Pack Your Bags!

Seriously, you're going to want to come visit.  But before I reveal the big news, here's how the day went.

The kids and I joined My Man at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) just after lunch, where he gave us a tour of his classroom and the place.  We were way too early (wanted to get good seats!) so we had a while to wait and for anticipation to build.  We all placed bets about where we were heading:

My Man thought Tijuana or Santo Domingo.
I thought Guatemala City or Ankara.
Young Man thought Santo Domingo or Vientiane.
Darling Daughter thought Tijuana or Tegucigalpa.
Funny Guy was still convinced we'd be going to Russia (Vladivostok), even though we kept telling him it wasn't likely anymore.

And the winner was . . . no one!  We were all wrong!  Actually Young Man was the closest, at least he got the right region, but more on that in a minute. 

The flag ceremony was crazy.  So many people, so many nerves.  Everyone cheering at every announcement.  At the beginning, they announced that there were no "Lows" in the group.  That meant that nobody was being sent to anywhere they had listed as "Low."  That doesn't always happen, so that was a relief, but still, they only let you place 25 percent as Low, so it wasn't a guarantee that we'd love our posting.

They announced countries and people completely randomly, not alphabetically as I'd expected.  The kids were playing bingo (everyone had country bingo sheets and there were prizes for bingo winners) and I was trying to help them with that while at the same time marking off all the posts on my list so I had an idea of what was left for us.  It was a lot to track!  More than half the spots were gone by the time our flag came up on the huge projection on the back wall, with my anxiety and suspense growing each time the post called was not ours.  Gone were our Ankara, Turkey, spots.  Gone were Santo Domingo and Tijuana and Phom Penh and Seoul.  Vladivostok went to someone else.  Many of the Mexico and China spots were gone.  And then came the flag for Thailand and they announced, "Chiang Mai, Thailand . . ." and My Man's name!!!! 

The look on his face was priceless.  The lurching excited feeling in my stomach was crazy.  It was a complete and absolute shock.  I was giddy and weak and happy and relieved and incredulous.  Wow.  We're going to be learning Thai.  We're going to be living in a jungle in paradise.  We are so excited.

Here were the kids' initial reactions:

We spent the next couple hours in a whirlwind of talking to people, consoling and congratulating and being congratulated!  I haven't had time to research much, but the basics are that we'll be here until December, learning Thai and taking other classes to get ready (if there's room in the language class, I'll get to have Thai lessons too!).  Then we'll be there for roughly two years.  It also means that we should find out our second post pretty soon because My Man still has to fulfill his Russian language commitment, so we might know as soon as May where that will be.  It really was the perfect Flag Day--there will never again be a time of such anticipation and so much unknown, and it was definitely a great surprise.  Here's a picture of the kids again, after we asked how they felt about pizza for dinner. :-)  See, we knew we'd win Darling Daughter over quickly.

So pack your bags, get ready for a beautiful vacation.  You'll definitely have a place to stay with us.