My internship - or lack there of...

Our office

So firstly, you may have noticed that I'm trying hard not to use names or post pictures of people without their consent first ... I'm not really that self-centered on just the two of us ... but I want to give our friends the options of maintaining their privacy on the interwebs.
With that in mind, I'm not going to be explicit about the non-profit that decided to take me on ... yet.

So some of you know that I was planning on finding some "gainful" employment while staying in Lucknow with Allen - I wasn't after the big bucks, just something to get me out of the house. Doing an internship with a local NGO seemed a perfect fit. As a bonus I would be getting internship credit for my Masters degree - keeping me as a matriculated student and therefore still eligible for the university's health insurance. Win-win, right?

The long and the sort of it is that the NGO that I found (one that my school formally accepted as "technology based" enough to count for credit) .... hasn't actually opened its office yet. Hmmm... sort of makes it a little bit tricky to be an "intern" when you don't have working phone lines, the internet, or even desks for people to work at.

On the one hand, watching this organization come together - in an emerging market country, no less - has been a real eye opener to some of the normal bumps that come along with opening up a new business, along with some decidedly Indian challenges, like:
"So I can have either 1 phone line or 5 phone lines - nothing in between?"
"I called Vishal 4 times yesterday and each time he said he would come in a half hour... but he never showed"
"Don't you understand that if you add a surcharge after the discount you are not applying the 7% discount to the final price?"
"What do you mean the plug for the divise is not included?"
(Personal favorite): "What do you mean I have to pay extra for the tubing that drains the waste water from the air conditioner?"

On the other hand, I'm a bit at a loss for what exactly it is that I'm doing with this group because they haven't yet hired the specialist who I was told I would be working with (M&E - monitoring and evaluation).

Not the end of the world - opens up the possibility for more responsibility for me - but I'm a little concerned about what my Masters program will think of the work I've been doing ... or rather, have not really been doing.