The seven month itch

You know you are well-suited for the foreign service when you've been somewhere for all of seven months and you are practically salivating for a glimpse of the next bid list. It's just a list, but it's a list of the most tantalizing and terrifying possibilities, and it governs the two to three year cycles of life in the service. I've got an even worse case of the itch than most probably get, as Mexico and I have a bit of a history, and while it hasn't been a complete disaster, let's just say I never felt the flutter in my heart that some feel for this country.
I didn't really want to do my dissertation research here, but it made sense. Fate had conspired to force me in that direction, what with the untimely loss of a much beloved advisor who might have kept me working somewhere in the Andes and the clear-headed advice of the new advisor (also now much beloved, may he forgive me for my horrifyingly slow progress), who was smart enough to know that Mexico was really the only option for someone wanting to do a historical project on tourism, as his own ex-patria wouldn't let me near the necessary docs. So I ended up here, in Mexico City, which I did learn to love for its megalopolis-ishness, and in Quintana Roo, which has its charms but lacks many as well, and now in Guadalajara. And everywhere I go in Mexico, I find myself vaguely annoyed not so much for the actual defects of this country, which does indeed offer much in terms of its physical beauty, its architectural history, its cultural diversity, its culinary delights but rather for what it is not.
My ambivalence about my current country of residence might just be a question of nostalgia for Ecuador with a taste of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia thrown in for good measure, the terraced mountain sides, the garlic, cilantro, sweat and diesel infused odor of a switch-backing bus ride, the sharp citric burst of that first bite of ceviche made that afternoon on the beach or in a favorite dive in Quito which is probably no longer even there, for the canelazo carts serving stiff but warm shots of booze at 6 in the morning or at a late night festival, for the peasants who were burning tires on the Panamerican highway at a moment that now with hindsight was the birthing of the indigenous movement that has recently had presidents and multinational oil corporations on the run. And maybe that nostalgia is just that, the fond recollections for the time and place in which I more or less became the person who I am now, politically, emotionally, and intellectually.
We're hoping for a posting somewhere in South America next time around, and I might end up horribly disappointed. The early/mid 1990s were a long time ago, and those places for which I harbor such fondness have changed a ton, and let's face it, living somewhere with the kids is a rather different endeavor than the footloose travels of my twenties. But bring on that bid list--we can't wait to obsess, along with hundreds of other foreign service families who love and dread the "season" as it's called among those in the biz.