Gripe

Well, I am back among the living. I had a nice bout of 24 hour flu. I went home for lunch yesterday and hardly got out of bed until this morning. I felt like I got run over by a truck...my whole body hurt. Thank god for the portable dvd player that we borrowed from a friend (partial payment for taking care of her cancer-ridden dog which shed a lot of hair from his chemo treatment, thus setting off my allergies on top of the gripe) so I was able to zone out to season 2 of House while attempting to move as little as possible. P.s. The spanish word "gripe" (pronounced gree--pay) is used to describe every other unknown ailment, or gripe, as you will.

Earlier this week I was in Quito for a two-day Gender and Development Committee meeting. We worked our arses off. There was no sitting around talking about what we were going to do...it was an incredibly productive two days. The big highlight was the raffle for the round trip airfare. First, a HUGE thanks to all of my friends and family that bought tickets. I was so thrilled to see so many of your names on the tickets (I had the fun job of printing and cutting thousands of tickets). Unfortunately, however, none of my friends or family won the tickets.... Nonetheless, it was a huge success, as we blew away last year´s record fundraising effort. The committee is made up of a lot of super cool volunteers--we worked hard, but had a good time, too. I hadn´t realized how competitive it was to get on the committee...there were a lot of other people who wanted to serve, but weren´t chosen...
Had lots of good food in Quito--including shwarma and Indian and some incredible banana macadamia nut pancakes at the Magic Bean Cafe. yummmmmmmmmm........ Well, am going to mosey back into the office. Ciao.