Ni hao. Si Jambo! I’m Jessie. Wel­come to my blog about my adven­tures around the globe.

Whats with the title of the blog?

This online mind-burp started when I moved to China in Novem­ber 2010, serv­ing as a place to doc­u­ment my writ­ings and pho­to­graphic sights of liv­ing in Asia. As for the name? Around the time I started col­lege, dif­fer­ent groups of friends started to call me Jess-bo, or some­times just “Jbo”. I found it endear­ing but puz­zling at the same time. It’s really beyond me– before I was mar­ried, no part of my name had the let­ters “B” or “O”. Any­way, I fig­ured if Lit­tle Bo could peep, why couldn’t I?

Before you read fur­ther, no, this blog was never about marshmallows.

But then, we moved back to the states. And call­ing the blog “Peeps from Abroad” was no longer rel­e­vant, so I searched high and low for a new title to my blog. I set­tled on “Here and There” for a bit, because this blog is all over the place, it’s both here AND there, con­cep­tu­ally and geo­graph­i­cally, so it summed up my life quite nicely. But in my heart of hearts, in the peeps of all peeps, it’s Peeps From Abroad. In May 2013 we’ll be mov­ing to Africa, so being a blog about being abroad will be rel­e­vant once again.

Why are you liv­ing overseas?

The DiploMan’s job placed him in Guangzhou in July of 2010. Orig­i­nally, I was fairly reluc­tant to move with. But temp­ta­tions of food and trav­els were baited, and I found it hard to resist. I moved to Guangzhou in the Fall of 2010 and decided to take up pho­tog­ra­phy again as a way to doc­u­ment the sights and tastes I would be expe­ri­enc­ing in my new sur­round­ings. I blogged about my trav­els around Asia, excit­ing new eats, and get­ting an Amer­i­can fix every now and again. After two years in China, we set­tled back in the DC area (quite eas­ily, in fact) — but only enough to get our fix of Mex­i­can Food and gourmet sal­ads. In May 2013, we packed up our bags yet again for another 2-year adven­ture: to Dar es Salaam, Tan­za­nia!

I hope you’ll come visit someday!

What’s this For­eign Ser­vice Business?

Grow­ing up in Cal­i­for­nia, none of my friends or fam­ily friends worked for the gov­ern­ment. So when my Diplo­Man got his job, there were many ques­tions– not only from friends and fam­ily, but from myself as well.

The For­eign Ser­vice is part of the State Depart­ment, which is headed by Sec­re­tary Hillary Clin­ton Kerry. Those who join the For­eign Ser­vice are For­eign Ser­vice Offi­cers (FSOs), or diplo­mats. They serve in posts all around the world, at Embassies and Con­sulates abroad (embassies are in Cap­i­tal cities only, con­sulates are located in all other cities). Diplo­mats have jobs pro­cess­ing visas and offer­ing con­sular ser­vices, han­dle man­age­ment affairs such as pro­cure­ment, ship­ping, hous­ing, and motor­pool, coör­di­nate VIP vis­its, engage in pub­lic diplo­macy with peo­ple of the res­i­dent coun­try, and research and write back to DC about polit­i­cal and eco­nomic affairs around the world. I’ve met diplo­mats who have, in their past lives, been Marines, lawyers, nurses, train con­duc­tors, teach­ers, police offi­cers, and like my very own diplo­mat– a Grad school student.

There are many things to learn about life in the For­eign Ser­vice. If you’re inter­ested, or have a few hours to kill, check out all the blogs by my fel­low for­eign ser­vants around the world, at AAFSW.

Nat­u­rally, there should be some sort of dis­claimer fol­low­ing all this infor­ma­tion– this is my own per­sonal blog, doc­u­ment­ing my own per­sonal expe­ri­ences and thoughts. No part of this blog is affil­i­ated with, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of, nor endorsed by the State Department.

More about this “DiploMan”

My hus­band is the Diplo­Man. I used his name on this blog at first, and even posted pic­tures of him. But he’s shy (online), so I no longer do that.

