Working hard, good results

Sorry I haven't posted in the last few days, but I get lazy when I'm back at the hotel room at night. The last couple of days have been very good, with encouraging meetings with our partner organization and with the officials who are our major audience. It's been really encouraging and great, though kind of exhausting. The night before the most important meeting, our developer and I worked all night long (for me; all day long and well into the evening for him) to get some bugs fixed. We got everything up and going about 40 minutes before I had to leave the hotel for the 8 a.m. meeting. Talk about high stress. But the application ran beautifully throughout the meeting, and the official was very impressed and pleased. He could clearly see the value of having this system and using it to run reports that he and his managers at lower levels could use to support vaccination services. It was great. I was so pleased.

Working has really taken almost all my waking time during this trip, so I don't have too many exciting things to report. I walk between the hotel and office now instead of getting a ride, and it feels good to have that independence and not feel like I'm burdening the local country director too much. Our office is on the 11th floor (and they count here like they do in England: 0, 1, 2, 3...; not 1, 2, 3 like in the U.S., so it's truly 11 flights of stairs), and I always take the stairs to get some good exercise. (I say this so casually here in my blog, but in reality if I take the stairs at a good clip all the way up, I'm winded for sure when I get to the office.)

There is a tiny cafe just a couple of doors down from our office building with delicious coffee, and our hotel serves instant coffee, so it's real treat to head downstairs for a coffee break or get to work early for a good cup before work. Occasionally, they have this one sweet that I really like called pastel de nata. It's a little pastry cup made out of something like phyllo dough and filled with egg custard. YUM. Fortunately for my figure, they run out of these early in the day, so a coffee visit is usually just coffee and not coffee+pastry.

I've eaten only one meal (besides breakfast, which is included with the price of the room) at the hotel during this trip. I'm trying to get out more and experience a little more of the city than I did last time (though I'm being very safe and careful, so no worries). Last evening, Maria (the country director) dropped me at a waterside restaurant after work, and I got a good table immediately overlooking the water. We were facing due south, but I leaned out the window held the cam facing west and got a few shots of the sunset over the water. It was peaceful and lovely. The meal I ordered was not too great, so I didn't eat that much of it, but the dessert was fantastic. Plain unsweetened Greek yogurt topped with local honey and toasted almonds. Man.

When I finished dinner it was full dark, so I asked the waiter if he could call me a taxi. He agreed and told me to stay at the table and he would call me when the taxi arrived. I was not to wait outside please. That made me feel so secure. And then when the taxi driver didn't know my hotel, the waiter walked outside and told him which hotel and how to get there. It was so incredibly nice. I have had great luck getting taxis, that is, getting perfect strangers to get me taxis. I am so grateful.