Bid List Top 5

Okay after reading hundreds of pages of post reports and educational reports on schools. Shannon and I have finally narrowed down our top five choices for our next assignment. The number one spot was the easiest because we had done plenty of research on this post and already knew that if it were on the list it would be number one. Our number four choice was a surprise to both Shannon and me. At first glance when you look at the list there seems to be a lot of really cool places. But it is not until you do the research that you find that some of the cool places would be neat to visit but not to live, at least for us. Drum Roll Please…..

1. The Hague, Netherlands
2. Vienna, Austria
3. Berlin, Germany
4. Taipei, Taiwan
5. Buenos Aires, Argentina

As you can see from the comments on the previous post, no one told us what they thought our top five would be. Well two people did e-mail me to let me know what they thought. They were Danny (one of my older brothers) and Aprille (one of my younger sisters). I was quite disappointed in the response to our informal survey. Below is what each e-mailed me.

Danny: The Hague, Vienna, Geneva, Buenos Aires, Frankfurt
Aprille: The Hague, Vienna, Santiago, Geneva, Toronto.
I did no research on this, just chose places I'd like to visit!

And the winner is … Danny, he got three of our top five! If he makes it to our next post I will take him out and buy him a beer.

Thank you to everyone who participated… Oh! I guess that would just be Danny and Aprille.

Thanks guys.

Now all we have left to do is rank number 6 through 20 :(

Bid List!!

OK Family, friends, and Cyberbones fans the long awaited bid list has finally arrived. For those of you out of the loop the bid list is the list of Foreign Service posts we may go to when we leave Jakarta next June. We have to rank our top 20 choices and submit them to the Powers-That-Be in DC. We have one month to do this. There are a couple of places where David can't take family so those are out. Darn! I really wanted to go Islamabad. Oh well. Here is the list in particular order:

Santiago, Chili
The Hague, Netherlands
Tirane, Albania
Toronto, Canada
Vienna, Austria
Zagreb, Croatia
Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Taipei, Taiwan
Algiers, Algeria
Bangkok, Thailand
Beijing, China
Beirut, Lebanon
Berlin, Germany
Bogotá, Columbia
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Chengdu, China
Doha, Qatar
Frankfurt, Germany
Geneva, Switzerland
Hong Kong, China
Islamabad, Pakistan
Jakarta, Indonesia
Katmandu, Nepal
Kyiv, Ukraine
Lima, Peru
Lusaka, Zambia
Managua, Nicaragua
Maputo, Mozambique
Mexico City, Mexico
Mumbai, India
Nairobi, Kenya
New Delhi, India
Port Louis, Mauritius

Well that is it for now. Let us know your top 5 picks and who ever gets closest we will buy you a beer (or bottle of wine) when you come to visit us. If you want to find out more about each post you can visit Real Post Reports http://www.talesmag.com/rprweb/home.shtml to read what expats who have really lived there think.

Try to be nice

I decided I would give Gray a treat and chop up the last of the strawberries and put them in his cereal. He walked in and saw what I was doing and came unglued. I had just opened the knife drawer when he shreiked "NO MOMMY! NO BERRIES! BAD MOMMY! NO BERRIES!" Then he grabbed the berries out of my hand and ran to the table where he is gobbling them all down before I can do something stupid like put them in his cereal. Thought I was being nice. Need to go buy more berries I guess.

As I was typing this he announced "Berries all gone. Ate them, Yum." Guess he likes berries. Nice sentence too.

Making a Splash

School starts Thursday so to bid farewell to Summer 2007 I took what's left of last year's gang of Galuh kids to the American Club for swimming, lunch, and ice cream. While the boys splashed in the pool I played with my newest toy, a waterproof camera. Hopefully as new people arrive the gang will grow larger again and maybe we will get a few girls in the group!


Alonzo, Kyle, Sam, Chris, and Colin ham it up for the camera. Even underwater they are too cute!

Alonzo swiped the camera and snapped a picture of Mom hanging out in the pool. Dad is going to be jealous, he still hasn't had a chance to play with the underwater camera.