So busy

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Things have been hectic since the new year started.

My office had a 3 day staff retreat in El Gouna, Egypt - the first and only self sustaining community in Egypt. However, the community is very upscale and lacks character. I cannot complain because our office paid for our flight, hotel accomodations at the Movenpick and dinners. The retreat seemed very productive, but since we have been back in the office, it seems that topics discussed at the retreat have gone in one ear and out the other for some. A bit frustrating for me and several other coworkers who thought we made progress at the retreat.

Currently, I have a lot on my plate. I am trying to develop the student leaders for service program, which is proving to be a challenge because the AUC student population is not your usual American college campus where, for the most part, students are civically engaged. I'm working on attracting applicants and developing the content for training seminars.

I'm also helping my co-worker get the network of Arab Universities off the ground with the launch of a website, but this is taking a long time because our supervisors are slow to approve content that we have created for the website. As part of the new network we are planning on holding a 4 day training institute in Beirut, which is also a large task, but currently, I am not as involved with that.

I’m also working on a lot of community-based learning projects and helping develop and administer the Al Alfi Award.

Fauzia and I have the honor of writing a working paper on youth service and policy in Egypt, but this is on our very low priority list for now.

There are several other projects that I am working on but I don't want to bore you with them and I'm also trying to finish this post up quickly.

And with all this work it doesn't help that I have a 2-day training institute on the topic of developing stronger training skills.

Add this with the inauguration of the new campus 2nd week in February, which requires my full devotion, applying for some fellowship programs, and writing a review for a journal (separate from my internship work) and you have a very busy person. Oh ya, and Arabic classes are going to start up in February and I'm hoping to start volunteering with an NGO on health education. I don't know how I will manage.

I've been pushing off on writing about the Palestine-Israel conflict, as well as, my trip to Jordan (which was in early December). Hopefully, I will be able to find some time in the coming weeks to do that.

Wish me luck!

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