Looking Forward to the Next Year

One year down in Afghanistan, one more year to go.  However, I'm optimistic the next year will also be good as there will be a different group of people and a different position in the office for me keeping things interesting fresh.

In the next year, I'll be moving from an operational Contracting Officer covering a specific portfolio to a managerial role supervising others and supporting them in the management of their portfolios.  This will be my first experience managing American career officers versus local national or third country national staff and I am sure I'll learn a grow from this position.

There is also a new group of solid people that have arrived to post.  Several I also knew from Indonesia which is a nice headstart for forming a new social network and it'll be fun to get to know new people.  I was with many great people in the last year at Kabul, I'm sure the next year will be the same.

Other news is that I was successful in my last attempt at the annual evaluation process moving up to the next personal grade in the foreign service from FS-4 to FS-3.  This is a great step up that will help me in being competitive for positions and posting in the future.  Promotions are particularly more difficult due to the hiring surge from 2008-2012 with the DLI program where the Agency doubled in size creating numerous people vying to be ranked for promotions.

The last bit of news is the assignment list for priority bidders (those coming out from countries such as Afghanistan) and I can look forward to going to Thailand for my next posting.  Having this as a next a assignment was a major factor in my decision to stay in Afghanistan a second year as this post will allow both my wife and I to be employed, the city of Bangkok has great medical facilities for if we consider children, and will just be an all-around great place to live.

The adventure continues and I look forward to the what the next year will bring.

Recent event with the Ambassador and other agency heads announcing funding of $200M through NATO channeled through USAID's mechanism with the World Bank for infrastructure.