THE OFFICE

I have never actually worked in an office before. Until now.

In college I was employed as a tutor for the university, so my workplace consisted of a classroom and a dry erase board. I worked briefly for Kaplan MCAT prep during med school. Subsequent to that, I've been employed as a physician, and there's not much office in an emergency department. As a matter of fact, I don't even have an office now! (Shhh... don't tell anyone... 'cause if I did I'd be expected to spend even more time at the hospital...) (Oh yes - I also briefly worked at an auto garage in high school until I started getting nosebleeds from the fumes.) (Not huffing.)

But now, for the first time in my life, I'm working in an actual office, in Palestine! USAID leased out two floors of a building for the project to work out of here in Ramallah. It's actually... really quite nice. It's a new building that's enviromentally friendly - for example, the heating and cooling works on a geothermal pump system (living in austere conditions, such as having limited access to electricity, forces you to make green choices), and it's big and clean. For the first time in my life, I've got a desk, there's a receptionist, a conference room, a break room with coffee pots and even a water cooler! I realize that I may sound as though I'm being sarcastic (or totally insane), but it's really a novel experience, and granted, it's only my first real day there so tomorrow I may start hanging Dilbert cartoons on the walls of my cubicle and hiding in the basement so I don't get fired. But it's different, and different, right now, is kind of nice.

Here's a view of the office - I'm in one of the cubes on the right.


That's the receptionist, and the conference room in the back.




That's the view from the men's room's window. See? Told you it was nice.