India, Here We COME!

 

One the of the amazing aspects of working in the United States Foreign Service, is that you get to serve the US overseas. These assignments are usually 2 or 3 years. In the past Lady Hiva and I served in Manila, Philippines and Istanbul, Turkey. After our 5 year break working in the private sector, we are back to start public life once again! 

We were assigned a post in Mumbai, India! 

The first thing we all were excited about is the good food. We often eat Indian food so that was the way the kids identified with our future home. It will be an amazing experience. India is full of color, people, diversity, history and we know it may be a bit crazy, but we are excited! 

To give you an idea how this works, I will share some of our experience. Once hired (or re-hired in our case), you attend orientation. In the first few weeks you are given a list of posts that you may be sent to. We have a few days to go through that list in great detail. We spent hours and hours searching posts. We wanted to know about schools, family life including safety, and I wanted to learn another language. So as we reviewed posts, we used those three criteria. This resulted in a HUGE spreadsheet for us. We ranked the posts, assigned a score, sorted them in so many ways. 

We then ranked each post high/medium/low. We ended up with 1/4 Highs, 1/4 lows and 1/2 mediums. For us, highs we would have been really excited to go! Mediums we would be ok with, but not as excited and lows we did NOT want to go to for one reason or another. 

Then we wait. 

The wait felt SO long. In reality it was only 2 weeks. But when you are wondering where you will spend the next 2 or 3 years of your life, it is easy to get anxious. Sometimes just knowing where you will be going is half the battle so you can plan. 

The FLAG day finally arrived! Flag Day is when all those waiting for their assignment get their  We gathered around the TV/Computer as a family to see where we were assigned. It was nerve-wracking as each post/country was announced one by one. (We happened to be visiting family at the time so we were all crammed into a small room with our suitcases and random piles of clothes all around us haha.) Lady Hiva and I both had lists that we crossed off each post option. I had made a "bingo" version of that list for the kids using the flags of the country. We ended up being one of the last 5 people announced...so we had to sit through the assignments for others go. Some posts we were relieved we did not get that assignment--other posts we were sad that our name was not called. 

In the end, as mentioned, we were assigned to Mumbai, India. This was a medium for us. But it does cover almost all of our 3 criteria--I just do not get to learn a language. We have dove back into the research aspect, this time focused on one post to center our research on. We want to maintain our excitement, but also prepare for the realities of India. A delicate balance. 

So off we go! Another move and more adventures ahead!