Driving training, part 2

The rest of the week of driving training was just as good and fun as the first day, if not better.  Still can't tell you all about it, except that: I got to learn to drive stick shift!

I've only ever tried to learn to drive stick shift one time before, shortly after I got my license when I was sixteen.  My grandma tried to teach me out in the pastures on their farm on this ancient, broken-down truck (the gas pedal didn't even have the flat pedal-part attached to it anymore, it was just this metal stick/wire thing coming out of the floorboard, hard to find with your foot and even harder to put the right amount of pressure on).  Even experienced drivers had trouble driving that truck, so sixteen-year-old me couldn't even get it into first gear - it just stalled every time, and (did I mention the brakes were pretty much shot?) then we would start rolling backwards towards the pond, and my grandma would be yelling at me to get the truck started again and get it moving so we wouldn't fall into the pond...

So I came out of that experience thinking that driving stick shift was really, really hard.  And then I just never had another chance to try to learn until now.  It wasn't on the schedule for our driving training, but the instructors took pity on me when they found out I couldn't drive stick at all and gave me personalized instruction for an hour (along with one other student who also didn't know how to do it, which made me feel a little better).  And it turns out driving stick is super easy if it's with a car that actually works right.  (At least, it's super easy if you're on a closed course with no pressure from traffic and it doesn't really matter if you happen to crash into anything.  But I think I'd be fine driving in a normal setting as well.)

Anyway, so yay for driving training!  Now I am just wishing I got the opportunity to drive more often, but I guess I will get plenty of that in Nairobi - driving on the left side of the road, no less - that should be interesting.

Former Gates Foundation exec Raj Shah to head USAID

Article in the Seattle Times about the probable new Administrator for USAID.  Now if we could just get a director for OFDA too...

Driving training

So I have survived my first day of driving training, and I would love to tell you all about it, but pretty much the first thing the instructor told us this morning was that what we're learning this week is sensitive information, and so we shouldn't go blabbing about it or leave our books lying around where someone might see them.  Because we don't want the bad guys to know how we're trained to react if we're attacked, so that they can attack us better.

My first thought when he said that, though, was: if the bad guys are coming all the way to Virginia to get information on me or to attack me, I am in big trouble, and I don't think this course is going to be enough to keep me safe.

But instead of telling you what I've been up to, I will just say this:  Bad Guys, I am learning all kinds of crazy stuff you do not want to have to deal with.  So don't mess with me!

Catching up

I just checked, and it looks like it's been a month since I last posted anything.  Oops.  I guess that means my life has gotten into a routine.  Work is going well - I've had some interesting training, and my supervisor seems to be warming up to me.  This week I'm going to Richmond, VA for the best training of all - Security Driving, which I think means we'll be learning stuff like how to get away from an ambush.  And we get to learn how to ram other cars.  So if I don't get myself killed, it should be a lot of fun.

Just about everyone else who started at USAID at the same time as me is starting language training next week, so I'm going to have a possibly lonely month working at the Ronald Reagan Building.  But I chose to put off my language training because there's some interesting stuff going on in November (Annual Program Reviews - doesn't that sound exciting? No? Well I guess that proves I am a dorky bureaucrat.), so hopefully it will be worth it.  And then in December I'll start learning to speak French properly, inshallah.

Working hard

Yesterday, after spending eight hours straight staring at my computer, researching climate change, I came home, ate dinner, and promptly fell asleep on my couch... at 6 pm.  I guess I must have been a little tired.

And then I woke up this morning and heard on NPR that there was an earthquake off Indonesia, which caused a tsunami on Samoa.  Which motivated me to get back to work, so that someday, hopefully soon, I will get to be one of the people on the relief team responding to disasters like that.

And then I spent another eight hours staring at the computer, researching climate change.

Finished training

I officially finished training on Thursday, which means now I get to do some actual work.  First up: researching how climate change is likely to cause displacement and conflict.  Should be interesting, but I have to say, reading climate change articles is awfully depressing.  It goes so quickly from "Here's what is likely to happen with a 1 degree Celsius increase in average temperatures" to "We're all doomed!"

Also, I should clarify: my official mandated training is over (10 weeks of it, in case you haven't been counting), but that doesn't mean that I'm actually done with training.  Now I just get to choose which trainings I want/think I need to take.  So this next week I have a one-and-a-half day training (if they let me into the class, I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one) on how to use field communications equipment like satellite phones.  And next week I have a training to learn how to respond to disasters as part of a deployed team (DART - Disaster Assistance Response Team).

So I'm still going to be really busy; actually I'm not quite sure how I'm going to find time to get the climate change project done.  Might have to do some super early mornings (because I hate late nights).

Death by powerpoint

Okay, I've had it.  I've tried really hard, but I just can't take it anymore.  Hour after hour, day after day, of looking at powerpoints and having people talk at me...  it's physically hurting me now.  The CIA should look into powerpoint lecturing for their interrogation program.  Or not, since I'm anti-torture.

Anyway, it's been nine weeks now since I started my job, which means nine weeks of training, mostly by powerpoint.  One week to go.  And then I'll get to do some actual work for a few weeks, inshallah.  I hope I don't discover that my brain has been completely lobotomized by staring at all these powerpoints the last few weeks and that I'm now completely useless.

But on a positive note, I also had some really good meetings yesterday.  One was about flooding in Senegal, so I was the local-knowledge "expert" (which of course I'm not really, but I did have a few thoughts to contribute, which made me feel good).  The other was trying to figure out what I'm actually going to be doing in Kenya, which was just as unclear after the meeting as before, but at least I know now that I'm confused because everyone else is too, and not because I'm missing out on some important piece of information.  And everyone was very nice and trying to be helpful, which reinforced my feeling that USAID is going to be a good place for me to work.  Even if they are giving me a lobotomy by powerpoint.

More Hong Kong photos

Hong Kong photo

A picture from my July trip to Hong Kong, for your viewing pleasure.

Exciting/scary

For the past two days I've been in a training course on conflict assessment and programming (in which we learn how to assess what's driving the conflict, the key actors, overall context, and mitigating factors, and then to design programs to mitigate the conflict).  Throughout the training we used the current situation in Sri Lanka as a case study, determining what the conflict is really about, what opportunities may exist right now, and what sort of programs we would like to implement there.  I really enjoy doing case studies, so this was a lot of fun for me, but the best part was I realized that soon, when I go overseas to work in the Mission, I could be doing work just like this.  But it won't be a case study, it will be for real, and whatever programs I design could actually be implemented!

Very exciting, but also a lot of responsibility...