I'm still alive...

I survived last weekend. And, with the full benefit of hindsight, it was mostly pretty enjoyable. I could have done without that tortuous climb up the mountain pass (think of that bit in Fellowship of the Ring without the snow) where I had to stop every 5 seconds to relieve the pain in my thighs while locals with flip flops and half their worldly possessions on their heads scampered past, but I did it. Yay me!

Have to say, though, that the views themselves were gorgeous but not sublimely so – perhaps I’ve been spoilt by other parts of the worlds (most recently, Jordan) but what struck me most about the mountain scenery, at least on the first day, was just how bare it was. And it wasn’t the natural starkness of a semi-desert, but an artificial emptiness brought about by decades of concentrated deforestation – often with the odd surviving lone tree. It’s actually rather heart-breaking to see and think that these mountainsides were once lush and verdant – apparently still are in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

Anyway, here are a couple of pics - judge for yourself:

And here's where we stayed the night. Had a fireplace and everything:

Group-wise, there were about ten of us: mostly my colleagues but some other hangers-on. One of the main reasons I went was the whole fellowship in adversity thing ie getting to know people that I’ll probably be spending a lot of time with. To a large extent, it worked in that I feel pretty much at ease with most of them. I’m not completely comfortable but then it normally takes years for me to get to that stage.

This week’s been pretty full-on with three days of MANGO training (most of which I skipped – naughty me ;-)) and our trying to finalise January accounts. Yes, we’re that late. It’s also been a definite learning experience for me. I’m still pretty slow but am getting the hang of things –and I have to say that I quite like this line manager experience: all I need to do is monitor and point out problems, and then get my minions to do the hard work of solving them for me ;-). Of course, it helps to have a pretty good team in place... That said, looking back on my times with my first NGO, I now have a lot more sympathy with my boss trying to line-manage an opinionated, outspoken employee convinced of the absolute rightness of her own ideas. I only hope I can be as patient as him.

In other news, I now have a new flatmate as from yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I thought she wasn’t moving in for another week not having been informed to the contrary. So there I was, Saturday afternoon, enjoying a nap stark bullock naked [don’t judge me – it was hot] in my room when I hear someone coming into my flat calling out my name after I had stupidly forgotten to lock the door. So, had to greet my new roomie wrapped in a blanket.

Way to make a great first impression.

As for how I felt about it: initially rather annoyed not to have been given any notice (or say for that matter) as I had planned a nice quiet weekend. But then she is lovely and pretty easy to get along with, and it’s good for me to learn to live with someone else and to do that compromise thing. And I’ll only be sharing for a month ;-).

Final note: I’ve actually joined a gym. But that doesn’t mean I’ve become a gym freak – I want to be very clear about that. I joined it mostly for the sauna, the massages and the dance classes masquerading as aerobics. My first class? Hip hop. If nothing else, after my stint here, I’ll be able to shake my booty with the best of them. Hopefully without getting stitches after 5 seconds...