Strange? Yes. But if you're going to do something, you might as well live it up. Traditionally, In Region Training (IRT) is just a 12 month tour. Unfortunately for families with children, the Bangladeshi staff college begins in April and ends in February. This doesn't really match up with school dates for the kids - one of the main reasons that the staff college has an elementary school at Mirpur that runs from April to February :) Again, unfortunately, this school is not accredited by American standards, so it would not have really done us much good to send B there for the year.
Once we were getting closer to the end of our tour, we asked if we could stay for a few extra months to allow B to finish out his school year which ends in June. I believe the official response was something along the lines of "we currently see no reason why you can't do this, but we remain free to change our minds at any point in time."
And so here we are. The up side of this is that staff college attendance is pretty involved, and doesn't necessarily allow for a lot of embassy time or a lot of travel. Josh is now (for the most part) fully integrated in DAO and will also have an opportunity to do some additional India travel before we leave. Naturally, I will stay in Dhaka and hang out with the kids :)
So what is life like post-staff college? The kids and I get to eat breakfast with Josh every morning, he works a standard 8/9ish to 5ish schedule, and he's both close to home and semi-reachable by phone. He's taken a few small trips within the country, but hasn't been gone for more than a few days at a time, which the kids seem pretty okay with. All in all, a fairly relaxed atmosphere. It's strange to me that so many people who participate in IRT ONLY experience this part. The staff college really forced both Josh and I to get out and get involved in Bangladeshi military culture; we both view this as a good thing. I know every experience is different, but I can't imagine having such an up-close and personal look without staff college. Then again, we were also very busy, and had mandatory evening events almost every week, sometimes multiple times per week. Up sides and down sides...
We have welcomed in the newest American staff college attendee - a non FAO - and I believe he's settling in. We're working on re-homing our staff and also selling on car, but this is complicated by having no idea when we're supposed to leave. With the current budget issues, all decisions for graduate school (our likely next step) are on hold. This means we are in a bit of limbo. We could get orders next week, or we could still be sitting here in August waiting. I'm really hoping for more of the first and less of the second. I'm looking at housing, but we don't know where we're going for sure, nor do we know when we will be there, so other than keeping an eye on the market, there's not much I can do.
Do I like to be this flexible? Not really. But this type of uncertainty just kind of comes with the territory sometimes.
