Last post on the conference, i promise!

Alright, I did want to write a little bit about Friday, but on Friday I was dead tired and I've been very busy since. Friday was a crazy day. The conference finished up alright. It wasn't too spectacular, but there was a speech that I found really interesting. It was by the CEO of the Grameen foundation. He was talking a little bit about his travel experience, but mostly he was talking about the success of his microfinance programs. And I realized something about the way I think about poverty, charity and profits that I hadn't noticed before.

The speaker was mildly disparaging another venture for not being profitable for the lender and my gut reaction was "Ugh, that's so capitalistic (read greedy)" and I realized that I have been working on an assumption that poverty should be eradicated with charity (ie giving without any benefit to oneself) and that I assumed that the enterprises he was involved with were less beneficial or less good intentioned because they make a profit. Some how, I've come to associate the idea of making profits with being inherently bad or selfish and I think I may have been missing something because of that assumption. I know I'm going to need to do more thinking on this before I'll really have got it sorted out, so I won't say anything more on this now, but expect another post on this soon.

Friday was also notable because I again found myself intensely homesick and hating D.C. I wasn't melancholy the I had been when I first arrived, instead I was annoyed and angry. While the feeling wasn't all that significant in the grand scheme of things, it was surprisingly crushing at the time. Fortunately, I tried to approach it as a learning opportunity and a test run for Nepal. At first, I thought getting out of the hotel would help, but the more I walked around the more annoyed I became. Then I spotted a 10,000 villages store like the one we have in A2 that helped a little bit, but not a ton. After that I stopped in to a little Lebanese restaurant where a kind waitress helped me to find something to eat. (It was delicious by the way; fried lentils ( Moujadara with cold mint cucumber soup) That helped immensely. It was wonderful to sit and listen to the people around me talk and to chat, even if only a little, with the waitress. After that, I was feeling much better. Then I headed back to the hotel and just allowed myself to relax with a warm shower and some TV. I know TV won't be available in Nepal, but hopefully, I'll be able to substitute some serious music listening and resting in when things get bad.

But the thing that really turned the day around, like most of the truly amazing things in my life was far beyond my control. As I was flipping through channels and considering all the anthropology of fashion that I could put in to the show "What not to wear" (I could write a book, easily), my phone rang. And to my surprise, the caller Id read "unknown caller". I answered and immediately recognized Didi's voice. She was calling me all the way from Nepal to check in and say hello. It was so so so amazing to talk with her. By the time I got off the phone with her I was literally jumping for joy. I told her all about the highlights of the conference and what my address in Kathmandu was going to be, and I got the scoop on everything that's been going on since I was in Nepal last. I just can't wait to see her again. And it really reminded me that even though I will get homesick in Nepal, I have real true family there and I will be fine, even if I end up crying on her couch a time or two. It was just wonderful.

But I think I've gone on long enough. There may be one more post from the trip about American fashion and my anthropological musings, but I'm not making any promises (or threats, I suppose) In any case, I'll write again soon, and until then, I'm off!