Clenched!

Damn!  I've spent the last 7 or 8 days learning the ins and outs of my new position.  The job itself is pretty easily grasped, but the documentation and database are causing me to fight the urge to crawl into the fetal position and rock myself into a "happy place".  Just when I think it's coming together - BAM.BITCH.BOOM!  There's yet another piece of paper that needs to be hunted down and included - seriously - this is a war of paper over here ... a war on the trees.  My head is spinning, my jaws are clenched and I'm having an overwhelmed moment because of the redonkulous level of paper trails necessary to do anything.  That's because the audits are all-important and what 'merica needs to justify the continuation of all the good we are doing over here - yes, I am smirking as I typed that last sentence.  I'm in awe.

On a brighter note - there looks to be a change in the weather today and it's looking like a mighty large thunderstorm is moving in.  That's a cause for great excitement as it's basically Groundhog Day here - every day is the same ... sunny, dusty with changes only in the temperature.  So I guess the rainy season I've been hearing so much about - the one that causes floods and the baby-powder-fine dirt to turn into peanut butter cement - may have finally arrived.  As usual, I will be excited about this for around 2 days and then will quickly become bored with the whole thing.  I'm betting it won't even smell like rain, but rather more like wet, filthy mud ... and poo.  The air here always has the aroma of poo, if even just a hint, and not in the "farm" way we are familiar with - more like the "look what the homeless guy did on my steps" way that occasionally occurs back at the Hillbilly's place of residence.

I had an amazing and fascinating meeting this week with the 5 members of the team I now manage which is comprised of local Afghans.  2 speak English well and the other 3 need the conversations to be translated back and forth which makes for long meetings and meaningful looks and head-nods from me as I pretend to grasp the context of what's being said.  I asked the team about their backgrounds and that was quite interesting - 3 were past (and highly ranked) military commanders back from the Soviet era.  All of them have many years experience working with international aid organizations.  One of them is extremely handsome with a very compelling voice and unusually colored eyes - almost like tiger's eyes - and were hard not to stare at, which is something women should always avoid doing here.  Let's see - their initial interest in me was only to ask my age and how many children I had ... not much different that the days of Don Draper ... both of the numbers I provided were most likely disappointing - Age 4+, and 0 chill'uns.  Of course I included my professional background and my stint in the military which was met with a round of appreciative head nods - I think anyone here who knows how to kill things is always welcome at the table - the inside joke is that they have no idea what kind of mad-capped mayhem ensued during my stint in the military.  Interesting fact - they all love cookies and juice which I find hysterically funny for some reason - most likely because I'm seriously due a break from here.  Here are these tough, seasoned military veterans enjoying the hell out of cookies and juice.  Eventually they clearly understood my boss-likeness, especially when I was laying down the law about reimbursements and other loose money issues.  The oldest one was happy that a woman was part of the team - this was said after I picked up garbage at the end of the meeting - and my co-worker and I were laughing about them being so confused as to my role.  Hell, I'm confused about my role but it's certainly not cleaning up after the "meetings with the mens".

I would like to mention that I am slowly falling into very weird speech patterns and speaking habits that will probably be difficult to initially break when I finally return home.  Many of my co-workers speak English as a second, third or fourth language and much like my experience in Greece, an "s" is placed at the end of almost all words.  Something I no longer notice in my own speaking - writing correctly is easy, but speaking is more about what you become accustomed to hearing.  Spoken sentence construction is also different as are slang terms for common items.  I'm certainly not worried about losing my hillbilly accent, but am curious as how much of a newly minted American I will sound like when finally home.  The strangeness is that you just stop noticing ...  kooky...

I am trying to enjoy my last few days in my own private container with my own private bathroom - in sum, I am extremely clean and well-groomed as a result.  I need a cut of the hair - see what I mean about sentence construction? :) - and an amazing amount of red wine, red meat and fresh pasta ... bread, and some tapas plates in Spain ... and some heart-clogging butter and cream based dishes in France ... pints of beer ... the freedom to roam ... something to look at that's not a tent, metal container or camouflage motif ... and tons and tons of walking and exploring!!  February 10th is right around the corner.  Hope everyone is sufficiently enjoying Winter!

Drink of the Night - an Arnold Palmer drink mix in water - would be a John Daly if I had vodka...