Balled Out

My life has been taken over by volleyball. Saturday at 7am, I'm crawling out of bed to give an opening speech at the girls tournament. Monday night at 2am, I'm waking up worrying if my additional 270 balls will arrive on time. Wednesday night at 5am, I'm panicking if it'll rain on Saturday afternoon and the whole thing would have to be scrapped!

Most people don't understand how much preparation goes behind organizing an event this size. I've got 16 villages and 8 schools participating in this 10-day tournament that is sponsored by USAID, Nike and APL, a shipping company. That's 24 teams of 12 players each. The finals will be on this Saturday and the event will be attended by an US Congressman who's decided to drag out his entire family (wife + 3 kids) to Aceh for a 3-day visit as well as the Governor of Aceh Province and a bunch of local officials. I've had to work with Nike on getting their products shipped here (they were suppose to send out 12 balls PER participating team = 288, instead they shipped out 18!), work with the shipping company on getting their money transferred to our village that's hosting the tournament, coming up with a budget that is all encompassing, work with my procurement and accounting staff to make sure that village is spending every dime properly, take care press releases, go on-site to make sure the banners are hung up correctly, make sure the village will prepare enough food for 400 people for the BBQ that's following the awards...OK, my head is beginning to spin just writing this. So I think I better stop.

I plan on getting very drunk on Saturday night. Either celebrating the success of the tournament or the fiasco it might turn out to be.