One of our larger sponsors came over this week for a follow up meeting on a risk assessment they had done last year. The four foreign volunteers on site pulled an all-nighter writing a report and making a large power point presentation explaining work done in the year 2006 in response to this. This never happened during my last term, but there's been a turnover in English speaking staff. While all of those documents existed, they existed in Thai and they were all in the hands of about 16 different staff members on 5 different centres in the Chiang Rai province.

This last minute compliling of information wasn't our fault. And let's not even mention the fact that all four of us were pretty new to this kind of writing and the sponsor. And all four of us are under 25. It felt kindof like those college all nighters excepte it wasn't interrupted by banging my head on the desk for procrastinating so much. There wasn't any planning on my part that could have prevented that from happening. It just got to be worrisome when the sun started to rise, and I was past my second, third and fourth wind. I'd check over some of my sentences and they'd read like, "Preventative education is imporant for education prevention because it is a tool for preventing people from being educated." I'm glad there were three other people to read over my dada-esque treatise on NGOs in northern thailand.

I'm also glad that this responsibility of answering to sponsors and donors is being shared between four people. At least for now. We're learning from each other and I think it's refreshing that none of us are confined to that one position at all times.

Things got polished enough for the actual meeting, I think. We took turns typing up the minutes and I could feel myself falling asleep while typing words at the same time. I'd type every single detail that was going on because I was worried if I stopped typing I'd fall asleep and that would have looked more than just a little bad. And sleeping afterwards was sooo good. I rolled off the mat in my floor and passed out on the tile, once for 4 hours, then again for 7 hours, but it was after 42 hours of staying awake.

Unfortunately, I've been feeling braindead this entire week because of that one night. I've been moving pretty slowly. My reaction timing is all off. Someone once told me that sleep deprivation is possibly worse for you than crack. Crack, I bet, is a lot more fun than pretending to be well rested and alert while sitting in a conference room for 8 hours. I could never hold a job that required these sortof sleep patterns regularly.