Our New Lives Have Begun

Pancho:

We're finally here in Arlington, VA, only a couple miles from the National Mall, and we LOVE it!  It was a long road trip in our little car with all of our pieces, but it was great to see the country.  We didn't have much time to stop and sight-see, but we were able to quickly explore Giltner, NE where my family immigrated from Germany, and Harrisonburg, VA, the home to Legs' friend MC and my uncle Walter.

There seems to be so much to do here, and the weather has been amazing for exploring.  I walked to the Marine Corps War Memorial with Thumper and Bambi the other day.  It was very impressive to see, but also sad to see all of the wars the Marines have taken part in and to think about how many people have lost their lives in our many wars.  Not far away from the War Memorial is the Arlington National Cemetery, which is even more surreal to quantify how many people have died serving our country.  There is a beautiful Carillon (sort of bell tower) gifted to the United States from the Netherlands for our involvement and support in World War II that plays music that can be heard at both the National Cemetery and the War Memorial.  Overall the experience there was sublime.

Thank you to all of our family for being so patient with us contacting everyone.  We are far more busy than we anticipated with the Foreign Service.  We've heard from several people that the pace slows down dramatically after A-100 training, but for now Legs and I are both very busy with classes, briefs, training, and entertaining our newly mobile Thumper.  Maybe he just needed a good week to think about crawling in the car before he could figure it out.  We will do our best to get in touch with everyone soon, but for now the blog and occasional phone calls/skype dates are the best we can do.