As I was chatting with a friend over Skype, she said, "Doug, don't be offended by this, but you're a little chubbier." Another friend told me that I was a "rellenito" (for those of you who don't speak Spanish, that's the same word that's used to describe jelly doughnuts). But don't worry. You'll be happy to hear that I have a plan:
1. Only eat out ONCE a day.
2. Disable my webcam.
You see, Kendal, Matt, and I are now in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia (which Wikipedia tells me means "Holy Cross of the Hills, Bolivia"). After a brief vacation eating pesto, empanadas, and steak in Buenos Aires, we have arrived to Bolivia anxious to pilot Ascend's first evaluation implemented by interns (and yes, directed by university professors).
I have been sitting here at my computer longer than I probably should trying to think of an interesting way to describe our evaluation project to you, vast readership. (This is the point where you can stop reading.)
To put it frankly (and a bit fasciciously): In our prosperous economic times, people are starting to care even more about where they put their money. And those of us who work in Non-profit and International Development care more than ever about the kind of work that we do. Evaluation, conducted intelligently (which we hope to do), can show organizations the positive effect they have had and also how to improve their programs.
How was that description? We promise that even though we will be filling our heads with uninteresting theoretical topics about the evaluation we're doing here (we actually are pretty excited about it, which probably makes us really uninteresting), we will only occasionally bore you, vast readership, with the details. To prove this, I am including a picture of Matt and a monkey from the Monkey Park we went to on Saturday, July 4!!!!
Yay!! Monkey Park!!!
What better way to celebrate the independence of your native country than by comforting an abused, rescued, capuchin monkey in Bolivia? (And you just watched fireworks.)
We'll keep you posted.
2 comments:
It's OK to get fat on good foreign food. I promise.
Doug, it's hard to imagine you getting chubby so rapidly, but even if you are, at least some prospective girlfriends might like that you definitely have thicker legs then them. Glad things are going well and thank you for the funny post. Katelyn saw the picture of the monkey.
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