1. How this adventure came to be?

Ever since our 14 months in Sri Lanka, Ron has been looking for another long term assignment over seas. He’s been lucky enough to get a number of short term assignments in places like Serbia, India, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia. He’s met with many firms and the only places he could get assignments were Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. These are places we didn’t want to go to mostly because of the security issues and that these places were not “accompanied” posts, which means the employer would not take any responsibility for Tricia’s travel or evacuation in the event of an emergency.


As things would happen, Ron was offered two assignments at the same time. One was in Ethiopia and the other in Georgia. This was a very difficult decision for Ron because of the pluses and minuses of each assignment. He agonized over the decision. Tricia was willing to go either place, but was more interested in Georgia because of the opportunities for work or volunteering through the Embassy in Georgia.

One day towards the deadline for deciding we went to the 100th anniversary sale at the Pendleton Woolen Mills outlet, not far from our home. We were looking at shirts for Ron & the boys and just looking around. Tricia found a nice woolen jacket and was holding it up when Ron asked if she was going to buy it. Tricia said that all depended on if Ron was taking her to Georgia or Ethiopia. Ron said, “Then you better get it.” And that’s how the final decision was made!

Since then it’s been a whirlwind of activity, packing up the house, making arrangements, finishing up work commitments for the short term work Ron was doing for Ethiopia, and getting training for the new assignment.

Ron will be working for the US Treasury department and will be helping the Georgian Ministry of Finance with budget issues. Specifically he’ll be assisting and advising on improvements to the budget process, implementing a capital budgeting system, and helping to develop a revenue sharing program in the country.
We’ll be living in Tbilisi Georgia the capital of the country. This is a city of just under 2 million in a country of just over 4 million. We’ll be living in Embassy assigned housing, as of this writing, we don’t know where that will be.