Time is a Flyin'

Its been quite a week here! The days are going fast and its hard to believe we are working on final projects. Anyway, its been a great week. We've been having class presentations which have been interesting but also doing a good bit of personal development. Today we had an open forum with the Drs. Arole where we got to ask any questions. They talked a lot about motivation and balance. Doing development work can be such a challenge but they both say they haven't felt like they have made any sacrifices. We also did a very cool meditation today where you had to picture your own funeral and what people where there, what your friends and family would say about you and what you would want them to say. Then we had to write our "life" mission statement. Really a neat thing to do and makes you think about where you are and where you want to be.

Speaking of life, had an amazing experience this week of getting to see a live birth. Tuesday night we had another poker game (I won this time!) and were just all hanging out because we knew there were two women in labor. I was set-up to see the 2am birth - bad prediction because 2am turned into 3am turned into 4am...you get the idea. But it was fun because a few of us just stayed up talking. Finally around 6am we went to the hospital. Unfortunately it was a very hard labor and the woman (20 yrs old...) was in a lot of pain. She kept wanting to walk around and the contractions were horrible. We tried to comfort her but by the end she was saying she didn't want the baby anymore...oops, too late for that! Finally she was fully dialated. By this time though she was so exhausted that the doctor had to push for her. Soon enough though a brand new baby boy emerged! Definitely one of the most amazing things I've seen. He was healthy and the mother is now fine. After a good rest she decided she would keep him :) I went and saw her the next day and she was in much better condition. Wednesday was a long, exhausting day but definitely worth it! (by the way, the first thing I did was call my mom and thank her profusly for going through that...)

Yesterday we got to attend a Wedding Reception! It was so neat. We went in the afternoon, basically with the whole village. We didn't really understand the customs but it was very cool to see. We are now working on "action plans" which is applying the principles we've learned to real-life. My team is doing young women in inner-city DC and I'm really enjoying the exercise. This weekend we have a final dinner and work on our projects which we present Monday morning and then have a "graduation" ceremony. Tuesday we head out! Crazy. Once I'm out traveling again not sure of the internet situation but hopefully I'll get that chance.