Halfway down the Danube

Moving to Moldova

So I have a job offer.

It's a bit strange, because it's only for seven or eight months.  A project in Chisinau, Moldova has lost its Chief of Party.  The project ends on September 30 of this year, but they need a COP until then.  It looks like that will be me.

Claudia and the boys will come with me.  We're thinking to put the boys in the International School there for the rest of the school year -- three months or so.

Some obvious questions:

Why Moldova?  -- Because that's where the job is.

Where is Moldova? -- Check a map!  It's in Eastern Europe, between Romania and Ukraine.  From where we are, it's about 1600 kilometers' drive. 

What's it like?  -- Briefly, it's a small, poor, former Soviet Republic.  The capital is Chisinau, a small city of about half a million people.  By all accounts it's a nice enough place, if poor.  It's usually pretty quiet.

Moldova is not part of the EU.  They dream of joining some day, but that would be many years from now, if it ever happens at all.

Will this lead to more work? -- Excellent question.  Short answer: we don't know.  The company that's hiring me thinks they have a very good chance of winning a follow-on project.  They also have made noises about hiring me for something else when this project ends.  This is not my first trip to the rodeo, alas; I have learned, through grim experience, that consulting companies may sometimes overstate these sorts of things just the tiniest bit. 

On the other hand, who knows?  My own experience suggests that it's easier to find a long-term position when you're already in one. 

How are the kids taking it? -- Pretty well so far.  They're worried about leaving friends and grandparents behind, but intrigued by the notion of a new country.  More on this anon.

How do you feel about it? -- Honestly?  Pretty mixed, though mostly positive.  I was hoping for something longer-term -- like, years.  Seven months is sort of an awkward period of time.  Also, it's going to knock a hole in my short-term career, which has actually been going really well lately; if this hadn't come up, I was going to make a business trip to DC for a conference, followed by three weeks in Vietnam, followed by another trip to the West Bank.  Basically I was booked through early April, which was nice.

But the short-term career wasn't supposed to be a career.  It was always supposed to be a stopgap until we found something more stable.  And it's been hard on Claudia and the kids, having me away for weeks at a time.  This will give us at least seven months of stability and living together.

Also, to be honest, I'm looking forward to being a COP again.  Being a freelancer is interesting, but running big projects has its own special fascination.

So, what kind of project? -- Oh, the usual.  Business environment, commercial law.  Tax stuff, which will be new for me, which is good.  Helping the Moldovans get past the lingering Soviet legacies of red tape and paranoid suspicion of the private sector.  Very similar to what I did in Romania and Armenia; should be right up my alley.

Well then, what next? -- I have some short-term obligations that I still have to finish.  The biggest one is, I'll be in Washington, DC for a few days around February 14 in order to make some presentations at a conference. 

After that, it's up stakes for Chisinau.  Our tentative plan is to drive, taking three days and two nights.  (You could do it in two days and one night if you put the hammer down, but we don't think keeping the kids in a car for 14 hours is a great idea.)

So that's the news.  Watch this space (and our Facebook feeds) for more information as it comes.

The last ten years (part one)

In brief:

I started the decade, January 2001, underemployed, having graduated from Yale with my Masters the previous May.  I was working part-time tutoring students for the LSAT, but it wasn't what you'd call a career.  I was living off savings in a studio apartment off DuPont Circle in Washington DC, keeping company with my then-girlfriend Claudia.  I spent a lot of time on Usenet.

And then...

2001 June:  Proposed marriage to girlfriend, which she accepted.  Got job offer.  (It was in that order.)

2001 July: Went off to Serbia to start new job as consultant.  This was less-than-a-year-post-Milosevic Serbia, and it was kind of a strange and interesting place.  We ended up living in Belgrade for almost two years, and made a number of good friends.  Oh, and I trained for a marathon.  And found some people to game with.

I lived at first in a dark apartment above a courtyard in the Dorchol neighborhood of Belgrade, just around the corner from (then President of Yugoslavia) Vojislav Kostunica.

2001 October:  Came back to DC to run the Marine Corps Marathon.  We ran past the Pentagon, which had been hit by the September 11 hijackers just a few weeks earlier, and was still under reconstruction.  Strange times.

Also that October: got married, in Ostheim, Germany.

2002 March: A baby boy!  Alan, who is now eight and a half and loves Legos and comic books and science.

Also that March: found out that I'd be out of a job by May, because our project was being replaced by a bigger project that wouldn't have a place for me.  ("We have too many lawyers."  Long story.)

2002 May: Finished the project.  Became a freelancer working with the World Bank.  This was interesting, but stressful -- getting paid could take months.

2002 summer: Trip through the Adriatic -- Montenegro, the coast of Croatia, Slovenia -- with Claudia and baby Alan. 

2002 Autumn: Claudia came down from Germany with the baby, and we all moved into a nice little house in Golsvortiyeva ('Galsworthy') Street in Belgrade.  Two bedrooms, big bathtub, cheerful blue and yellow decor, skylight that made a pleasant drumming when the rain came down.  We were only there eight or nine months, but it was Alan's first real home.

2003 March, Serbian PM Zoran Djindjic assassinated.  I'd walk in his funeral procession, along with nearly a million other people.

2003 April:  Started this blog.

2003 May:  Got a job offer in Bucharest, Romania, as a component manager on a large USAID project.  Left Belgrade.  We would live in Bucharest for nearly three years.  Still by far my favorite of our long-term postings -- nice country, lovely people.  (Oh, and lots of gamers.)

2003 June: Moved to Bucharest.  We traveled there by overnight train, a trip that we both still remember.  Found a nice place to live -- the house on Strada Bruxelles, just north of the city center.

2003 July:  A baby boy!  Enter David, currently seven years old, who loves reading and Nintendo and is incredibly picky and stubborn about food.

2003 September: Claudia moved back from Germany, post-birth, and we settled down for our first winter in Romania.

(I was still spending a lot of time on Usenet.  Though, with two kids, less.  Had met my deputy Maria, who would become my best friend in Romania.  Hadn't met the gamers yet.)

More in a bit...

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve was good.

The boys decided that they would try to stay up until midnight.  They're seven and eight years old, and they normally go to bed around 8:00, so this was no small thing.

But they did it! 

It helped that the neighbors across the street invited us over.  They'd built a bonfire in their back yard, and were setting off fireworks. There were some older boys -- older than our boys, I mean.  Like ten, thirteen years old.  If you're eight years old?  Stay up very late + hang around with older boys + bonfire + fireworks = WIN!!!  We got them into bed half an hour after midnight, and they were still all wiggly and "this was the BEST New Year's EVER Daddy!"

 

And this morning we all slept late.