Training

So far all my time at work has been taken up with training - the first five weeks were "orientation", which was a lot of information from Human Resources about how the Foreign Service works and there were lots of forms to fill out, and then there were lots of sessions to give us a general introduction to the agency, with information about what the different bureaus do, etc. At the end of the five weeks we had a graduation ceremony, which is where they told us what country we've each been assigned to.

Since then, for the past three weeks, I've been in training provided by my bureau (Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance) to learn how to do my job. We've learned how to assess the democracy and governance situation in a country, how to evaluate the impact of programs, and lots of other stuff. The classes have almost all been really interesting, but I have to admit that after eight weeks now of sitting and watching powerpoints all day, I'm having a hard time paying attention.

But for the next two days at least, there will be a change of pace: we're moving on from democracy and governance to conflict management & mitigation, which I think I'll find a bit more interesting (not that D&G wasn't, but it's just not my main interest), and it's also going to be at a different location, which I'm hoping will be cheerier than our cold, dreary basement room.

Also they've said they're going to feed us breakfast, lunch, and a snack for the next two days, which seems so fancy after the past eight weeks of not even being provided coffee or water cooler water. (I've been spending $1.80 a day in the cafeteria on coffee, but I figure it's not so bad since I bring my own lunch and I've been biking to work. Although I can definitely make myself feel guilty by thinking about what my host family could do with an extra $1.80 a day). Anyway, all you taxpayers out there worried about government wastefulness, I haven't seen it at USAID - I mean really, not even water coolers?

Anyway, back to my point about training: two more weeks of training to go, and then, theoretically at least, I will move on to doing some actual job-related work. Inshallah. But I really only have a few weeks in October where that might happen, and then I have a couple weeks of disaster assistance training, and then I'll start full-time language training.

Busy busy busy. But I'm loving it (okay, maybe not all the powerpoints, but in general). And I'm so impressed with how smart and knowledgeable about their jobs everyone at USAID is, it makes me feel like I've really picked a good place to work.