After three weeks in this city, I was all ready to categorize DC summer weather as follows: hot-and-sticky, hotter-and-sticky, hotter-and-stickier, and so-sticky-I'm-not-sure-how-hot-it-is,-but-it's-pretty-hot. Know how it feels when you take a shower and forget to put the fan on? That's DC pretty much all summer, regardless of the outside temperature. You step outside, you drip. Pretty much a done deal.

But no! I left the house this morning to find it dry(ish) - and 64 degrees! Fahrenheit! It's not quite my New-England-girl-preferred temp of "cold enough for your boots to squeak" (around 20°F) but hey, it's a start.

Lest I think DC and I were going to suddenly drop all hostilities and make friends, recent events have conspired so that I can no longer access the internet from my house. (Technically, this has less to do with DC as a city and more to do with our Comcast account having expired, but it's fun to place blame on amorphous urban poltergeists.) So while I'd love to upload pictures of my neighborhood or my snazzy lime-green walls... you'll have to wait until the end of the week for those.

And in the meantime, there's work! So much work to be done. Half of my office is currently either on vacation or attending conferences in Ghana or Kenya or Burundi, so my life as a working-girl is never over.

Enjoy your week!

This past Monday's New York Times magazine did an in-depth feature article on how women will play a key role in international development, with some interesting recommendations for foreign aid programs based on their findings. It also contains more information about microfinance and its links to women - many of MFO's programs are in fact targeted at women, for many of the reasons the article brings up.

The feature was adapted from the forthcoming book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which I'm looking forward to. You can read the article in its entirety on the NY Times site here, and I would definitely suggest you take a look.

Today was the one-week anniversary of my first day of work (whee!), so I thought I'd post a few more details about the job itself. Is it any coincidence that this is organized in bullet form? Nah, I make bullet-point lists like it's... well, my job. Which it is.

• Job title: Project Assistant, Financial Education


• Organization: Microfinance Opportunities
  


• What exactly is "microfinance"?: Microfinance, broadly speaking, is the creation of financial solutions for the developing world, with the goal of empowering people to lift themselves out of poverty.

• So what does MFO do?: We are a "microfinance resource center" - we are involved in financial education, market research, and some work with microinsurance (which is insurance against a very specific risk - for example, crop failure - that is affordable for someone at the poverty level). I work for the financial education team - the people who develop, market, and disseminate our financial education curriculum. The curriculum is targeted at people at or around the poverty line, and we train hundreds of people around the world to teach it every year. (For more information, click here.)


• What does your job entail?: A whole mix of things. I'm responsible for some administrative tasks like answering the phones, handling curriculum sales and requests for information, ordering supplies, keeping our databases current, etc. I make lists every day because the range of things I'm responsible for at any given moment is so vast. I also do a lot of logistical work - organizing training conferences overseas, booking travel, shipping things to faraway places... I made a phone call to Kenya last week. I also do just about anything else our two training officers and the rest of the MFO team need me to do - proofreading documents, taking inventory, coming up with ideas for keeping things in order... just about anything that needs doing.
  


• What does it feel like to place a phone call to Kenya?: Sadly, it feels exactly like calling someone in Kentucky. Or someone in DC who lives on Kentucky Avenue. I was kind of hoping to hear the Indiana Jones theme playing in the background, but alas.
  


• What's your favorite part of the job thus far?: It has to be the people I work with - we're a very small organization and everyone I've met so far is smart, passionate, funny, and genuinely a pleasure to be around. Much like when I interned with the State department, pretty much everyone at MFO has traveled and lived abroad, often extensively, so there are a lot of cool stories, funky jewelry, and respect/admiration for other cultures and ways of life.
  
  And they pay me! It doesn't get much better than that.

This morning I went for a run around the US Capitol building, and felt compelled to stop and say "Good Morning, America!" as I passed the National Mall. The sheer wonder-filled absurdity of this city just can't be captured in words, and I promise many pictures to come. But for now, I leave you to help one of my roommates put his IKEA furniture together. He's not Swedish, see, and we Swedes have this traditional ritual called Assembling Pieces of Particleboard With Allen Wrenches. And I would be a very poor Swede indeed if I didn't pass on the secrets of our craft.

And so it happens that I have a home in DC.

Brita and I drove down today (eight and half hours with one stop, at one point averaging 28 mpg, no traffic except for accident slowdown about 60 miles north of Baltimore) and found parking on my street, found our parking pass in the kitchen, moved my things to an empty bedroom (which is not mine, but we'll switch things around soon) and I am here.

I have a job at a nonprofit called Microfinance Opportunities (microfinanceopportunities.org) which is mostly administrative, but it should be interesting nonetheless. I have a metro pass. I have full bookshelves, a camera, and infinite curiosity.

Feels like a very good beginning.