Fun Lunch

Today the microfinance CEO, Babur, took the three of us interns to lunch. He and I had been to lunch while the other interns were out of town, but this was the first time that we had all been out. It was such a nice time; I’m really impressed with Babur. He is well educated and well traveled and a real professional but is so friendly and welcoming, never intimidating. He wanted to know about our scopes of work, how things were going, if we needed any resources or information that we weren’t getting. It was great.

I have been really lucky in my work, since I am partnered with a full-time employee in the Communications Department and am working for a woman who likes to get things in writing and set deadlines. Things have been pretty smooth for me, though I have had to track down certain types of information that are important for my deliverables and which no one had thought to mention until I began asking. However, once I realized that I needed the info, people pointed me to the person who could provide it, and I got info within a day. That has been good. Meerim, my teammate, has been translating some forms for me, and that is really great. The forms will tell me what kinds of information is gathered now, so I can make recommendations for what information should be gathered in the future. So…back to lunch.

We all walked to an Italian restaurant for lunch, and it was so good. The three of us interns all got gnocchi, while the CEO got ravioli. Our gnocchi was great, but the sauce tasted like canned tomato sauce (like the kind on the aisle with tomato paste and stewed tomatoes). But Babur’s ravioli was stuffed with spinach and had an herbed cream sauce. Wow. We’re all ordering that next time! :) Walking back, we saw this little bitty girl (maybe 2 years old) standing on the sidewalk with her mom. She was in an incredibly frilly ruffled light yellow dress and little yellow hat….and bare bottom! Sarah and I cracked up. That little girl looked so adorable and her little bottom hanging out was so funny. I had told Sarah that my mama cannot abide when women wear shorts so short that their rear ends hang out. And so when we saw this little girl today, Sarah said, “I’ll bet your mom would make an exception in this case.” And I laughed and said that yes, it’s only after potty training (and puberty!) that bare bottoms are too shocking in public.