Some details on the trip

I found this contract through a friend who attended the School of International and Policy Administration at Columbia. She allowed me to sign in to her careers web site account. Thanks Kelly! Anyway, the contract is with Pragma Corporation, who got it from Kabul University, who got it from the US Trade and Development Agency. We'll be teaching for four weeks, concluding on February 19. The schedule calls for us to have class for eight hours a day, six days a week (Friday's off). The syllabus indicates we'll finish all 27 chapters in the 24 days of class, but I'm skeptical. Even with university students fluent in English, this seems ambitious. But we'll see. I am not the lead instructor, but an assistant to a woman who has done some accounting instruction before on contracts like this, but not as much in an academic setting--she's been to lots of the central Asian countries and has been to Afghanistan before as well.

There is the option of going back again to teach another round of the accounting class--there will be a month off and then another class will begin. I'm waiting to see how things go before I decide on whether I would "re-up." There are a couple things standing in the way, one of which is the Foreign Service Oral Exam I have scheduled for April 2, the other is an interview with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on February 22--if I did get the job at the Fed, it would begin in late March.

I'm scheduled to be back in New York on February 20, and with an interview on February 22 I won't have much time to sleep off the jet lag. Will I have enough time to shave off the beard!?