Sylvia's Journal

It is hard to get used again to (a) the early commute, (b) the darkness and (c) the cold. But it is nice to be back in the office. This is the good thing of traveling that much: one can enjoy/appreciate people and things anew after each trip – nothing/no one to be taken for granted.

I managed to get through my first day back in the office without even one yawn, as if I had not travelled across 11 time zones. Apparently the 10 hours of sleep on my first night home got me back in the Cambridge groove and helped me hit the ground running. That was a good thing as most of the day was spoken for: a four hour training, designed on a napkin on my tray table between Dhaka and Dubai, of a new batch of program officers, one other meeting and suddenly it was 4 o’clock and time to go home.

I crossed paths with Axel, somewhere along route 128 or 1; he on his way to his Wednesday night class and me going home via the hairdresser. Since he has another class tonight we won’t see each other until Friday morning, if he gets up before I leave for the dentist. If not he will see me, all new and sparkly, with my hair cut and shiny white teeth, on Friday at the end of the morning; a very different appearance from the dazed traveller he picked up at the airport on Tuesday .

At work I handed in my passport for extra pages. After three years of citizenship it is full – this includes the extra pages that had already been added a little over a year ago. I have requested a second passport. According to the official passport website, second passports may be requested by frequent travelers like me. This should reduce both the stress and the cost of obtaining last minute visas like the one for Bangladesh.

My travel schedule for the spring of 2009 is beginning to emerge after several false starts (Ghana, yes then no; Nigeria, yes then no, Pakistan, maybe…). Now it looks like I will be going to Cambodia which is a country I have not yet visited in my 22 years at MSH. I have always been an ‘Africa’ person (if such exists) and only lately been venturing out eastwards. I know very little about the far east and look forward to exploring that part of the world, with my brand new passport in hand.