Bid List Update

While I was in Paris, we received the shortened bid list. People get to bid on their next assignment in order of how difficult their current position is considered (i.e. Iraq and Afghanistan go first - people "serving" in Scandanavia go last.) Jordan is considered average on the difficulty scale. After the people serving in very difficult places got assigned, we received a new bid list that was without a number of jobs in London and Jerusalem.

We have now figured out the jobs we will request. We had to find jobs that started next fall, didn't require teaching Dan a language (because he was already paid to learn Arabic) and which would allow me to work at least a year in a Consular section. Chances are our next assignment will be one of the positions below - but the HR folks can always tell us "no, we really need you to come up with some other proposed assignments."

Our list:

• Canberra, Australia
• Bridgeton, Barbados
• Port of Spain, Trinidad (and Tobago)
• Bucharest, Romania
• Ottawa, Canada
• Vancouver, Canada (we'd be there during the winter Olympics)
• Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (low crime and high elevation)
• Sydney and Canberra Australia (we'd be in different cities during the work week)
• Bern and Geneva Switzerland (low crime and high elevation too!)
• Kampala, Uganda
• Manama, Bahrain
• Johannesburg, South Africa
• Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Kingston, Jamaica

We don't know where we are going next. Lots of people (including people who will bid ahead of us) will certainly want to go to Australia. We think there is a high likelihood for Bahrain because it requires Arabic and is well timed, starting soon after we finish in Amman. Also, there aren't that many Arabic-speakers at our level (and many of the ones we know are serving in Baghdad for their second tour - which means there are fewer to serve in other places in the Middle East.)

We should know where we are headed in about a month - stay tuned!

Here are pictures from each post - can you identify which is which (clue: look for palm trees vs. snow).