Apologize

It has been waaaaaaay too long since my last update, but I have reasons. Please forgive me and read on. Upon assessing my financial and future job situation, plus the headache that is Air_Bulgaria and talking to my supervisor, I decided my best option for returning to the States was keeping my ticket in mid-December. I will be flying into Philly, staying until the 19th, then flying to Colorado, then returning to DC sometime after the first of the year. This decision has been one of the most difficult decisions of my life. This experience in Macedonia has been exciting, challenging, exhilarating and just plain different!

My Thanksgiving was spent having girls night with Dominika, Asya and Mattia (Dominika's 1 year old son - he liked being with the ladies). It was perfect and relaxing. No turkey and traditional food, but the spirit of the holiday was there - being thankful for what we have.

Today, I wrote a speech to discuss the CEDAW (Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women) Concluding Comments for Macedonia 3 years later - where we have been and challenges ahead. I will give you a little background so if you don't want to click the link, you have an idea what CEDAW does; however, I encourage you to read the actual link to the Concluding Comments - it isn't very long, just so you can see what I am working with. Basically, the Committee evaluates where a country is and where it needs to improve when it comes to gender equality. It looks not just at mandates, i.e. legislation and legal codes, but also implementation of mandates. I like the Concluding Comments format, which is basically here's what you did well, here's where you need to improve. So the Comments do not just focus on the negative, which is easy, but also looks at accomplishments. Granted, I have only looked at Macedonia's Comments, but this is my impression. As I noted a couple months ago, you won't find Concluding Comments with regard to the US because the US does not feel it needs to participate. It signed the treaty, but failed to ratify it so, basically, you have the Angora reporting, but not the self-anointed leader of the free world. By not ratifying the treaty, the US is not bound by its obligations, hence no reporting. What's wrong with this picture? So I am channeling my inner Obama and trying to write an inspirational speech of where we've been and where we are going...how we, as citizens, civil society, government entities and the international community can build on the current mandates and projects to achieve the goal of gender equality. We'll see how destroyed my draft gets, but it was a fun exercise none the less. If the person I wrote the speech for can channel their inner Obama (which I am convinced this individual does not have), we could maybe inspire some leadership in this department. Some people have charisma; others do not. I am not sure my level of charisma, but I think I have a bit...I just need to keep practicing writing speeches. I give good speeches, in my humble opinion, but writing them for others is a different issue because you have to write it for their delivery style. In this case, the delivery style is reading verbatim off a page, much different from my own. My dream is to one day not even need my note cards, which I barely look at.