Notes of October 2011

November 2, 2011

The Cards won the series, the AIS Dhaka Halloween party was a big success, Millie’s basketball career in Bangladesh has begun, and the monsoon here on the Delta may finally have come to end. 

We are fine for the most part, although Gail has been experiencing some asthma problems.  Her first AIS Dhaka play, See How They Run, is in rehearsal daily and the theater is pretty dusty.  She has seen the local English doctor and has medications.  She seems to be getting better. 

October began with our Fall Break week.  We took advantage of the 9 days off to go to Thailand.  Millie found an electronic drum set and successfully lobbied us into buying it for her.  We then carried all 75 pounds of pads, controls, pipes and kick pads from Bangkok to Phuket and then back to Bangkok and Bangladesh.   We had a nice beach hotel in Phuket but only rainy days, so we didn’t do much but lay around. 

We were back for a week before I went to Hong Kong for an IB conference.  We had perfect weather for a perfectly boring three-day conference.  Next time I’ll play hooky and sight see. 

The school Halloween party is a real monster—days of preparation for a two hours kids’ party that draws about a thousand people.  I did the dunking tank in Gail’s place.   Costume parties here are “the way of our people” (as Samoans would say).  Parents were all dressed up, as were the teachers.  The night before, some of the teachers had an “80’s” theme party—everybody dressed for that, too. 

There is not much to do here, so dressing up for parties is a big deal.  While I was in HK, Gail went to the school’s Glitter Ball.  Groups sat together as tables in a hotel ballroom and came dressed in goofy themes—hers was Master Chef Dhaka.  Once again, an inordinate amount of planning and forethought goes into such events.  Each table group keeps their theme a secret and some have performances. 

We hosted a non-dress-up party for Gail’s birthday: a happy hour catered in part by the American Club.  We had about 70 people here at its peak.  Gail had made pitchers of lemon-drop and cosmopolitan martinis, so almost everyone had a good time.   The real key ingredient to these things is the presence of excellent domestic assistance.  Our cook stayed for the whole time and cleaned up afterword.  Such events in STL used to take us the weekend to recover.  Woodstock was a little better, but our cook there didn’t like to clean up anything. 

Millie had her first BB games Saturday—a one day tournament in which they played three games in about five hours.  They won only one, but played harder each time.  Millie has made the traveling team and will go to Bombay the first weekend in December. 

Now that the weather is better, I was able to get my new bike put together.  One of the other new teachers brought the tools and even a stand to do this.  Of course, I couldn’t go over to Nick’s house for this until we—Millie and me—had won game 6.  Really, who would have expected this from the Cards?  To come from this far back, to get in on the last day, beat the best team in baseball in their own park, then the best home team in theirs, then win two in a row against a team that hadn’t lost two in row in three months.  Millie told me to stay home and watch game 7 before I came to her BB tournament so that I could text her updates.  We are ready to order our WS hats and shirts. 

Abby is doing well at Truman State and was the first freshman to have a recital.  We saw her friend’s video of it on Facebook—not much sound quality and, of course, the microphone pole was directly in front of her.  She said they make professional recordings of these things, so we expect to get a good copy when she meets us in Bangkok in December.  We hope to travel with her through Vietnam and Cambodia during our three weeks at Christmas, but we don’t have solid plans yet. 

That’s about all our news right now.  I’ll try to get back in the habit of weekly reports. And we have a long Eid weekend, so maybe I'll get some pictures up on Facebook.