Back to the Grind!

Just like a student starting a new school after a long summer, I started working today after 3 months of visiting friends, new cities, and just totally enjoying the summer. Like any other worker be slaving away for the Man, I was up and out of the door by 7:30 am and spent the first day meeting so many new faces and getting my poor inactive brain stuffed with more information than it's handled all summer. It was my first day and old habits of staying late already started with me trying to catch up on this mega project that I already have 'homework' on.
Very simply, I'll be working on several projects in Emerging from Conflict countries (mostly Iraq). I'll be helping with backstopping for the field offices, working on new proposals, and dealing with donors and other D.C. based stakeholders. It's actually really exciting because I've always been the person in the field, so this is a whole new face of development for me. I was in a meeting this afternoon and could literally feel my brain expanding with all the new information flowing in. Now I'll just need a bit of time to actually UNDERSTAND everything that was going in. Plus, I'll be working on a whole new region of the world which will be exciting. We were talking about Iraq and East Timor and Boliva and it's really AMAZING how little I know about those places! My heart actually made a little leap of joy when someone mentioned a very countries in Africa because I at least understand a very general geography (let alone the socio-political background of some African countries) of what they were talking about!