The Home Stretch

My tour in Afghanistan is rapidly coming to a close with just a couple weeks left.  The many goodbye parties have already begun and this will be the time to focus on finishing outstanding work and begin to transition away responsibilities and hopefully establish tools to improve continuity for those to come.

This second year was challenging in that many of the colleagues with whom you became close with and spent so much time suddenly switch out and you begin the process of starting over with the new people who have come.  Fortunately, there were great people, new friends and old, that arrived and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to meet, work, and live with all of them.  Kabul really is a unique place where you can form such close-knit relationships in a brief amount of time.

The last few months have been busy and exciting.  I took a trip back to the US and went on the first trip in a decade with my brothers, saw lots of friends, explored several of the national parks in the southwest, and had some great experiences at work.

The next chapter of my foreign service adventure will take me back to Indonesia where I will help support my old office for nine weeks on temporary assignment.  It will be great to see old colleagues and friends and it will reunite me with my wife.  Then, it will be a brief home leave back to the US for a couple of weeks and then off to the next big chapter beginning in Thailand.

I'm excited and anxious.  Let's do this!

The flowers are blooming!