I’m not sure that I’ve ever learned so much in just five days. It was exhausting, both physically and mentally. We played out scenario after scenario. Things that I can now say I’ve done that I never thought I would do:

• Fired a gun.
• Rammed a car through another one blocking the road.
• Applied a tourniquet.
• Studied my surroundings to determine if I was under surveillance.
• Drove a Humvee.

And I was doing much of this while wearing 30 pounds of body armor. I don’t want to give a lot of details about the course (if I was a little paranoid about putting information on the internet before, I’m very paranoid now), but here are some photos for you:

The “bang” portion of the class. Ignore my terrible shooting stance. I promise I was actually hitting the center of the target. In fact, two of the instructors said that I was “a natural.”

I drove both of these. That’s an armored suburban in front.

They didn’t let us drive this one, but we decided to use it as a photo op in our vests.

2012 seems to be flying by. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that I’m more than a little concerned about our next move in August. To Afghanistan. We’ve known for over a year that Shawn would be going to Embassy Kabul this summer, but I just found out this past week that I have been hired for a job there as well. It’s kind of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I would have felt terrible sending him off to a war zone by himself for a year. On the other hand, I had some pretty awesome ideas of what I would do by myself for a year in the US. Oh, well, best not to dwell on that.

“It will be an adventure!” is the official party line around here.

Getting ready to move is always a lot of work. But this one seems bigger. There are more things to take into consideration — extra visas required; lack of space on the compound, so most of our things can’t go along; required training for both of us. The list goes on and on. Actually, multiple lists. I’ve gotten one checklist from the EFM (Eligible Family Member, or what I am in State terms, for those of you just joining us) hiring coordinator, as well as two from the Orientation and In-Processing department. And, of course, I’ve started about four different lists in my head. I really should start writing these things down.

So if 2012 could slow itself down for just a bit, I would really appreciate it. Really.

Our tour in Nassau has been, well….interesting. We’ve learned some valuable lessons for future bidding. Life at work affects life at home. (We already knew that one, but I guess life thought it was time for a refresher.) The people you surround yourself with is more important than the job you do. No matter how much sun there is or how many beaches you are surrounded by, it’s still annoying to be without power/water/gas/(insert general necessity of modern life here) on a weekly basis. And “island fever” is a real thing. People tried to tell us this before we arrived, but I was sure they were exaggerating. Thank goodness Nassau is only a 45 minute flight from the US. I’m not a huge fan of southern Florida, but it has saved my sanity more than once over the past two years.

As much as I am ready to get off this rock, I’m finding this move to be an emotionally challenging one.

First of all, I have made an amazing group of friends in the Stepping Stone Quilters. They took me in and made me feel like a part of the group from day one. And their support and friendship are quite possibly the only things that got me through some very difficult times here. On more than one Wednesday, I found myself in a situation where I would cry myself all the way from work to our weekly meeting, pull it together for the meeting, and then after two hours of sharing, talking, problem-solving (and sometimes even quilting…) find that I felt like I could face the world again. Two weeks ago, the women in the group presented me with a quilt that they had made for me. I can see each of them in the squares that they made. And I will remember how blessed I am to have each one of them in my life every time I look at it:

Secondly (and harder to put into words), is the fact that this place feels like our last connection to Laika. I know that she’s not here anymore, but the process of leaving is like we’re completely severing all ties to her. The non-emotional part of my brain knows that we made the right decision. Every update we get from the woman that is currently caring for her is positive: she’s overcome her fears of bicycles and thunderstorms, and she loves going to PetSmart on adoption days. (What? We would have never even attempted an outing like that…) She’s clearly thriving in her current environment. And I have to admit that our pack-out was way easier without her here. But I guess I just didn’t expect these emotions to surface again.

On the bright side: in just 4 days we will be back in the United States, home of good food and shopping. I actually had a dream the other night that I was waiting outside Target for the doors to open so that I could get the best deals. Weird, I know, but I think it’s definitely a sign that I need to get back to the US!

If you’re interested, the password is: Nassau.

Two Years in Nassau from Jennifer Kobb on Vimeo.

Work has been crazy. It’s summer transfer season – that that means out with the old boss and in with the new one. As the program assistant, that meant lots of work for me. But I think the transition went fairly well. Now it’s time to get ready for my own transition. We’ve hired a really great person to take over my position, so I’m confident that it will go well. And she happens to be a friend of mine, which means I can give her all of my tips and tricks for working with the different groups of people that I have to work with. (If it was a stranger, I might feel the need to be a little more “diplomatic”…)

Shawn and I have taken on a foster dog. Yes, we might be crazy. But she’s a Doberman, and we’re suckers for a Doberman…especially one with a sad history like hers. She’s only three years old, but was used for breeding. And neglected/mistreated while she was being used. So she was only half the size Laika was and when she came to us, and severely underweight. We’ve managed to put some muscle on her bones in the past three weeks and teach her that people can be trusted, so she’s ready for a new home. Now we just have to find it. Here’s a before and after of Robin:

We’ve done some traveling in the past month – Green Turtle Cay in Abaco for Memorial Day weekend and Ft. Lauderdale last weekend. Abaco was great for relaxing, as there is absolutely nothing to do there. But we did all kinds of shopping in Ft. Lauderdale and saw Joel McHale(!), so it’s hard to say which trip was better. Now that I think about it, Ft. Lauderdale would have definitely won if Joel McHale had been wearing the speedo from our Abaco trip:

And finally, Shawn has his next assignment (after our year in Washington):

(You all know the flag of Afghanistan, right? That should have been an easy one.)

