Yay! Bid List!

First, a thousand thanks to my A-100 classmate, Jim Zix! Our bid list did indeed come out yesterday, and Jim was kind enough to mail a copy of it to me. Yay bid list! Yay Jim!

When I first looked at the list, I was a little dismayed. There are a TON of straight consular tours on that list. (To give you an idea, there were 26 pages of positions, a total of 435 jobs. When I removed all the consular tours, there were only NINE pages of positions!) And I am just not willing to do another straight consular tour. I will have done 27 months of consular work when I leave, most of it visa work. I want some other experience...in my cone (public diplomacy) or in political would be nice!

So I sorted out (removed) all of the straight consular positions, and then M and I removed the places we were unwilling to serve. That left me about six pages of places to consider. Then I sorted further to jobs that were in places I'd be interested in going or jobs I thought would be interesting. I think I counted 40 some. And I only have to bid on 25. So I think I am good. And of course, these jobs don't include the DC jobs like the Op Center, which I am allowed to bid on but is not on the list. So I think I am good to go and am pretty excited about the possibilities.

Top on my list: Berlin, Vienna, Luxembourg, Kiev, London, and The Hague. Geneva, Lisbon, Belgrade, and Istanbul are on my short list too. I think I can deal with that!