Under African Skies!: About A Good Day

I had a really good day today, and since those have been rare lately I thought I should record it for posterity and to remind me that they do happen. Actually, that makes it sound like I've had nothing but horrible days and that isn't really true. Things have been better lately but it has been awhile since I've left the office thinking "that was a good day".

My day started with a meeting with the consortium I'm working with for a really big grant proposal. The meeting is not held at my office and I usually go straight there on the mornings of our meetings instead of going all the way to my office and then turning around an hour later and coming back. So I work from their meeting room or from a cafe near by until it is time for our meeting to start. We started almost an hour late this morning but somehow that didn't bother me as much as it normally does. Nothing I had planned on finishing got finished but we had a good discussion and made important progress on other things. I had lunch with someone from one of the other organizations and we talked about our logframe and objectives as well as our organogram over brown rice salad with raisins and cashews and a cafe mocha. Work is more enjoyable over a good lunch.

Then I went back to the office and spent the afternoon in skype conversations realizing that no one was sure about what progress we had actually made this morning on those important things, and that somehow no decisions had actually been made. Again, somehow this did not bother me as much as it normally would have and I spent a couple of hours figuring things out and I think I made some progress and things will be fine by Monday.

So reading this, it sounds like I should have had a frustrating day brightened only by a yummy lunch with a nice colleague. But it was actually a really good day and I enjoyed working with interesting and smart people and problem solving obstacles and just doing my job. It has been awhile since I found these things enjoyable in themselves and it is a nice way to end the week. It is Friday and I am looking forward to the weekend but I am not as desperate for it as I was at the end of last week. Hopefully the rest of the five weeks (!? when did that happen...) I have left in Burundi are as pleasant as this one, although maybe a little more productive!

To finish off this happy post, here are a couple happy pictures from my trip to the beach last weekend.