He Said, She Said: An Evening at the Latvian Embassy

Elise:

"Just over a year ago we sat snuggled in our bed midmorning in treehouse/townhouse during an unseasonably cold streak of winter in South Florida. Newborn baby Peter close to my chest and Sam curled reading books at our feet we contemplated what picking all of this up and moving it to "God Knows Where, World" meant. Let's be real, we were throwing more than just caution into the wind. We may have been throwing it ALL into the wind. But, if anyone asked me to jump off a bridge with them, and I did it, you can rest assured it would only be with Paul. So we grasped hands, closed our eyes and jumped.

It seems as though we've landed safely. Just as he promised me we would.

I attended an event with Paul last night that he has volunteered to head up, the Diplomats Association of Brasilia. A monthly gathering of young diplomats held at a new and exciting (not to mention fabulous) digs of a new embassy each month. Gathered around food and beverages we met quirky and wonderful people from Nepal, Finland and Argentina.

Paul, normally quiet and reserved, spun me in circles as he greeted, shook hands with and introduced himself (and me) to fresh faces throughout the room. Paul and I, are usually not the ones to work a room. We are happier on the outside looking in, in subtle observation within our comfort zones in situations that involve a lot of "schmutzing," but not last night my friends. Our budding diplomat was on fire. He signed guest books, customarily "double-kissy faced" hostesses and colleagues, he interchanged Portuguese and English so quickly when needed that I had no time to manually reach up and flip my switch from Portugeuse to English as I normally do. He spoke Portuguese to diplomats from Guinea and English to Brazilians from Itamaraty all in one breath.

He looked incredibly handsome.

And when he was introduced as the new (co) president of the Diplomats Association I nearly tipped backwards into the pool with pride."

Paul:

"Last evening, Elise and I made our debut onto the diplomatic scene. We attended our first Diplomats Association event, hosted by the Embassy of Latvia. Zilda was kind enough to stay late, so I rolled up my sleeves and gave quickie baths while Elise got ready and Zilda helped wrangle Sam and Pete into their pjs, or ‘roupa da noite’, because I haven’t yet learned how to say pajamas in Portuguese, though I don’t doubt Sam will know it before I will, because as reported by Elise, he came home from school yesterday and asked to play with the ‘massilha’, which, evidently, is what they call Play Dough in Portuguese.

Our neighborhood is small and the drive to the Embassy is short, so we arrived nearly fifteen to twenty minutes early. In any culture—but even more so in the Brazilian culture—it is taboo to show up for anything on time, much less early, so Elise and I drove around, boning up on Latvian culture via Wikipedia on the iPhone. The capital of Latvia is Riga. “The Latvians are a Baltic people, culturally related to the Estonians and Lithuanians, with the Latvian language having many similarities with Lithuanian, but not with the Estonian language,” Elise read, the screen of her iPhone illuminating her face. “So, we’ll be careful not to speak Estonian,” I cautioned. “Lativa is a unitary parliamentary republic and is divided into 118 municipalities (109 counties and 9 cities).” Early on we decided not to bring up the Soviet occupation. The president of Latvia is Valdis Zatlers. Their favorite sport is hockey. Bingo! When in doubt, we’ll talk hockey. Hmm...I don’t really know anything about hockey...

The street that the Embassy was on was dark, though there was a full moon. We figured we were in the right place judging by all the blue diplomatic plates lining the street (not to mention X3s and Jaguars). We cautiously walked up to a small, white modern house with a flagpole in front. We had missed the flag from the street, owing to the lack of breeze. There was a large Brazilian guard at the gate. I asked in Portuguese if this were the Embassy of Latvia, as unassuming as it was, and he confirmed that we were in the right place.

On our way in, we were stopped by a woman from Guinea and exchanged greetings. We quickly found our host and her husband, interestingly enough a diplomat from Peru and were guided to a table of really good Peruvian food (with 2 cans of unopened Pringles, a box of Godiva chocolates, the omnipresent and obligatory plate of coxinhas, fried dough with pulled chicken inside and a six pack of Corona). So, after much encouragement from our host, I helped myself to a Corona and poured Elise a glass of Argentinean red wine, brought by a diplomat from Buenos Aires, who was, arguably, one of the more colorful personalities at the party. I gave him both my card and Elise’s card, and he definitely liked Elise’s card better, I believe going so far as to suggest that diplomats’ cards should be more colorful.

We met diplomats from Finland, Nepal, Brazil (of course) and Trinidad and Tobago, among others. I particularly respected the Nepalese. They brought two-thirds of their mission (okay, there are only three of them, including the Ambassador) and had taught themselves Portuguese in Sao Paulo. I asked one if he spoke Portuguese, to which he replied, “Mais ou menos (more or less).” He answered a lot of questions with “mais ou menos” which is only humorous in the fact that one of my language instructors also taught us that we could get a lot of mileage out of this one simple phrase combined with a noncommittal waver of the hand. He also just had his second child, a boy, one month prior. He seemed happy and proud, smiling wide as he sipped from his can of Skol, assuring Elise and I that Kathmandu would be a wonderful place to raise children and that you could see the Himalayas from the town most days.

Much to Elise’s chagrin, we had to go around the group, introducing ourselves and telling everyone where we were from, and despite the fact that she loathes doing so, I was never more proud to know her and have her as my wife than at that precise moment."