How the hell did we get here?

Oh yeah, we volunteered.

It raining/snowing/drizzling again. Just following four beautiful springtime days with clear blue skys and temperatures in the upper 60's.

When we initially started the process a year ago that brought us over here, I was offered a much higher level, more interesting job in Afghanistan, but we chose Iraq and "what we could get". Liz was not offered an interesting job in the slightest. The company was/is very prejudicial in their hiring. The only women that work for our company in Afghanistan work on the help desk in Bagram, and half of them are waiting for the telephone operator positions to open up. We do have one woman in management, but she just got moved to a senior leadership position in Kuwait. Liz had to beat them over the head with her resume when we got to Afghanistan to get moved into a systems administrator position.

I was complaining about the weather. We chose to go to Iraq over Afghanistan because the weather in Iraq generally varies between 40% and 0% overcast. Liz is essentially cold blooded, in that she requires large amounts of warmth and sunlight to resist the urge to update people as to their exact position within the evolutionary food chain. Iraq has everything in spades except humidity, warmth, sunshine, and interesting people were abundant. On the other hand Liz was stuck in a help desk position depsite the fact that she had more knowledge and experience than most of the people who were filling the systems administration and network administration jobs.

In the "real world" we are both Information Assurance professionals, not a job we would have suffered through a Masters degree program if we didn't really enjoy it. We came out here to make a contribution, do what needed to be done, and spend some time seeing the otherside of the world. Despite the complete lack of adult supervision at the location we were at in Iraq and the painfully boring jobs, we were starting to get into our groove and enjoy the place.

Then the program manager dangled the golden carrot and mentioned that they actually had Information Assurance jobs in Afghanistan and here we are. He we are, living in the mud, muck, rain, and snow; living in part of plywood box constructed by the minimum bidder; living with the luxury of metal outhouses made from steel shipping containers and showers that occasionally have hot water.

Be careful what you wish for...