October

In October we made it a point to get out of the house and enjoy time with our embassy colleagues.

We went to the opening game of the Dominican baseball season with about 30 people. Before the game we got together at a colmado (a kind of local bar/convenience store/delivery service) called the Dogout:

"No minors, no guns. They'll close my business. To drink without killing."

We also had a great time at a Halloween party organized by a colleague in IV:

Our costumes. We were .... wait for it .... ceiling fans.

🍃

The major thing that happened in October, however, was that I threw my hat in the ring for a PSP (priority staffing post), and have been assigned to a one-year tour in Islamabad, Pakistan, beginning in November 2017. I'll extend here in Santo Domingo for a month to make the timing work, and I'm already bidding on a linked assignment after Pakistan. More to come on that as details emerge.

This means, of course, that we will no longer be assigned to Yekaterinburg. A part of me will always regret not going to Russia, but that's how it will be for every assignment - the assignment you get is at the expense of the assignments that might have been.

One of the main reasons that we requested to be assigned to Pakistan was to avoid language training. It's not that I have anything against learning a language. It's just that as a vintage diplomat I have a limited amount of time in the foreign service and I want to spend as much of that time as possible serving the United States outside of its borders. Russian is nearly a year-long commitment, but the Pakistan job does not require a language at all.

R will be able to go with me to Islamabad if we can line up a job for him. I'm told that's a pretty straight-forward process; we're just waiting for official orders to start his job search in earnest.

It's constant change as a foreign service officer. I love the work, and I'm lucky that R shares my wandering spirit and is with me for the adventure.

Onward Assignment

I just got back from Wyoming where I spent the 4th of July. I've been constantly checking email since last week to find out our onward assignment, and it finally came in this afternoon:

Yekaterinburg, Russia!

We have another year in the DR and then we'll have language training at FSI in Virginia, but then, come April 2018, we'll be seeing a lot of this:

Second Tour Bidding

The bid list for summer-cycle, soon-to-be second tour officers came out this week. There are really (really) amazing posts on the list, but I have to manage my expectations. This is how it works:

First, bidding groups (or "tranches" as the State Department likes to call them). Santo Domingo is a 15% hardship differential post, which means that because of certain factors (traffic, crime, etc.) the State Department determined that it is 15% harder to live here than in, say, London. This is important because there are much worse places out there, and to be fair, those posts that are ranked 20% hardship or greater are given first dibs on the bid list. So while I can look at the list all I want, I have to wait for about three weeks or so for all those other folks to make their bids and be assigned, before I'll receive the revised list. No point in getting really attached to anything when it could very easily be gone by the time it's my turn to bid. Sigh.

A few of the rules that I have to follow in bidding:

• I can only have a total of 78 weeks of training during my first two tours. I've already had 50 (A-100, ConGen, Spanish), so if a post requires a language, it's unlikely I would be assigned if the language training were more than 28 weeks (there are a few exceptions, sometimes, when the stars align....)
• I am a consular officer and, while it's feasible that I could bid on a management, political, economic, or public diplomacy job, I have no desire to, and have already eliminated them from the list.
• The timing for 20 of my top 30 choices has to be perfect. This means that I have to be able to leave my current post during August 2017, take at least 4 weeks of home leave (this is mandatory), take any training necessary (language or other), and arrive at my new post sometime during the exact month that they want an officer. All of this is logistically challenging.
• 10 of my top 30 choices can be "imperfect," meaning that the timing is a little bit off (it can't be a lot off). I could potentially leave post one month early or arrive at a new post one month late, but I can't do both. 

Quite a number of my colleagues who bid on the winter cycle are heading to great places (think Santiago, Chile and Melbourne, Australia), so not all of the amazing posts are snatched up the first go-round.

Realistically, though, for various reasons I can say adios to some really great places right now, simply because the positions offered are not consular or because I know that I can't make the timing work.

All of that being said, R and I are excited about the myriad possibilities. We could be anywhere in the world in two years - Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, the Middle East. The opportunity to travel and learn about other places is a lot of the attraction of this profession, so it's an exciting time.

All this bidding hullabaloo will be over at the end of June and I should know where we're going next by the first of July - a little over a month away!

While I wait for the revised list, though, it feels like I'm looking in a bakery window at all the cookies, pies, cakes, and brownies, but I can't have any. 

And drooling is frowned on in the Foreign Service. :)