Notes...Just past Ground Hog Day 2012 edition

This is actually a mosque we passed on the road coming home from Srimangal.  See the previous post for the story.

February 3; Groundhog Day +1.  Groundhog Day is my parents' wedding anniversary--if Dad were still alive, it would have been #61.  Yesterday was also the 80th birthday of Dwyatt Gantt, the co-founder and director of Children's Hope International, the adoption agency that helped us get Abby and Millie.  We met Dwyatt and and the other co-founder, Melody Zhang Lee, in Nanjing, February 25, 1993, the day before we got Abby.


Here in Bangladesh, if we had groundhogs, one of them would have seen his shadow, probably through a cloud of mosquitos.  I think this means six more weeks of dust.

Another week has passed in sunny Dhaka, with a few new wrinkles to report.  Gail got to see a couple theater productions, Millie (and us) are busy with a band festival, and I have successfully resumed an exercise routine.

One of the theater productions Gail saw was a London troop's performance of Romeo and Juliet at the other international school in town, The International School of Dhaka.  It was a bilingual hybrid of the forbidden love story found in many cultures; both Gail and Jen, the ISD drama teacher, were real impressed.  The other one was a couple guys who travel around Asia doing theater.  They came to AISD and taught in both the middle and high school drama classes, and gave a local performance as well.  They were not as impressive, but it can't all be Shakespeare.  And audience behavior in a theater performance is a public skill still being learned here in Dhaka, I am told.

The American International School Dhaka is currently hosting a band festival--a conference event attended by three other schools: the American School of Bombay, the American School of Chennai, and the American International School of Muscat (Oman).  The conference is larger, but the Lincoln School in Kathmandu, the Overseas School of Colombo, and the Pakistani schools did not send bands.  The kids that were here performed solos and ensemble pieces and a combined jazz band played three numbers in a concert last night.  Millie played drums with the jazz band for "Georgia on My Mind".  The combined symphonic band performs tonight, and everyone goes home tomorrow.

We have been hosting the HS principal from Muscat.  (AISD families take in visiting students and coaches for these events--we had soccer players from Bombay in December.)  From what Mr. File has told us about Muscat, it is a great place to live, except for the summer heat.  There are beaches and mountains as well as the desert, all accessible and available to foreigners, and within easy driving distance. Driving or biking is also much easier than here on the sub-continent. And this year there was snow on the 12,000 ft. mountains near the city.

The pain in my knees has subsided, and the school's community education program has started up, so I am going to three exercise classes per week.  Water aerobics is taught by a 3rd grade, rather than a 4th grade, teacher as previously reported.  She is a youngster in her 50s and pushes me and the others around for an hour in the AISD heated pool (one of two in Bangladesh).  Her co-coach is our art teacher, who is closer to my age.

I am the only guy in the class, which is also true of the "total body workout" class.  Both are pretty much low-impact on my knees, but the latter is pretty strenuous.  The "workout" class is taught by a 100 lb Asian lady who is always smiling and never speaks, except to count off the reps.  Our next door neighbor, a lady from the Phillipines, is also in the class.

Gail and I are taking a really low impact yoga class on Fridays.  Yesterday we exercised our face muscles and tongues and then relaxed.  It would be pretty easy except for sitting cross-legged on the floor for an hour.

Gail is taking French cooking which, she tells me, also requires athletic shoes as well as a good knife and an apron.  Last week she learned the correct procedure for cutting up a chicken.  Since neither of us have had to actually cook anything beyond lighting charcoal and making coffee since we got here, I am not sure when or where she will employ this skill.  She did learn how to make "coq au vin", which means we will never discard wine again.

Next week we'll let you know how we celebrated Millie's "Gotchya Day" (February 5, 1996).