When are you leaving and where will you go?

As the bartender at a favorite Boston pub used to say at closing time: 

"You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

No one signs up for this gig planning to settle in one place until it's time to retire. And as we prepare to close out our third in Delhi and look ahead to the fourth, a frequent topic of conversation among family and fellow international school teachers is: how much longer we will stay here....and where will we go next?

Throughout the past eight months or so, there were times when we felt ready to move on and times when we would have been happy to sign on to stay a long while. Our kids, who were three and four when we moved to India, are now old enough to take part in these discussions. They have seen many classmates come and go over three years and can well imagine what it would be like to be the new kids themselves. What they tell us - very clearly - is that they have no interest in going to school anywhere but AES. At the dinner table recently, Jonah and I tossed out the "Where would you like to live next?" question and the boys' reaction surprised us both. We thought that they would talk excitedly about living close to Legoland or a beach or in Italy. But instead, Asa was non-committal to any new place regardless of its amenities while Liam, our super extroverted, ever-confident, scene stealer became so anxious that we just dropped the subject altogether.

So we have no set plan on how much longer we will stay in Delhi - it may be just one more year, two more years, or longer. We really drive ourselves crazy talking about all of this.

Yet we can't stop ourselves.

It's considered somewhat taboo to get specific on what countries or schools are on anyone's "We are keeping an eye on this place" list. This might be partly due to the competition for jobs and partly due to the vast number of variables involved and not wanting to get too far ahead of the process. In other words, before we can move, one of our preferred schools needs looking to hire both a high school science teacher and a high school counselor and we would need to get.those.jobs.

In the meantime, here are a few places we will probably not be moving to:

• China. To be honest, China has always been off our list despite having a huge number of international schools. And since our next stop must have cleaner air than Delhi, China is out.
• Africa. Africa will be a great place to visit but moving there is highly unlikely. Most of the international schools there are small and so finding a fit professionally would be a challenge. In addition, there are security concerns in the cities where larger schools are located as well as limited access to health care throughout the continent.
• Arabian Peninsula. Well okay, we would move to Oman but have ruled out the other countries in this region. Fascinating places to visit, but we don't want to live there. 
• Central America. Although we dream of living in Costa Rica or Mexico (close to family and friends! great food! beaches! learn Spanish!), the schools there are not a fit. 

At this point, all we can say with certainty is that we are taking things one school year at a time. Please stay tuned and we'll be sure to share any updates here first. In the meantime, we plan to track down a few Choose Your Own Adventure books - remember those? - starting with this one, which has a most fitting title.