Greg and I went out to dins last night with my boss here and it was so funny b/c I come home and tell Greg all these funny work stories and stories about funny things she says, and then last night she said them all at dinner and Greg and I were both just trying so hard to not laugh too hard. my favorite things she says (and picture them in a funny dutch accent) are:

1) "oh thanks god" instead of thank god
2) "lookie lookie cookie cookie"
3) "oh, I am top!" to indicate being busy
4) "he is not so speedy"
5) "this is so handy dandy, don't you think so?"
6) "popie opie popie popie" for "the pope"

The funny part is her accent and the fact that she isn't trying to be funny by saying these things, she just thinks everyone who speaks English says things like "not so speedy".

Since I am working in the department that sends people abroad, I keep getting these bizarre assignments to try to call random people in different countries, but they always give me wrong phone numbers and don't quite tell me all the information I need. my first interesting call was calling this partner NGO in the Philippines to beg them to front my agency $1100 to pay for a plane ticket for a doctor (the Argentine guy who chain smokes reds who I went to lunch with and who invited me to visit him in Argentina) living in the Philippines to come interview for a surgeon position at my agency. the doctor had nothing to do with the partner NGO, so it was really redic to ask them to give him money on our behalf and to tell them that we needed $1100 by the next day. after that, he (dr) came to interview in Holland and they hired him to be a surgeon in Sri Lanka. they are trying to process his visa paperwork, but they had some questions about visa documents so I had to call a random guy in Sri Lanka to ask him these visa questions. These phone calls have been kind of annoying/painful to make and I was feeling like my agency was just sending me on a wild goose chase, if you will, until someone finally told me that it's really important that they get the visa as soon as possible, because basically there is ONE clinic in this city of 150,000 people in Sri Lanka and NO doctor right now. So basically people are waiting for this Argentine doctor to get his visa so that they can finally be seen for medical treatment.