my life: 8 Countries in one month...

Granted three of them were just the airport, but still....it's been a really busy and hectic month! Alex and I had a great trip to Madrid for a wedding and then on to Portugal that started at the end of August. To get there we transited Seoul, which has great facilities in the airport for a five-hour layover. We drove from Madrid to Faro, Portugal, which is on the southwest coast. There, we met up with our good friend who's currently posted in Munich and we all rented a little apartment near the beach and spent a week laying by the beach and catching up. It was one of the best vacations I can remember ever taking. The return trip was brutal (transiting Hamburg, London, Seoul, Nadi) and took about 40 hours straight, but we left on a Saturday morning and arrived home on Monday at noon due to the time difference.

I was in the office four days before we left for my first work trip to Tonga (one of the countries in our vast consular district). Alex went along on the Tonga trip and enjoyed snorkeling with whales (and a shark), photographing the blowholes at sunset, and discovering what Tongatapu has to offer. It will be a somewhat regular trip for me, so we'll probably plan to take advantage of the trip over and stay a weekend at one of the other islands where there are lots of diving/snorkeling options. Though smaller and more rustic than Suva, Tonga has a lot of beauty to behold, and I look forward to getting to see more of it on future trips. (Check out Alex's picture of the coast at sunset here).

Returning to Suva from Tonga, I was very eager to get home and stay here for a while! It was nice that it is finally starting to feel like home. We still have a few things to work on to be completely settled, but I was able to spend all day Saturday unpacking and arranging some of the last boxes that had been pushed to the back of closets for storage. There's not a lot of storage room, and I brought quite a bit of consumables, so it's still a bit of a challenge finding a place for everything.

Below is a random list of some highlights that stick out from my travels:
-buying tons of fingernail polish and hair mousse in Madrid to replace all of mine that was not allowed to be packed in my HHE
-being in Mariola and Lucas' wedding (seeing her for the first time in three years)
-seeing Jenn for the first time in a year and feeling like no time had passed
-eating the most delicious seafood I've ever had in Portugal
-kayaking through the stone arches off the coast of Portugal
-sitting in the hammock on the porch listening to the rain in Suva
-providing American Citizen services to US citizens who required Tongan translation across a folding table at a conference center in downtown Tonga
-talking about laptop visa adjudications on camera for the local news in Tonga
-spraying myself in the face with coconut juice as I tried to cut a hole for my straw
-taking a picture with a US flag tattooed man on the streets of downtown Tonga (he looks like he may have done time in a California prison based on some of his tattoos)