IN and OUT

So, I have been busy lately. I have been in and out of town a lot for work and some for play. My office got a grant from the OSCE to expand our work out in the North West regions of Azerbaijan. That basically means I had/ got to spend a week out of town lately. I had to go to trainings with my staff everyday and then went and hung out with Ben and Rob in the evenings. It was a pretty good week. Ben got some packages from home which he graciously shared with me. I got some good work done and learned some stuff. There were however, some less than stellar moments. One came while I was conducting a training and one of the gentlemen that was up for a trainer position asked the program manager how much I cost and another took pictures of me on his phone while the training was going on. After that I was sure of two things. First, that I would spend the rest of that day at Ben's hanging out with Americans and eating America food (we baked cookies and two pizzas). Second, that it was time to start planning the gender conference that I had been thinking about.
This week Rachel cam up to Sheki so that we could start planning the conference. It was great to have her help and to have a friend around for a week. Saturday I left town with her and went to Baku and met up with Ash who had just finished a week long boys leadership camp. We hung out with some 5s until 4am when I got in a taxi to go to the airport. Currently, I am in Istanbul in the middle of a seven hour layover, but am I enjoying the free wireless internet! I'm going to be in Germany for the next two weeks I hope that the next post will be full of glorious pictures of me with my friends there!!!