Tour of the Foreign Service Institute

Today I had the pleasure of skipping out on three hours of work to go see the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) located in Roslynn, VA. The FSI serves as the training center for all Foreisn Service Officers (FSOs), of which there are approximately 7,000. Leading the tour was a 6-year veteran of the service who has served in Lithuania, Armenia, and is on his way to Afghanistan this summer. While I do not have any intentions of joining the Foreign Service, I must say the program sounds simply superb. If you have no trouble learning languages and serving in hardship posts, the FS can be the adventure of a lifetime. I am not going to list everything I learned today given the huge amount of information that was dumped on me, but if you are interested I am more than willing to share what I absorbed.