Around the World in 8 Hours

It's been kind of radio silence for a few days on the blog hasn't it?  Don't worry, things are fine.  I just wake up in the morning thinking I'll do an array of productive things and then I get sucked into researching places on our bid list.  It's not entirely a joyless activity, in fact, if it wasn't for the immense impact one of these places would have on our life - and thus a wee bit of stress, I would prefer country research over most of my daily activities.

The Foreign Service Institute has this wondrous place with information and videos on each and every post you could possible go to.  I spent 8 hours on Monday flipping through fact sheets, "personal post insights", and watching videos about as many posts as I could get to in one day.  And making excel spreadsheets to organize the information of course!  There are about 100 on our list remember.  It was actually pretty fun and every now and again I had to remember to stick to just the places on our bid list :)

We are feeling pretty good about the rankings we have given our posts.  Of course, as we've been warned, they will primarily consider "The Needs of the Services".   So quite often we'll sit down together and read out random names and imagine living there - just to try and prepare.  But how does one prepare mentally for monsoons?  "Opportunistic" crime?  Food shortages? 130 heat?

To decompress Max and I have taken several self guided tours around The Mall.  (I know, I hear my family saying "You and Max get stressed?"  Well yes.  We are normal people, you know:) )