Where do I start???

Well, I have yet again to apologize for the length of time it has taken for me to get around to getting another post up. I think besides being busy, I was a bit intimidated by the fact that since I now know how to upload pictures, I should be loading pics into every blog...and I haven't had time to sort through my photos, so....
Anyways, as I am sitting here today, I figure it will be better to just get a darn blog up than to fiddle with pictures, since it seems to be a bit of a block!
So I never really did justice to Mom and Meghan's trip here with us - I know my mom kept great notes, so I am hoping she will do a guest blog and email me some of her details so I can post them.
Since my last post, I completed the daunting amount of work required in order to facilitate my week long workshop on M&E....it was a battle, but I got the job done in the end, and have recently compiled the results of the workshop evaluation - it seems that many people were extremely happy with their experience and learned some valuable lessons, so that made me feel great. I can see how teaching is a rewarding experience - one day we were doing a recap and people were all participating a lot, and I realized that they learned some of the things we were talking about from ME! I was pretty tickled.
Anyways, the week after the workshop was a bit of a blur - I arrived home on Friday night and Jules and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary (1 day late) with Regan by going out for dinner, and then Regan went to a party while we went home and crashed out. On Saturday we went to a friend's birthday/one year in Malawi party, which was really nice - we met some new people and had a brilliant evening. On Sunday, I started getting really puffy eyes - I used to get this occasionally in Canada - some kind of undiagnosed allergy I guess, so I wasn't too worried, but it did continue until Monday when I spent the afternoon at home to rest my eyes. The rest of the week was taken up with trying to capture the notes from my workshop in order to create my workshop report and thinking about the best way to divide the rest of my (too short!) time here.
I don't know if I ever reported that we were finally able to recruit a counterpart for my position here? Originally, they were hoping to hire an M&E Officer that I was to work with way back in February just after my arrival...unfortunately the recruitment was unsuccessful, and my colleagues decided to wait until new salary levels were approved before attempting to recruit again. The new salary levels were supposed to be approved in February, but in actuality were not approved until June! Then there were all sorts of administrative delays involved and we didn't actually make offers until much later. Finally we thought we had the candidate lined up and the position was filled - the officer was invited to attend my workshop as his first week of work. I am trying not to be personally offended, but in fact, since the workshop ended, he has not been seen again here at CADECOM. Sorry - slight exaggeration - we had his computer all set up Monday morning and he did pop in Monday afternoon (when I had gone home to rest my poor eyes), but since then, he has not returned.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, I asked my boss what he was planning to do, and his response was that we should give him to the end of the week!!! When he hadn't shown up for two days with no phone call or anything??? Anyways, it was not my call, but he didn't show up all week, so we are now assuming he is not interested. I wasn't too sure of him after the workshop (he was pretty quiet and I worried how we would get on), so I am not sure if I am relieved or dissapointed, but I am definately back at square one. Not having a counterpart here has severely limited the amount I can hope to get done in my year here, and now with a new recruitment scheme on the horizon, it seems unlikely that we will get someone in before Christmas.
Anyways, most of this month I will be focussed on rewriting my work plan to accommodate these new circumstances and trying to plan for my highest impact activities to be completed before I go.
This week there is a week long training in Nutrition, but I am staying back today and tomorrow to try an finish up some loose ends from my workshop...I will attend while the focus is on successful program design and indicator selection for nutrition.
This past weekend was super - on Saturday we walked around and did some errands on foot, which got us outside and also some exercise. On Sunday, unfortunately I had puffy eyes again, worse than last weekend, so I wasn't capable of doing much and just laid around watching movies - since this is something I rarely do, I have to say it was a pretty enjoyable way to spend a Sunday! I am better today, so that is good.
Anyways, have piles of work to do so I must get on with it - I promise (AGAIN - do you still believe me at ALL?) to try and update more regularly now that things are back to normal after vacations and workshops etc...