Just a quick note to wish friends and family north of the border (or Canadians in other territorial borders) a very Happy Thanksgiving!
The kiwi and I are enjoying the "holiday" in the apartment eating a bowl of veggie chili and Brent's homemade cornbread while I take a brief hiatus from my never-ending backlog of writing. Brent, on the other hand, flew to San Francisco this morning to schmooze it up at a $1000-a-plate fundraising and awards dinner. One of his Case Managers, Amina, won the award this year, so she invited Brent, the other Case Managers and she even yours truly to the event! Unfortunately, IRC wasn't inclined to fork over the $1000 for my seat as well as a plane ticket to get me there ;-) Well, I hope they have fun!
Despite the lack of family or turkey dinner on my Thanksgiving, I have had a lot to be thankful for lately. Last week I told my supervisors at the IPJ about my pregnancy and then took one of them aside to let her know that I was also interested in working at the IPJ in the future. To my surprise, she told me that she was happy to hear that, as she liked my work, knew I was staying in San Diego and had already been dropping my name around the institute! So that's very encouraging news! However, the IPJ is in the process of hiring a new Exec Director, and has only recently hired a new Senior Program Officer (a Harvard law grad and Human Rights Watch's French West Africa correspondent), so it will likely take them a little while to get those two people settled in and to decide in which direction they would like the institute to go. Nevertheless, if I keep my foot in the door, that could mean some great opportunities in the future! YAY!
Other than that, it is also time to ask all of the people who have written to us lately, for a three week break before I will be able to reply. The final 3 weeks of this position are going to be absolutely crazy as we try to meet a string of final deadlines. After November 7th, however, (provided our immigration hearing on Nov 6th goes well) my life should quieten down immensely (at least until I get work again) and I'll be able to be much better about keeping in touch.
However, impending deadlines and way too much work did not stop the IPJ from taking the PeaceMakers, writers and a film crew to Sea World this weekend! Despite the absurd commercialism (SeaWorld is now owned by Anhauser Busch) and the moral quandaries I have with animals being held in captivity performing tricks for humans, it was a lot of fun! I felt 7 years old again.
Ok, as always, there is lots more to say, but I should get back to work! I'll probably try to write quickly again later in the week after our second ultrasound :-)
Enjoy your turkey, tofurkey, or at least the pumpkin pie!
p.s. yes, as the photos indicate, it's still in the high 20's to low 30's here. Which is great until we start missing fall.
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