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I’ve completed the first of eight days of Diplomatic Security Anti-Terrorism Course (DSAC) at the Foreign Service Instiute, located at the National Foreign Affairs Training Center (NFATC) in Arlington.

I hate driving anywhere east of Tyson’s Corner, so I took the 427 bus from the Westpark Transit Station in Tyson’s Corner, to West Falls Church Metro. I rode Metrorail to Ballston, then the 22A bus towards the Pentagon, which I rode to the South George Mason & 6th Street stop. This was my first experience with the new talking buses, which announce the next stop, sparing you the indignity of asking the driver.

The bus dropped me off immediately opposite the south entrance to the NFATC. I walked past the guard booth without incident, and used my DoS credentials to get past the guards. I was early enough I had time to stop for coffee in the cafetteria building before the course.

There was quite a bit of aimless wandering as I tried to figure out where the course was being held. Several factors conspired against me:

• The F building of NFATC, where most (all?) of the courses are, is huge and layed out apparently at random. This is where alot of Foreign Service and language training happens, so there’s alot going on.
• The signage within the building sucks. Information like room numbers is only available when you’re at the room, so you have to wander around until you find it. Corridors aren’t even numbered in any discernable pattern.
• I had old information about the room in which the course took place. I finally stumbled upon a monitor with the course information

The first day of the course itself was quite good. It covered basics of life at Embassy Baghdad (Department of State English is significantly different from standard American English, in that it is stripped of most superfluous words including articles and conjuctive phrases), and background on Arab and Iraqi culture, as well as some Iraqi history, and a brief history of Islam.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, though the 8:15 AM start time has me getting up before 6AM, which sucks mightily.

For reference, a satellite image of the NFATC from Google Earth is below:

I’ve also made available the Google Earth placemarks for George Schultz NFATC

Tags: fsi, iraq, Migrated from Drupal, nfatc

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