor with covered outdoor seating.

Plenty of people wandered around. There were huge lines for the ATMs and banks as people need lots of cash with the inflation. The restaurants were kind of dead but the fast food places were busy. It seemed like a lot of people were there like me to mostly look around since it was a nice place to do it. I didn't see a whole lot of shopping even though the stores were full of stuff to buy.

Prices ranged from a little cheaper to a bit outrageous from my perspective. Most of it hovered around U.S. prices as far as I could tell with the exchange rate. Local wages haven't kept up with inflation so everything's probably much more expensive without dollars to transfer into the country. It's good for me that I get paid in dollars. :-) If this is what their inflation has done so far then I'm not looking forward to next year if it gets more expensive than this. Hopefully the exchange rate keeps up with inflation. Here's some pics of the mall:

Foreign Service Specialist Tenure

The cable was finally released with the Tenure Board results. All of my IMS new hire classmates made it too so that's awesome. I've heard tenure for specialists is a bit easier to get than the officers, but it's still not guaranteed everyone will get it. If we didn't get tenure on first review then we do get two more looks before time's up. Tenure is required to get past the long probationary period of Foreign Service employment and if you can't get it then you're let go.

Tenure isn't just about current job performance. The policy 3 FAH-1 H-2250 has the criteria for tenure and their consideration of potential for greater responsibilities:

The sole criterion for a positive tenuring decision will be the candidate’s demonstrated ability to perform satisfactorily in the occupational category in which the candidate is serving and the potential, assuming normal growth and career development, to serve effectively in the Foreign Service at higher levels with greater responsibilities in the candidate’s occupational category.

Tenure means transitioning from career conditional status to a career appointment. It also means the entry-level directed tours are done and my next move involves mid-level bidding on the next tour. It'll be like interviewing for my job over and over again to get each assignment. So it's not like work gets much easier after achieving tenure...

Caracas - Week 1

Shipments

I had 4 shipments out of DC for the move to Caracas. A company came the day before flying out to load my vehicle on a trailer and take it away for loading in a shipping container. They said it'd go from the port of Baltimore to Miami before heading to Caracas. It joins the rest of the stuff in Miami waiting on clearance to proceed including a Household Effects (HHE) shipment from Stockholm.

The other 3 shipments were the Unaccompanied Air Baggage (UAB), Consumables, and a supplemental HHE. If there's any HHE weight leftover then it's surprisingly easy to ship some more stuff from DC or home leave if you need to buy new appliances or anything else for the next post. It just has to be over 200 lbs of stuff or it isn't worthwhile to ship and the request will be denied. Now it's just a matter of waiting for all of the various stuff to get here which could be several months to transit and clear local processing.

Flights

The flights were good with a Miami connection breaking it in half. It's easier flying for 6 or 7 hours when the time zone doesn't change. It definitely makes going to work the next day a more wakeful experience.

Above was the only decent sign I noticed in the airport as a sort of welcome sign while waiting for my bags. SENIAT is their version of the IRS. I didn't have time for picture taking or pulling out a phone for any reason when I came out of customs. I was surrounded by guys offering me taxis or to change my dollars to bolivars since I looked like a guy lacking bolivars. I quickly found my driver and left.