Initial trepidations

So I am joining the blogosphere. I don't know how frequently I'll post, but I thought starting a blog now was a good idea for a couple of reasons, namely:
1) we do not know where we will land next year but it may be on another continent and this seems like a decent way of keeping up with people
2) being the wife of an academic in the current job market is more than a little stressful and likely to get more so with the economy as it is and this seemed like a decent place for my fellow academe spouses to commiserate/vent/speculate/sympathize

Not sure how to kick this sucker off, but laying out the current situation seems as good a start as any. Currently Scott has a tenure track offer at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. He has a job talk at CASL (University of Maryland affiliated) in 2 weeks. He has funding for 1 more year of a post-doc here at UIUC as well. He's short-listed for a TT in Konstanz, Germany, but they won't pick until summer. A few other applications are still up in the air but it seems like these are going to be the major players in the decision making.

The South Africa job is both really intriguing and somewhat terrifying. It is very remote, which makes it much safer than someplace like Joburg or Cape Town, but also means it would take 2 full days to get to from the States. There is a very good prep school there for the girls, but it is the South African system which may make coming back to the States hard for them educationally if that was to happen. We have not gotten the package offer from HR yet but we are anticipating the salary will be very low by US standards. That wouldn't be a problem as the cost of living is quite low in South Africa, but the cost of travel back to the States would then be prohibitively expensive and we'd likely only get back once a year tops and it would be very hard for family to come to us. South Africa appears to be at a tipping point right now as far as the future goes and it is really hard to predict where the country is going long-term. If they survive the current growing pains it could be a very exciting place to be permanently. It also seems equally possible that the current instability there could get much worse and things could go the way of Zimbabwe. Hard to know. There is rampant poverty, an AIDS epidemic, residual systemic economic and educational disparities by race, and pretty rampant crime. Those things are all pretty big negatives. However, Grahamstown is fairly isolated from the violent crime and the other problems seem to present really compelling opportunities for us to really engage in humanitarian work as a family. I think making service as a family a priority would be a wonderful thing for all of us long term.

So that is where we are now. We did hear that Cora was admitted to Holy Redeemer in College Park, so at least we have that school option lined up if CASL makes an offer. For now we're in limbo, but being a compulsive planner I'm trying to wrap my head around all the options and have plans lined up for how we respond to any combination of circumstances that pan out. In no way would we have guessed that these would have been the options we were considering if you had asked a few years ago, but a bad economy makes for tough choices. Any feedback or thoughts on the whole process would be welcome. Next year looks to be exciting wherever we end up and at this point I feel lucky to have the security of a guaranteed paycheck come summer. That puts us in better shape than many and I am acutely aware of that.