..finally back in the office..

So a sign of how independent susanne and i are becoming is that for the first time since we have been here in chennai, we traveled to office in a local rickshaw as Kumar (our driver) decided to extend his Diwali holiday a bit further to spend some quality time with his family - i cant really blame him, and this gave me and susanne a great opportunity to stand on our "own legs" if you will .. and if i may be so bold and say that we managed it perfectly - okay might not sound like a big thing, but for those of you that have been to india, and have every needed to negotiate with a rickshaw driver to be taken some 30 - 40 min ride, that gets to be a long conversation .. in the end we managed to get a price that didnt make us look to much as "silly foreigners" i am sure we could have pushed it another 10 - 15 % down, but after 5 min of discussing and waiting i just want to be on my way.. - as you can see waiting is not / or at least was not my strongest side .. (i have definitely been challenged on this one ever since my arrival to india - and i feel i am getting better at controlling myself)  So after taking a lot of short-cuts, we finally arrive to the office, as Diwali was just a couple a days ago, a lot of people are still not back from their families - but still there is a lot of talks going, a lot of discussions, people on the desktops - and then i am reminded of the fact that this NGO is hosting a youth convention for around 800 people on sunday, and as it looks like right now, there is apparently a lot of things that are still not ready .. - but seeing how these people here are working, i feel every very confident that all will be ready for sunday.. we get our invitations as well (writing beautifully in Tamil) and a translation of the program, i have to admit, it seems to be an interesting day, a mixture of fun and laughter (which i like) and of course as well some official activities .. (which i have no comments about ..)

We move to our base camp - a small little 2 meters x 2 meters with two desktops and 5 chairs (a bit compacted - but by now i am use to it) today's objectives are to review the  agenda for the whole of next week, go through the collected feedback from the session last friday, discuss some points regarding splitting of the groups, review some of the presentation material, see an alternative to our first site, and print some material ... - As some many times before susanne and i with out further conversation or preparation just gets going, and we work through our prepared agenda, and it seems like it was a good idea to have prepared this agenda because approximately 1 hour into the conversation with the team, we end up looking at pictures from one of the team members wedding, my God .. for her wedding there was 1300 guests on one day and 800 guests on the other day .. imagine a wedding in Europe with that amount - WOW, she shows us the dress she was wearing, the ceremony, the food, the traditions and it is very interesting, but unfortunately work doesnt get done by itself, so we refocus and move down the list .. and then its lunch time, rice and chicken.. and then off to see the alternative site - and we meet with the local team there, that by now have heard stories, rumour and gossip about me and susanne, so a lot of whispering is happening when we enter, we fast recognize some of the women that was on our session last friday, they seem to be very excited about next weeks trainings, and that there ladies and gentlemen is my motivation to perform to my maximum.. we return back to the office, to do one last review - say or greetings for a nice saturday and see them all on sunday.. after what feels like 5 min, has actually been 6 hours, and we find ourselves once again negotiating the price of taking us to 5th Cross street..  its soo good to have been back in office .. and i cant wait for next week to come, this is what we have been working for - this is what we came to do... - hhmm still saturday and a sunday, but then it is lights, camera and ACTION...