LG's Excellent PC Adventure

Last weekend I went to Hissar to join a group of volunteers who were planning on taking a hike. Hissar is about an hour north of Plovdiv by bus which, like Stara Zagora, puts it in the foothills of the Sredna Gora. The outing was planned and coordinated by the VSN or Volunteer Support Network, a group of volunteers who serve as peer counselors and shoulders-to-lean-on. The VSN thought it would be nice to set up a weekend for anyone who wanted to visit Hissar, go for a swim in the hot baths, see the Roman ruins and take a short walk through the surrounding countryside. It sounded good to me and my friend Kate was doing the coordinating so I decided to tag along.

We had very comfortable rooms in a sanitarium that had special rates for railroad employees. After determining that none of us had ever actually been employed by a railroad at any time, they charged us full whack. That came to almost 13 leva per person, or about nine dollars. We dumped our things in our rooms and gathered out front to wait for our guide for the walk around town. Georgi showed up right on time and was dressed in full camouflage with military hiking boots. This was a man who took his walks about town seriously.

Promptly at 11:00am we started off at a brisk clip. We barreled past ruins and hot springs without so much as a brief, "That's a Roman ruin" or "These are some of our famous hot springs", from our tour guide. We walked to the very edge of town and then took a brief rest while our guide ran off to his apartment for something he'd forgotten. Ten minutes later he returned and we were off again. This time we struck out across the fields behind Hissar towards the foothills. We marched for an hour across fields and through orchards and, as the foothills grew closer they began to seem more like footmountains. We stopped just short of the serious uphill part of the hills and the guide showed us where he intended to take us so the faint of heart could bail out then and there. I can usually faint with the best of them but I would have been the only one so I trudged on with the pack. Just before we began the climb, a friend of Georgi's joined us. He too was in full camo with military boots and he was packing heat. For reasons I never quite figured out he had a very large pistol holstered on his hip. I suppose if any of us broke a leg or something it would have been more merciful to shoot us rather than leave us to the wild squirrels and lizards.

The path began its climb into the Sredna Gora and we climbed right along with it. I was huffing and puffing like a steam engine, an old steam engine, but I was keeping up with everyone and it kept looking like we were almost there. 'There' being a nice spot the guide was taking us to for lunch. As a group we soon fell into a groove; we'd hike for ten minutes and then rest for ten minutes. It made the hike longer but seriously curtailed the coronaries. Up and up we went and I knew that I was in trouble when Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay came down the path shaking their heads and telling us to go back because it was too difficult. I had a fleeting feeling that the VSN was trying to kill me because I'm old.

Finally, without the use of ropes, pitons or an escalator we made it up to the highest point on the planned hike and stopped for lunch. It was a very pretty spot with a natural spring of cold water and a view of the entire valley. We ate and relaxed and gathered our strength for the tumble back down the hill. Some people were theorizing that going down is harder than going up, don't let them kid you, going up is all effort and muscle pain, going down is losing your balance and rolling a lot. We got back to the sanitarium at about 5:00pm, showered and headed off to dinner. After a very nice dinner in a local restaurant, we found another place that served real carrot cake and had dessert there. I was asleep like a baby by 10:00 and woke the next morning feeling great. Until I tried to move my legs and discovered that each leg weighed about twelve tons. Maybe I shouldn't have had that extra piece of carrot cake. In a month or so, when my legs begin to recover their strength, I might try this hiking thing again.

March 30

It's that time of the year again. Baseball season begins this weekend and my fantasy team, The OverPaidPrimaDonnas, is poised to defend its role as the perennial bridesmaid in our league. Our draft was held yesterday and this year's team has some promise which is a serious handicap considering that our major strength has always been the quality of my whining. Nonetheless, in spite of a bizarre set of draft rules that once again conspired to prevent me from acquiring even one frontline pitching ace, second place is well within our expectations. We're No. 2, we're no. 2!!

March 31

Several months ago I had dinner with a group of friends in Pazardjik and ended up sitting across from Lori at the table. Lori told us all that she was leaving the PC because she'd joined the Foreign Service and had to terminate her PC service to begin training. It all sounded pretty interesting to me so I asked her how she went about joining the Foreign Service. It seems that there is a rigorously competitive process for obtaining one of these State Department jobs. Lacking a presidential appointment (ie. Condaleeza Rice) you first must pass a Foreign Service Written Exam (FSWE), then a Foreign Service Oral Assessment (FSOA) and finally, be high enough up on the list of qualifiers to be called for the one and only group training class each year. Here's a rough approximation of how the numbers work out; 30,000 people sign up for the free FSWE, about 5,000 of these don't even show up on test day; of the 25,000 who actually take the exam, approximately 10% achieve high enough scores to be offered a shot at the FSOA; some of these 2,500 then reconsider and drop out but about 2,000 will go through the day-long ordeal of the FSOA; less than 10% will be put on the list for potential entry into the Foreign Service. Then you just wait to see if there are openings in your cone (State Department talk for Field). You can stay on the list for 18 months at which time, if you haven't been offered a job, you can begin the whole procedure again or go find a day job. Lori was too modest to go into all these numbers, I dug them out of online State Department statistics.

The FSWE is a five part exam. Prior to taking it you have to declare which of the five FS cones you want to specialize in, the choices are Political, Public Diplomacy, Economics, Consular and Management. The SD site has a wealth of information on each and an online interactive test to help you decide. Part one of the exam is the job knowledge section. Multiple choice questions testing your knowledge in a wide range of subjects such as economics, history, geography, math, cultural events, political science, US legal system, management theory, etc. Upon finishing this section, you proceed immediately to a multiple choice section specifically designed for your cone. There is a 50 minute essay and then a multiple choice test on English and another that assesses your general life skills. A minimum score will be determined by the SD and only exams scoring above that number on the multiple choice sections will have their essays graded. Two out of three of the exams that qualify to have their essays graded are then rejected because of essay deficiencies.

Daunting to say the least. However, as it seems that my dream of being appointed a Senator will never come to fruition, I've signed up for the FSWE being held this Saturday in Sofia. I must be clear here, I don't want to campaign, run or engage in any political process to become a Senator, I just think it would be nice to have the job and I'd accept it if someone decided to give it to me. I probably stand a better chance of that happening than I do of passing the FSWE, but I'm going to give the test a shot anyway. After all, I have to find something to do when I grow up.

By the way, Lori, as a reward for her outstanding achievement, has been sent to Sudan for her first assignment which, of course, leaves the French Riviera wide open for the next group!