Flag Day

The most exciting and nerve-racking day of this whole process was Flag Day. It’s not even close. Following the events in the post “Now What?!”, we went through a bidding process to determine what country we would be assigned to. We can only share general details, but the list of potential posts was slightly longer than the number of students in Misha’s A-100 class and included positions at embassies and consulates all around the world. This meant that although not every position would be filled, most of them would be. In this new life, we always have to be prepared to go somewhere we may not exactly love.

You can express preferences for certain locations, but there are no guarantees about where you may be assigned Misha and I spent many nights deciding what our priorities were for posts.  When it came down to it, they were:

1. We didn’t want Mochi to be quarantined;
2. We wanted a place where I could find a decent job;
3. Misha wanted to find a place with good career opportunities; and
4. Misha wanted to satisfy the State Department language requirement, which must be completed in the first 5 years.

We thought, hoped even, this would land us in a Spanish-speaking country, so we pushed for this region.  We explained our strategy to an advisor of Misha’s, and he gave us some very helpful feedback.  But, again…there are NO guarantees.

After weeks of waiting, stress, excitement, and, oh yeah…a wedding…Flag Day finally arrived.  This is when we finally learn where we’ll be assigned.  There’s a lot of pomp surrounding this important day.  The whole A-100 class sits together, while friends and family fill the room probably feeling the same anxiety we did.

I sat with my father in-law and the husband of one of Misha’s classmates, a new friend with a similar career.  In order to avoid day-of disappointments and bad reactions, anyone who is assigned to a place they expressly said they did not want to go to will get a heads up.  Although we didn’t get a call, there were still plenty of places on the list that we didn’t necessarily want to go to.  Some near, some far.  One of these assignments was in Canada, which we visited last summer.  Not that there’s anything wrong with living there.  But, of all the cool places to live for the next two years, that would have been rather anticlimactic.

After a few quick speeches, they’re finally ready to announce the groups assignments.  Three large trays holding a flag for each post are brought out.  The list is completely randomized.  Name after name gets called.  Flags and folders with post details are handed to the exuberant faces of proud Foreign Service Officers.  The EFM sitting next to me scratches off the countries as they are called.  Name.  Country.  Check.  Name.  Country. Check.  It feels like it’s taking forever.  Misha still hasn’t been called.  Nearly every post at the top of our list gets filled.  A sense of dread begins to grow in my stomach as I can almost hear Misha’s name getting called for a city I have no interest in.  My friend’s wife hasn’t been called either, and I can feel his anxiety mounting as well.

Finally, about two-thirds of the way through…finally…MISHA MCDONALD, TEL AVIV!  I jumped out of my seat and high fived my friend and father in-law.  It was an amazing feeling, one I could hardly contain through the rest of the ceremony.  About 10 minutes later, with the very last post assignment of the day, our new friend is also assigned to Tel Aviv!  It was an amazing feeling.  Not only were we going to one of our top posts, but we’d also be going with cool, new friends with common interests.  What a great way to wrap up the day.