Darren Felsburg:  

I graduated from Coronado early in January of '88 and went to Marine Corps boot camp. During my time in the Marines I worked on communication and navigation electronic systems for fighter jets and helicopters. I lived in Okinawa, Japan for two years before being stationed in southern California for the majority of my time in the Corps. After I got out of the Marines I moved to Virginia to try and get a job working in politics; I had finished my bachelor's degree in political science before I got out of the military. I ended up teaching math and electronics at a local junior college, kind of like DeVry. After a year I realized I loved to teach, but the I could not live on the pay. The school I taught at had a job placement office, so I asked one of my friends in the office to see what was available for our graduates. I applied for a job installing security systems at U.S. embassies around the world. My first post was Kiev, Ukraine, where I stayed for about four months. I really enjoyed eastern Europe, the food was excellent and the culture was unique. I learned enough Russian to get around town and most people were very patient and helpful when I tried to speak Russian...and they laughed a lot. My next post was Warsaw, Poland, which lasted another four months. That city was very interesting because the city was leveled as a result of carpet bombing in WWII, so no structure in the city is older than 1945. They rebuilt the "old city" in the same style as the original building so it still looks old. I was fascinated by the military museum in Warsaw because they have military history going back to the middle ages and longer; as compared to the U.S., which only has military history back to perhaps King Phillip's War in 1675. Additionally, before I went to Poland I visited the Holocaust museum here in Washington, D.C. and saw displays about many of the locations I went to in Warsaw. My next few posts were inspection trips so I only stayed a week to ten days in each location, for example, my trip to Canada included 10 days in Quebec, Ottowa, Montreal and Toronto. Over the next two years, I also went to Yerevan, Armania; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Australia; Bangkok, Thailand; Aukland, New Zealand, Nairobi, Kenya; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and Algiers, Algeria. After a few years on the road I was asked to work at the headquarters building as a project manager and security systems designer instead of installation tech. During that time I designed security systems for the State Department and would travel to different posts to ensure the designs were implemented properly. That job took me to Majuro, Marshall Islands; Helsinki, Finland; Stockholm, Sweden and some others. I went to ...Expand for more