March Madness, part 1

Looking back on the month of March it’s hard for me to remember much other than work. Unfortunately, I was immersed in it...or more like drowning in it. We (Willamette University) received a grant from the US State Department to administer the Youth Leadership Program with Bosnia and Herzegovina. The grant began in September 2008, and by March it was in full swing. Of course, as Program Manager, my wheels were turning 24/7 from recruiting host families, interviewing host families, tracking expenditures, preparing and submitting the quarterly grant reports, creating and constantly tweaking the program schedule, recruiting local non-profits to work with the students, recruiting Willamette professors to teach their sessions, and ironing out all the logistical kinks that come with administering a month long program. By the time March came, I was only 1 month away from the arrival of 18 students and 3 teachers from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On March 8th, I headed over to Sarajevo to conduct the participants’ Pre-Departure Orientation. I was to arrive one day early to finalize my preparations. The next day was to be an all day meeting at the US Embassy in Sarajevo with our program officers, and the next day was to be the start of the 5 day long Pre-Departure Orientation, which would consist of all day sessions from 8 to 5. I was responsible for providing all the materials, and giving two 2-hour presentations daily. Since I was putting together 21 binders, each containing 60 pages of materials, (that I created, thank you very much!) I decided to pack the empty binders, and arrive 1 day early in Sarajevo, take my thumb drive to a print shop and print all the pages of materials and assemble the binders. This way I wouldn’t have to lug around all that printed material on the way over. And surely one full day was plenty of time to finalize the preparations.

Well, I arrived at the Portland airport for my departure and sure enough…my flight to Chicago was delayed. No big deal, right? Wrong! As I waited for hours upon hours at PDX I slowly began to realize that I was going to miss my connecting flight from Chicago to Munich which then connected me to Sarajevo. This ended up meaning I had to spend the night in Chicago because the next flight to Munich didn’t leave until the next day. Which meant I would arrive in Sarajevo a day late…I would literally go straight from the airport to my meetings at the Embassy. Aaacckk! There goes my prep day!

(A self portrait of my extremely frustrated self in my Chicago hotel room)

So, once I arrived in Chicago, instead of seeing the city, I spent most of the night and the next day in a Kinko’s shop, printing materials and assembling binders…it was great fun. This was one of those moments where the thought crossed my mind, “Why did I complain about the monotony of dishes and laundry when I was a stay at home mom? What I would give now to be home in my ugly sweats, no make-up, hair in a pony tail, and folding laundry on the couch while listening to the sound of my kids fighting with each other and my husband coming home asking what was for dinner.” I seriously would have sold my left arm for it.(This picture sums up everything I was able to see while in Chicago.)

(However, being stuck in a fancy hotel has its benefits...aka room service!)

To be continued...