I say it’s his assignment (as opposed to ours) because I can’t go along unless I get a job as well. So I’m back to applying for jobs again. I feel like I’ve spent most of my life looking for jobs. I thought grown ups didn’t have to do that….

We (well, I should say Shawn) scored an invite to a New Year’s Eve Eve party thrown by one of the local business associations, so we attended that. It was at a private residence on the beach that was just amazing. Several drinks in, there was a Junkanoo rush, which alleviated all of my guilt about not attending either official Junkanoo this year.

On our way out of the party we took a moment to hang out in the hammock.

As this is a moving year for us, I know that the big theme of the next 6 months will be cleaning out and throwing away. We’re going to be lucky if we can find an “affordable” apartment in one of the areas we want to live in that has more than 800 square feet, so that means a lot of things need to go. I’ve already started cleaning out my sewing and craft supplies — the ladies in my quilting guild are going to have fun going through the two LARGE boxes of things I’ve cleaned out already! And now that we have our Kindles, we’re weeding out our book collection. We had declared our DVD collection to be just stupidly large when we moved here, so the purge has begun there as well. And don’t even get me started on clothes. That’s going to take some serious time.

So the countdown has begun. The list of things we still need to do and restaurants we still need to visit before we leave has been started. I know from experience that the next couple of months will feel slow, but then after that time will take off and we’ll be out of here before we know it.

While I can’t complain about moving back to the US, I am a little disappointed that we won’t be overseas for the next few years. It feels like we’ll be missing out on exploring new places and learning new cultures. But there will be new adventures, like paying for our own housing and a little family restructuring.* But Shawn is really excited about his new job, and that makes me happy. Now if I can just figure out what I’m going to do…

*My pleasant euphemism for the painful fact that we are going to have to find a new home/family for our Laika girl.

There’s been a lot of new road construction here lately, mostly work on two new roundabouts in our area.  But they got it all opened up in time for the start of the school year last week. And it went so well that it warranted this in Monday’s newspaper:

An official “introduction” to the new 6-legged roundabout! We tried to use this thing on Saturday to get to the movies and it was not pretty. In fact, it required two full laps of the roundabout. Of course, that was before we got our 16-step instructions on roundabout use.

And in case words aren’t your thing, there is a diagram with color-coded cars:

Realistically, this thing is going to be a mess until they get construction completely done. (They should have spent another week or two on, oh, I don’t know, completing all of the lanes in this diagram before they opened it, in my opinion.) Well, it’s still going to be a mess after that. There are just too many cars on too small an island to make traffic flow smoothly. I’m just waiting for my new Kindle to arrive so that I at least have something to do during my commute. Don’t worry — it’s safe when you have the car in Park anyway.

After my last blog post, my mom called up to say that she was surprised I shared so much information about our list. I usually keep it really quiet right up until we’re assigned. Well, this is why, mom. We will change our minds approximately 972 times before we decide on our final list of jobs to bid on. It’s happened every time, but I have chosen not to share it up until now. Bidding is a stressful, ugly process that makes you want to tear your hair out. And we do it every two years!

So, yes, life in our house right now is revolving around this list and figuring out who we know that might know somebody that can get Shawn a job. But…I have resolved to start taking more pictures of life around here, and I actually have been doing some sewing, so my plan is that my next blog post will be less “foreign service,” and more “other stuff.” Gotta keep the balance. Stay tuned.

The big question right now is: Washington or Overseas? That’s right, for the first time (realistically) we could be posted back in the U.S. While coming back to Washington does have a certain appeal (Target! Whole Foods! Walking around the neighborhood without fear of being mauled by a street dog!), there are other big things to take into consideration. Like where would we live – being overseas has the major bonus of not only not having to find your own place to live, but also not having to pay for it. Pretty tough to beat that. Also, even if we find a place to live that we can afford, we don’t own any furniture. Yeah, that’s going to be quite an expense. A big part of the reason I took a job here is so that we could start a savings account exclusively for house or rental payments back in the U.S., if we were posted there. In theory, we should be prepared for this expense. In reality, how is anyone ever prepared for such a large expense when you haven’t been dealing with it for several years?

Setting aside the first question, here comes the next big one: If overseas, where? Right now we’re focusing on Europe (eastern for the most part) and Africa. But Europe versus Africa is a pretty difficult decision as well. How can you possibly compare the two?

I spent all day yesterday researching our Europe options. Unfortunately, by the end of the day they had all kind of blurred together. We have lots of friends who have served in a lot of these places, so we’re putting out requests for personal input at this point. And Shawn’s working on his resume — I don’t envy him for that. Of course, if we end up in Washington, I’m going to be working on mine soon enough.