Greetings all. Well I have another official announcement to make. Today was our final workshop of the consultancy. I do not mean that I won’t be doing instruction in the month or so I have left here. What I do mean is we have now fulfilled our major mandate by completing our trainings. 15 trainings and 9 provinces later we have provided some foundational expertise to provincial trainers in Moodle in the use and development of computer assisted learning. I feel very good and extremely fulfilled in the job that I have just completed. This really was a very strongly oriented team effort but I am blown away and very humbled by my team leader who twice today gave me the credit for the workshops in large group forums. He also paid me several comments which I never thought I would really hear before but they are music to my ears and confirm decisions that have already started taking hold in my head. For the time being, I will leave those decisions to the ethers and let you all keep guessing. It is an amazing feeling to finish with such an undertaking. I am very pleased.
The workshop was unusual today just because our schedule was a little whacked out. Things went just as I planned, so it is all good. On top of that, there were some nice layers of icing put on the cake. One of the participants was nice enough to invite my team lead and I over to her home for a dinner. We are going to take her up on the offer in late December about a week before I leave. The major breakthrough was that one of the support staff from the NIE treated me to some local chilis. They are very small red and green chilis no more than .5 inches in length. They are about as hot as very hot Jalapenos and are full of seeds. The locals hardly even eat them but I munched and it was nice to have a good local spice that factors on the heat scale I am used to from back home. Sorry to say these chilis didn’t make me sweat. The woman who brought them to me today just happened to have a birthday today so I paid her back by singing her happy birthday just after lunch. The thing that is interesting is that I found out from another support person who saw in her Facebook page that it was her birthday. That Facebook is pure evil I tell you!
This weekend I am celebrating by spending two nights at the aforementioned Mt. Lavinia Hotel. It should be very luxurious and restful. I am really looking forward to the trip. My team lead and his family will also join me tomorrow so that will be nice. I am sure that I will meet lots of interesting people along the way. The following weekend we have a trip down south scheduled. That should be good and it will be a perfect way to usher in my final month here. It is hard to believe that there are so few days left here for me.
Our main concern at work now is making sure the equipment we have ordered is delivered in a timely fashion. Administrate shortcomings here inevitably slow down just about anything that people try to accomplish so we are very keen on speeding things along so people can start to use the computers they already have. Other than that, it is time to start finishing job aids, annotating PowerPoints, and packaging materials. Good stuff indeed.
Take care all and have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Think of me when you are having some turkey, stuffing, and pecan pie among other things!