Flag Day (wait wait it's over?)

After months and months of waiting, Flag Day came and went so fast that I'm still reaching back for details to reinforce my fleeting impressions.  We started the day with a field trip to another agency, which did a decent job of keeping my mind off the afternoon. When we got back to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), Mom and Dad had already arrived and staked out seats next to the wonderful McKeating family. I led the parents on a tour of the halls of FSI ("This is the Danish classroom....there's the Pashto room...and here's Somali"), and then it was time to settle into the auditorium.

Choosing seats with our classmates turned out to be kind of a big deal. We were told to sit next to someone supportive to help process whatever might come (I did pass tissues to a girl nearby). Given the presence of a few very dangerous posts on our list, I wondered if a scene from The Hunger Games might transpire, with someone running the front to volunteer.  Then the A-100 course leaders paraded in with the flags, brief introductory remarks were made, and bam!

The flag of China was up on the screen, and a classmate was called to Beijing. As China was the country with the most positions on our list, it was called first and frequently. A few posts that made my stomach queasy went by, and another classmate was called to Guangzhou. Two China posts down....if this continued, might I get my dream post after all? The odds were decidedly not in my favor.

China's flag flashed on the screen a third time, this time for a consular position in Shanghai. I had a feeling Shanghai would be my destination, and indeed it was. I made my way to the front to shake the hand of the Ambassador and class mentor and pick up a folder with the marching orders.

All the tension was gone now, and the rest of the ceremony passed so quickly. I didn't even try keeping up with the Bingo game going on; it was too fast to even write down everyone's names by their posts. I celebrated with my friends when they were called to Ulaanbaatar and Sarajevo, laughed when classmates shrieked for joy, and felt a twinge of pain when my dream post went to another highly deserving colleague. But as our A-100 coordinator advised us, this is a job where you have to own your decisions and not look back. You can't spend your life wondering at every juncture what might have been better had things gone differently. Wise words.

The rest of the night was spent with my parents and two old friends.

Everyone seemed to think I needed to hold up my flag in every photo.

The day before Flag Day, I read the story of Joshua taking the city of Jericho. As he stands on a hill looking at the tightly shut city of Jericho in the distance, wondering how he will take it, God appears to him and tells him how the victory will be won. He just had to look with the eyes of faith to see that the victory was already accomplished. Going into Flag Day with this story in mind, I knew that whatever the outcome, God had already prepared the way.

And you know what? Shanghai is probably going to be awesome.