October 14^th

Started the day early with a big hearty breakfast (half a banana) and shot off to work for a full day of meetings and work. I started with visa adjudications, basically interviews with applicants to see if they meet the necessary requirements to convince us to approve or deny their petition to travel to the U.S. We had some really interesting cases, and it was interesting to see how each consular officer had their own style of interviewing their applicants to determine whether or not they were at risk of violating their visa and staying in the U.S. It is a job where you learn to not take things at face value. People will sometimes fake documents, lie, be evasive and vague in their replies, and pretty much do whatever they can, to gain entry to the United States. With some people, you can spot it a mile away. Not so much with others. You can't believe everything you hear, and you kind of become distrusting of peoples motives. Or at least suspect of them. As an applicant, you really have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you are a trustworthy person and that you won't renege on your word. Before every interview we make the applicant take an oath that everything they say is the truth, and nothing but the truth, to the best of their knowledge and ability. Unfortunately, we catch people caught in webs of lies from time to time. Deep down inside of me, every time I hear the officer give them the oath to take, I want one of the applicants to just burst out with a "You want the truth ? You want the truth?? You CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" Haha. A silly dream I suppose, and I doubt it would go over very well for them in terms of getting their request granted. A guy can dream, can't he?

I needed to leave near the end of the interviews to go meet with Mr. Gilmer, Management section lead, and the person who selected me. It went really well, and I am really looking forward to some of the tentative projects he has lined up for me. He was still in the middle of getting his bearings once again; he had been on vacation since late August I believe, so he had a lot of things to get caught up on. He mentioned that I would be attending the important weekly meeting between the Ambassador and all of the section chiefs, which I am really excited to be allowed to sit in on. I am not sure if it is exactly protocol for interns to be able to attend high profile meetings like that, but Mr. Gilmer really wants to help me get the most out of my internship, and even talked about letting me do some work in the Political and Public Diplomacy departments if I am interested. He asked me about my future goals and plans, and about school. I look forward to getting to know him better and the other people in the office. I even get to have my own desk to work from! I have made a sort of makeshift station that half-resembles a desk in the consular section which has been pretty well-suited for most of the projects I have done thus far, but a desk will be so much nicer.

After my meeting with Mr. Gilmer, I headed back down to consular and wrapped up the last of the interviews with Kristine Marsh. I then jumped back on my aforementioned project of cataloging past records, only now I filed records dating back to 2004. I went over thousands of papers today, combing through incident reports filed by American citizens traveling/living in Hungary. I would say about 85% of the incident reports were concerning consumption girl victims who were taken for anywhere from 300-3,000 U.S. dollars. Some of the incident reports were positively abhorrent, and disheartening, where American citizens had been drugged/beaten/mugged/abused. And these were all mostly travel-savvy people who were not strangers to danger. Some of the stories even made me stop reading them for a while and take a break because of the content described. It makes me sad that such things can happen to people, regardless of their nationality, and it makes me even more acutely aware of how fragile and precarious our safety is, regardless of what country we are in. It can happen to anyone, anywhere. No one is safe. It raises concern in me in regards to raising a family in a world where such senseless and horrible crimes are committed to people who are innocent and don't deserve that kind of treatment.

I spent the rest of the day working on these cases with a small reprieve for lunch where I met up again with Jimmy Wellence from IT, my social sponsor, and discussed sports and work. He has an old roommate who played/plays in an expat football league here in Budapest, and I was curious to find out more about it. I wouldn't mind letting loose for a couple of hours and playing some football. And yes, by football I am referring to “soccer”, as in, the game where you play primarily with feet, unlike American football…which I still don't understand.

Near the end of the day Mr. Gilmer came down to talk to Jeff Lodinsky, the consular section chief, and in passing engaged me in conversation. Mr. Gilmer explained to Mr. Lodinsky that I would be leaving them after tomorrow and heading on up to Management, but that they were free to borrow me for any projects they would need help on. Mr. Lodinsky then said that they would definitely take him up on it because they really enjoyed having me there and that I was a really big help, and then told me that I would always have a home there in consular, which was a really nice thing for him to say. I am going to miss working in the consular section with all of the wonderful people I met and the budding friendships that I made there. I felt proud and appreciated by my colleagues in consular; it will be a shame to not see them anymore. Well, at least not on a regular basis. Management is a couple floors above ground level where the consular section is located, so our paths do not really cross except the lobby and cafeteria.

After work ended at 5 and I finished the last of my incident reports archiving project, I walked out of the embassy and started walking home, when I realized I was missing my sunglasses. I debated whether or not to leave them, but I decided to quickly run back and grab them. On my way out once again, I was fortunate enough to run into the RSO team (Regional Security Office) as they were heading home for the day. Rick Gregory, Regional Security Officer for the U.S. embassy here, recognized me and approached me before I passed through the gate and left the embassy compound. He asked me how my internship was going and if I had gotten settled in okay. I told him that I had and that I was really enjoying my internship so far. He asked me if they were keeping me busy in consular and I told him that they had, and that I was starting my management rotation on Monday. He was glad to hear that everything was going good, and then he surprised me by telling me that he would really like to have me come up to his office sometime because he had some projects that I could help out with. I was delighted by his offer, because I didn’t think interns could work in that area of the embassy, as it is all really cool secret service related territory. 

Regional Security Officer (RSO) is the title given to Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Special Agents serving overseas as the heads of security at U.S. diplomatic facilities such as an American Embassy. Working for the U.S. Department of State as special agents, RSOs are also considered officers within the State Department acting as specialists within the Foreign Service of the United States. The RSO is the senior U.S. law enforcement and security attaché/advisor to the Ambassador at a U.S. Embassy. They handle counter-intelligence, surveillance, security for dignitaries, Marine posts, and the surveillance detection unit (SDU), with a mission of counter-surveillance.  In addition, they are responsible for security matters relating to personnel, information, physical security of Embassy buildings and residences, as well as conducting criminal investigations, particularly those involving passport and visa fraud. It is a pretty exciting office to work in, and I think any project within that office would be great to take part in.

So thus concludes my busy Thursday, with tomorrow being my bittersweet farewell to the consular section.

Viszontlátásra!

 (Farewell!)

Oh, I also forgot to post about some minor comical things that I forgot to mention:

 1. What I thought was originally shampoo when I purchased it, turned out to be…hand soap. So I have been washing my hair for the past week and a half with hand soap. Sigh. At least I can sleep soundly at night knowing that 99.9% of the bacteria in my hair is dead. Right?

2. I noticed something really funny during my first few days here in Budapest, and luckily, Brent’s wife Mallory Huntley took a picture and posted it on their blog with a funny caption that really sums it up.

"Quick question: you know how you have to confirm the amount on the touch pad when you buy something with a credit card. Well Budapest is no different, except this is what it says: 

 Every time I see it asking "helyes" (like hell yes) I start laughing. It actually mean "Correct" but I can't help but think that this is just a very enthusiastic touch pad! I love it! by the way, the total it is showing you is 3,200 forints (about $16.00 USD). "

First-rate!