Since schools are out of session and a lot of the office has been away on vacation, today was the first day that we actually had a scheduled work event. At 2 pm we had a development session (DS) for our coaches. DSs are the weekly meeting between our coaches (the people who deliver our curriculum to the kids) and their program managers to make sure that the coaches are keeping their facilitation skills sharp between the annual trainings that we hold for them. We were running errands in town before the meeting and decided to stop in at a coffee shop and grab a quick coffee before heading to the DS. We sit down, order our coffees, and enjoy the MTV jams music videos playing on all the TVs in the café. (MTV jams is always playing at any establishment that has a TV here. Dear diary, Jackpot.) About 10 minutes later our waiter returns to tell us that the power has gone out in the half of the café that has the coffee machine so he has to go make us coffee at the restaurant next door. He assured us, “don’t worry. This happens all the time, it should only take about 5 minutes.” Thankfully the MTV jams still had a power source because we were about to be waiting for a while. 40 minutes later we finally get our coffee and headed out to the DS – about 15 minutes late already. We arrive about 30 minutes late to 30 coach DS with only 5 coaches there, who had arrived just about the same time that we did. We waited for about 30 more minutes for the rest of the coaches to show up before starting.
This is one example of about 5 different instances of this type of thing that I have already experienced so far in my 3 days here. In a country where the word “milo” means both yesterday and tomorrow, you can’t expect that they hold timeliness in too high a regard. The world moves a bit slower here. People don’t feel pressured to do anything in any specified amount of time. Things just happen when they happen. This coming from a Californian, that’s really saying something. I think I could get used to this.
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