The Bid List . . .

"Where are you heading next?" is probably the question I hear most often these days.  The answer?  Only God knows!  We did, however, finally get our bid list (the list of almost a hundred places where the State Department could send us next).  Here's what one of My Man's colleagues said about it:

The list is confidential, so I can't write the exact places on the list, but a simple thought experiment will give you an idea. Imagine a list of all the countries in the world.  Now cross off every country that you have ever dreamed of visiting, especially for a honeymoon or dream vacation. Next cross off the countries that you think are interesting because of significant historical events or have been on the news because of significant political or economic events happened there recently. Now cross off the countries that you think would be nice places to live. Now circle the names of countries that you have not heard of or that you aren't quite sure where they are . . . . The countries that you circled in your imagination are probably on the bid list.  (http://blog.denniehoopingarner.com)

It's not really that bad, but I have to admit it was a bit of a shock when we saw the list.  Not a single Russian speaking post!  And the list is arranged by city name, not country, so at first glance I only recognized a small handful of the names.  As My Man marked each spot on our giant world map, he made comments like, "Wow, wouldn't it be awesome to go there?!" or "How incredible would that be?!" and my stomach got tighter and tighter and I felt like I might faint or throw up.  I admit I may have had a major minor breakdown at some point in the days following.  But thanks to some really awesome Foreign Service spouses with fantastic attitudes and advice, and some pretty intensive research into every single entry on the list, and a husband who is really truly excited about this whole process (and amazingly patient with me), I recovered and actually started to get pretty excited myself.  So now we are gearing ourselves up for learning a new language, maybe Spanish or Thai or Chinese.  Or maybe we'll go to one of the handful of English-speaking posts available.  Maybe we'll go to an exotic jungle city or maybe a Caribbean island.  We could go someplace exotic or we could go to a Mexican border town.  We really have no idea.  But every single place on the list has some really cool things about it and would be a great place to live.

Although the State Department gets to make the final choice about where to send us during our first two posts, we do get to provide some input.  We can classify the posts into High, Medium, or Low priorities (meaning, we'd be excited to go to a High post, but reluctant to go to a Low post).  The only catch is that you can only put 25 percent of the posts as low and all of your Highs are equally ranked (even though there might be some that would be way more exciting than others). :-)  So the past several days have been spent busily researching everything from climate to schools to safety and more about each post, and last night we finally felt good about all our choices.  Hopefully now I can start sleeping again.

Only three more weeks until Flag Day, when we'll receive our first country assignment.  Stay tuned. . .