After one month

Today marks a month of my arrival. A month gone so fast, a month which toured me amongst such a colorful road, so full of new people, places, food, colors, textures. My, it did go fast yet so much has gone out of me and into me.
Life is just not the same. My expectations have changed.
I am realizing how much I have to simplify my expectations and my way of treating others. And this is a lesson I am thankful for.
Everyday I am trying to remind myself to treat others like I wish they would treat me. I am reminding myself to let by-gones be by-gones, and that each day should start with a clean slate.
My expectations of what we can accomplish need to be flexible, because sometimes I am happily surprised and other times I am disappointed. But isn't life so much better when we are happily surprised?
I am disappointed when my expectations are high but when I just wait to see what happens and the results are good, or even great, wow do I feel encouraged.
We are setting up a store at the women's market. The design center has shared responsability for establishing the store. The center did not want to do the store but the women's business federation really pushed for it. So it was agreed.
I arrived, and the feelings at the center have been that the store will be a failure, but the federation expects the store to be a key component to their sustainability. I think both expectations are in opposite extremes. I just want to aid in the setup, walk with the women whom we train to do inventory, keep records, tag, etc. and then see how they do. It is more a learning experience than a mere success or failure.
After a month I feel like I am way in the middle of the design center and the women's federation.
The foreign ideas are one extreme and the local ideas are another. How do we merge and seek success as a team?
And I having walked on both sides before, feel that neither is quite right, but both possess a lot of truth. Part of me saying all of this is feeling that after a month, I see a tug of war.
And all I want is to train local women who hand make their products.
But the politics in between sandwich me and my work and instead of me being able o set up and start have to spend a lot of time and energy on talking and figuring things out on both sides.
Then the women who await training seem to always be the ones on the loosing end as because of external complications we can't reach them or we cut short the time to be spent with them.
All of this can really wear you down.
I want to remain optimistic, and when I am around them, when I visit them, it is exactly what I want, what I wish to be doing.
But when I am away from them everything seems to get so complicated.
My aim for September is to be as close to the local associations as possible. It will be an interesting month to start training as it is RAMADAN. Employees are allowed to go home at 2, specially for the women, as they have to cook a feast for the family to eat after the sun sets. So our trainings will be from 8 to 2 with no tea breaks or lunch in between. I wonder how much concentration the women can do.
In October I am flying to be with the Quan and Maria Nguyen and their lovely kids. I'll be in England for 10 days, then fly back to Kabul to leave the next day to New Delhi for the India market readiness program, I'll walk the trade show as well as be part of a market and raw material sourcing tour to take place right after the training program. My first time to England. My first time to India.
Life just keeps getting more interesting with time, and I continue to be toured around all kinds of newness.