Working solo

Posted by Ali

It's always exciting when a notable visitor comes to campus. Except when that visitor's presence means your boss is leaving for a week. Today Seth something-starting-with-M from the Small Project Loans (or something like that) department of ADRA International in Silver Springs, MD arrived. Do any of you know him [ie. Stephen]? He had an hour and a half to talk to the finance people and Rachel, who is in charge of the PIN project (still not sure what that entails but it has something to do with those wonderful little ADRA Gift Catalogues that we see around Christmastime each year). Then Seth, Max and Yona headed to the airport to catch a two-hour flight to Mwanza (in the northwest part of the country) for a weeklong trip to wrap up a project. So, for the next week I'm going to have to wade through proposal-writing all by myself. It's a very daunting thought. Today I did about as much cutting and pasting from our Concept Note as I possibly could. I downloaded and organized the appendices and tried to start filling them out. I also found a section from our last proposal that could be copied and pasted into this one. And I used all my brain power to try to come up with as much original writing as I could.

Now, even several hours after work ended, my brain is still tired. But that might have something to do with coming straight back to my room and going right to work on finishing up the Southern Accent Stylebook. I got it done and am soooo happy now! It's finished and backed up and e-mailed off to the Accent editor just in time for their third newspaper editing session of the school year (yeah I know it's later than they wanted, but hey, at least they have it now). Hopefully the files all got there...I haven't got any confirmation yet, but I guess she'll let me know when she's got a second. I know from experience that Tuesdays are pretty hectic if you're on the Accent staff.

I haven't let you know yet, but I thought now was a good time. I bought a treat last Friday. Gouda cheese! Unfortunately the grocery store I shopped at didn't have any smoked Gouda, but plain Gouda is a plenty good substitute. This cheese is infinitely better than the cheddar I bought during my first week here. I was not impressed with that stuff at all. So now I'm writing this blog post between mouthfuls of potato bun and Gouda cheese. It's delicious and I'm happy. Accent Stylebook done. Check. Eating Gouda. Check. Ahhh, now I can relax until I start my next personal project: putting together my home church's bimonthly (unless that means twice a month) newsletter. Now if I could just motivate people enough to send in some submissions to work with...

PS - Injustices really bother me. Especially since coming here and learning about the plight of the Tanzanian albinos.