Each of us assigned by State to the Embassy gets 3 R&Rs/year, or, 2 longer R&Rs and three shorter Regional Rest Breaks. I don't know why it is called rest and recuperation - given the effort to get it done, it should be called sleep removal and reduction. The toughest part of these R&Rs is getting out and back to Baghdad, due to security concerns. I won't go into details, that would be poor operational security, but suffice it to say that for us, it took 53 hours from leaving our residence at the Embassy compound in Baghdad to the airport in Philadelphia. the largest single leg was from our residence in Baghdad to Amman, Jordan. Of course, traveling in a sleigh pulled by only one reindeer is slow going, but the other reindeer were in training for Christmas eve service.
We arrived in the states in time to participate in the Christmas, XMAS for you non-Christians (see “Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus” in God in the Dock collected essays by C.S. Lewis) , preparations, buying, shopping, giving, receiving, eating, drinking, reveling, etc. as required/expected/desired. Midnight Mass was great - first one that i've been to in years, but I very much missed being with the small catholic community in baghdad on Christmas - a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-ritual mass was planned.
Jet lag - I've always had a harder time adjusting to the time change caused by flying west versus flying east. I find myself falling asleep at 5 in the afternoon, then rising at 1 am. gradually, i stay up later and rise at the normal hour of 6 am. but, it takes several days. going east, it takes about a day, maybe two, to re-set my personal/bio clock.
Two weeks to our return to baghdad, and I'm already dreading the travel. Time to get ebooks to read along the way!
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