Working weekend

This weekend was spent in true field-trip style - working. Saturday was an all-day meeting with staff which on the plus side meant heat and internet access, and on the down side meant no lunch and long hours.

Sunday Sue and I worked all day on her starting to piece together the evaluation narrative and me piece together tables needed for the umpteen annexes. The sun finally came out today and so I took a morning break to get out and see a bit of the neighborhood. I walked down to square with the closed opera building and stumbled upon the district museum (pictured to the left) and a dilapitated park. The scenary here is something else. I can't decide whether it is beautiful or eerily stark. A river runs through town and right behind the city rises the driest, steepest mountains I've ever seen. From afar, it looks like there isn't a living thing growing on them.

And now, my favorite topic, food. The food here is probably the least enjoyable I've ever had. It is heavy on the meat, and fattiest meat possible. We have eaten out a few times and I think I've had my quota for meat, fat and oil. The bread is not bad (usually in these rounds to the right) and you can purchase a lot of nuts and dried fruit which is always good. It is probably safe to assume that a home cooked meal here would be much better than the restaurants.

So, the topic of food is not complete without the accompanying food-borne illness. Late Sunday night I was awakened and kept awake all night by some creatures within who wanted out, now. And all night with two layers of clothes and two comforters, I shivered. So not only did I still manage to get what Sue had had, I got it worse. All day Monday, I slept and everytime I stood up, was too dizzy to get very far. Dehydrated, headachy and also hungry, Sue and our country director Brandy arrived that evening with crackers and ibuprophen. And I slept some more.