I was warned that most of January would be a blur.  That after the holidays, co-workers would be slow to get back to work and most of my time at the office would be spent drinking tea and chatting.

Unfortunately for Sean and me, we’ve been busy.  I’ve probably been busier this week than all my time working at my organization!  Why?  The US Embassy scheduled a grant deadline for January 17th – a week after most offices re-open after the holiday hullabaloo.  It would be great for my organization to land support from the Embassy and my director and I developed an appropriate project idea in Ureki.  We had to try.  And because it needed to be written in good English, I took the lead.  (Sean, too, wrote a project for his organization.)

I made all the efforts I could to coax my director into working on this grant in December.  We had meetings set and first steps planned.  However, things rarely, if ever, go as I expect here and we weren’t able to start the grant until the middle of break.  (Granted, three weeks is probably more prep-time than my organization has ever had for a project, seeing as most proposals run right up to the deadline.)  But even with three weeks, today – the last official work day before the grant was due – was still absolutely crazy.

I think it’s a sign of my continual adjustment to life in Georgia that I don’t become frustrated about certain things, especially the way my office operates.  I wasn’t frustrated that we still hadn’t contacted our grant references as of yesterday afternoon.  I wasn’t frustrated that, after days of asking, I had to wait until 5:30 p.m. for a co-worker to dig through three computers to find their English resumes.  I wasn’t even that upset that yesterday afternoon I was told of another grant, due today at 5:00, that needed serious English help and lots of revision time from yours truly.  This is a major achievement for a perfectionist like me, but frustration doesn’t help anyone.

And, more importantly,  I’ve learned that most things here are simply out of my control.  My job here is not to save my organization from itself.  My job is to help them discover how they can avoid these stressful, difficult situations – like being unprepared for a grant deadline – altogether.  Unfortunately, after years of doing business in this manner, it’s a tough sell.

(Thankfully, the grant due today was submitted in an acceptable form and after another few hours of work over the weekend, the final Embassy grant will be something I can be proud of.  Whew.)