Plan vs. Actual Implementation

While I was teaching English today, I was able to use a few Bengali words, which was quite exciting.  I realized that I should plan the lessons so that I could use some of my Bengali to explain the English;  that would help explain things more clearly and help me improve my Bengali.  My students are all older than me, and very polite.  But fortunately they tell me when it’s time to move onto something else and explain things to each other since I’m ridiculous and don’t know enough Bengali to explain things. 

I put together some mock-ups for the annual report and showed them to Porjo today.  He said they were “okay, no problem,” and we talked about how the space was really the biggest issue.  They have a lot they want to put in.  I kind of felt like they were indulging me; it might be easier for them to just make the report without a layout that I design.  It really depends on the pictures and the amount of text they want to put in each section, so the layout is really dependant on that.  I'm still making a layout though, with the goals of maximizing space for text and pictures and having flexibility.

As far as re-organizing goes, the CRWRC office is working and it looks like we’ll just be considering a cubicle system for one room.  I’d love to re-organize the whole office, but it would be very disruptive and there aren’t any big problems.  The SATHI office could use re-organization, but they are in the middle of the busiest part of their year, and re-organization would be quite disruptive.  Looks like I won’t be doing much re-organization.

A couple years ago this would have really frustrated me, to have an idea and opportunity for an improvement and not be able to work on it.  I’m keeping plenty busy, but I’m not actually doing a whole ton of work.  I started this summer knowing that my time would be about learning and not saving the day, but old habits usually die hard.  Fortunately I’m actually adjusting to not being a super intense worker quite well.

I’m be-ing here and learning all sorts of things (I really need to learn more Bengali though).  I am doing surprisingly well at adjusting to not always working and having some of the projects not quite working out.   Taking lots of time to think and process everything, taking everything as it comes, learning to think on my feet better (still really working on that though).