We have the long bid list.

Today, we received the long bid list. Yes, it includes some dream assignments like New Zealand and Ireland. No, there is no chance we are going there.

What Bidding Is:
Bidding is the rank-ordering of 20 Foreign Service jobs from the list of about 400 jobs that will be available sometime in 2009-2010.

How Bidding Works:
While it sounds like it would be easy to find 20 fabulous positions in a list with 400 jobs, in fact it will not be. There are a number of constraints:

1. We want to stay together. So while there is one job in Dubai which could be a fun place to live – there aren’t two.

2. We can only bid on jobs in countries where they speak English or Arabic. This is actually a lot of countries but some of the biggest English-speaking embassies are in Nigeria and India and we aren’t very excited about going there (although we actually know people who loved, loved, loved serving in India – we know no one who loves Nigeria.)

3. Our timing has to work. Management doesn’t want us hanging around Washington so because our jobs here end in summer 2009 we need to find something that starts in Fall 2009 (giving us time for home leave and job training).

4. Submissions are reviewed in order of how “hard” your current post is. For second tours (but not for our tours in the future), people will be assigned in rank-order of how “hard” their current assignment is. This means colleagues in Afghanistan and Iraq get first pick – we’ve heard that Embassy Rome is filled with people who just served in Iraq. Colleagues in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, etc. are next. We will bid at the same time as colleagues who are in countries considered equally hard (or easy) as Jordan – this includes many countries including Venezuela, Colombia, Ukraine, and Sri Lanka. Jordan is about “middle of the pack” as far as bidding goes.

What is Next:
1. We’ve read through the list and started noting some jobs that look fun (Barbados, Trinidad, Toronto).

2. In early August, the bid list is actually reissued and all of the jobs which went to people in really hard countries will be removed. When we get the revised list, we will see which of our favorites are still on the list and haven’t been taken by bidders from hard countries. We know many people who reported that they created a top 20 list from the original long list and had NONE of theirs left after they saw the revised list.

3. In mid-August, we will submit our final bid list with 20 rank-ordered jobs. We have been warned that it will be hard to stay together (our top priority) and that doing so may require going to places other people don’t want to go. So we’ve started having conversations that include:

“Now that we are hopelessly addicted to our Wii, do you think we could enjoy somewhat boring Bahrain?”
“Do we think because [so and so] loved India that we would?”
“What would life on a military base in Seoul be like?”

There are actually no jobs in Baghdad on our list. We were given the option of selecting Baghdad before we saw this list and seemingly all of the jobs on that list were taken by people who wanted Baghdad as their first choice. We have a lot of colleagues here in Amman whose next tour will be Iraq.

When we have a list of 20 to send-in we’ll let you know. No promises that many vacation dream spots will be on the list – but perhaps you will be able to see Uganda in a whole new way! But we have really enjoyed our first tour and it was an easy decision to decide that yes, we want to do a second tour abroad. We hope we love where we are going as much as we’ve loved Jordan.