What I can tell you is that we went to high school together, and that we may or may not have had non-overlapping crushes on each other. So, we’ve known each other for awhile, and it makes going home for the hol­i­days a hel­luva lot eas­ier! I’ll blog about that story.…someday…If you trav­eled back in time and told any­one what we know now (that he would be work­ing for the U.S. Gov­ern­ment), peo­ple would prob­a­bly fall over laugh­ing. They would prob­a­bly stay on the ground if you told them I would move to China for him, and pro­ceed to marry him. That’s right, we got mar­ried in China in June 2012, and had a state­side wed­ding in May 2013. It’s been a thrilling ride so far, and I can’t wait for what’s ahead.

Are you one of those crazy “food­ies” I read about?

So, you might notice that there’s a lot of talk about food on my blog. I ini­tially started this as a food-focused blog where I wanted to explore mar­kets and dif­fer­ent dishes while liv­ing in China. But it quickly (as in, within the first three entries) turned into just a blog about what I was see­ing and doing and think­ing every day, and the trav­els we were so for­tu­nate to take.

But at the heart of it, my writ­ing and my think­ing is still very focused on food, on and off this blog. So uh, yeah, I’m pretty much a “foodie”. But it’s not all my fault. First of all, I was raised in Cal­i­for­nia, so I can’t quite grasp what it means to live in a place with­out sushi or avo­ca­dos. Sec­ond, thanks to my mother’s views on eat­ing, we were shop­ping at farmer’s mar­kets way before “loca­vore” was even a word. It was inex­cus­able to skip din­ner with the fam­ily, although that was never really a prob­lem thanks to my inner fat-kid. Third, I grew up eat­ing bi-culturally, and from a young age pigs’ ears, chicken feet, bit­ter greens and fruit-only desserts were com­mon at meals. On the flip side, so was spaghetti, mac’n’cheese, and turkey sand­wiches. Aside from a mild “I’m a veg­e­tar­ian now” stint in mid­dle school, I have always had open views on food and eating.

Thanks to work­ing var­i­ous restau­rant gigs, I adapted a more supe­rior taste for food, wine, and whiskeys. After mov­ing to NYC in 2005 for a “real” job, my world soon became enlight­ened with the cul­ture of din­ing. Food was ele­vated to a level that I had never before expe­ri­enced, and though one can eas­ily become dis­tracted with other things in a bustling metrop­o­lis like NYC, I decided to ven­ture deeper into the world of food. By the time I was ready to leave in 2010, my views on eat­ing and cook­ing had greatly expanded to acco­mo­date issues of sus­tain­abil­ity and com­mu­nity, in addi­tion to my ever-lasting views on eat­ing well.

In China I found it dif­fi­cult to keep tabs on the con­stantly chang­ing world of food and cul­ture, but I tried my best. I dreamed of a beau­ti­ful hydro­ponic gar­den, and shopped at the local mar­ket as much as I could. In between free­lanc­ing as a writer and copy­ed­i­tor, I fre­quently con­tributed to sites such as RecipeRe­lay and Hon­est­Cook­ing (and I still do!). Now that I’m explor­ing the DC scene, you can also find my mus­ings over at Girl Meets Food and the Right­eous Cheese Blog, and my pho­tographs over at EaterDC.

I hope to one day be a famous blogger-published author-travel journalist-cult leader. Kid­ding about that last part, sort of. I also sell, cut, and eat cheese part-time at Union Mar­ket. Seri­ously.

Cam­era

I am using a Canon EOS Kiss Dig­i­tal X, with a Sigma 30mm lens and a Tam­ron 62mm tele­photo lens, and some­times a cheap yet effec­tive Canon 50mm f1.8 lens for more con­cen­trated food shots. Once I started shoot­ing some indoor pho­tog­ra­phy, I invested in a nice wide angle Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5–4.5 lens, which has become my weapon of choice, both indoors and outdoors.

I was an art major in col­lege and took some photo classes, so com­bined with the pow­ers of a dig­i­tal SLR, I would say that the pho­tos here are not bad at all. I’m always yearn­ing for more glass, though.

Visit my Picasa page for more great snaps of China, food, and travels!

Finally, thanks for reading!!