One Year Later

One year ago, we had already started making preparations for our "big trip".  We spent the weekend in and around Sacramento (after a quick trip to the ER to remove popcorn kernels from B's ears).  It's strange that while that trip seems so familiar to me and I can recall many of the things we did, it was also a long, long time ago.  So many new things have happened!  We've been here in Dhaka for nine months now.  Sadly, I've had relatively few opportunities to travel even though we'd hoped to be able to travel together.  We're all very happy that B is in school now, but given his issues getting adjusted to that new schedule, we've been loathe to pull him out.  So, Josh has traveled alone most of the time.  I look back and I'm a bit jealous of our ability to just make hotel reservations and take off for the weekend.  With Josh's school, this is often totally impossible between social events, after-hours work, and "field trips".  So my primary job is keeping the kids on a schedule.

I've successfully completed my first semester of grad school and I'm happy to report that while my grades aren't officially posted, I'm pretty sure I got an A in both classes.  I've registered for my next set of classes and I only hope we're here in Dhaka through the end of the next semester so I can continue to focus on that instead of trying to squeeze class into the middle of an international move.

We celebrated K's third birthday on Friday - she's is such a big girl!  Josh took her out to pick out a cake and she was so excited about it that rather than waiting until lunch, we had cake in the middle of the morning followed by presents.  That evening, Josh and I attended the 237th birthday day of the United States Marine Corps.  At embassies, this is often one of the largest social functions of the year, and if our experience was any indication, I can see why.  If you've been to a few military balls before, I'm sure you remember the format:  mediocre dinner, so-so guest speaker, 5 minutes of grown-up dancing followed by...  Well, to spare my albeit limited audience, I'll just say we usually leave to avoid the embarrassing "dancing" of the younger crowd.  Anyway, this is clearly a different sort of group here.  I'm not sure I can really guess the average age of the people at our event, but we were definitely not the oldest or youngest.  And the dance floor was beyond crowded late into the evening.  I even got Josh to dance!  So add some free alcohol into the equation and you have a recipe for success.  Too bad Josh had to get up early the next morning to go on an all-day boat cruise for school.  

And today, Veterans Day, B is at school, K is on a playdate, Josh is at school, and I'm enjoying the Masterchef Australia/How I Met Your Mother marathon and thinking about all of my friends, past and present, who have served this fine country in any capacity.  

Have I got a deal for you!

After two repairs, it appears the motherboard on our two year old laptop is completely shot.  Maybe it's just me, but I really think they should last longer than that...  We thought we were still going to be okay and just have our local trusty repair shop take care of replacing the motherboard, but when I called to get an estimate of when they thought it would be ready, they said it would take 6 weeks to get the new motherboard in.  6 WEEKS! 

Since I'm taking online classes and we have our country brief to Josh's classmates coming up, it wasn't terribly realistic to think we could go that long without the laptop working.  And so, I made several trips to the ATM to withdraw enough cash to go purchase a new laptop.

My early inquiries about prices were met with the standard party line of a randomly high price (less than the price tag, but still high) followed by several lower offers.  But since each store in the mall sells the same products, they know they're competing against eachother essentially and whoever is willing to quote the lowest price gets the sale. 

Funny thing about laptops here in Bangladesh.  They don't come with software.  Like any software.  We're talking no operating system here.  So while I could purchase a fairly decent computer, if I wanted to actually use it, I was told to purchase pirated software (pirated Windows 7 and Microsoft Office were available for a small fee).  Do I have anything against using pirated software?  No.  Not really.  But we went through all that when we built computers while living in Korea where pirated software is also very common.  It worked fine for a while, and then we started getting all kids of messages from Microsoft about how they "thought" we "might" be using an unofficial copy and eventually it stopped working altogether.  If we just stayed in Korea, it probably wouldn't have been a problem.  We just would have stopped by our local computer software store and picked up a new copy of the pirated software and all would have been fine.  But since we eventually had to return to the states, we decided it would just be easier in the long run to purchase a real copy of an operating system (at the time, Windows XP) and be done with it.  Considering that same computer (built 8 years ago) is still my backup computer and sitting upstairs in my office right now, I consider it a good investment. 

Regardless, no one seemed to understand why I would object to having a pirated copy of software.  It's apparently just the way it's done here.  They sell you essentially a blank computer, and you load whatever you want.  And strangely, it you go to the Toshiba-Asia website, they even show that each model of computer can be purchased without software if you so desire.  I was starting to be concerned that buying a new laptop would not actually solve any of our problems.

But then, I remembered that I was still carrying around the hard drive from my old computer (which worked just fine) because I needed to pick up my computer from the repair shop as we were not getting it fixed.  Once I produced this hard drive that had an authentic copy of Windows 7 on it, there was much excited discussion after which they told me that "of course" they could just copy the operating system from my old hard drive and put it on my new one.

So, then the guy from the store walked me downstairs to another store (this one appeared to actually be a Toshiba outlet of some sort) and left me there telling me to call him when I was ready to go.  The Toshiba people loaded the drivers I needed onto the laptop, but essentially just left my old hard drive in my new laptop rather than copying anything.  I guess it's a long and involved process (kind of like buying a computer?) and as I'd already been wandering around the computer mall for over 2 hours, I was ready to just let it go.  He told me to come back another day if I wanted them to transfer everything to the new hard drive and then the new laptop would be much faster since my old hard drive is over half full.

As business over here is all about relationships, I have no doubt that I could walk in some time next week and they would remember me and know why I was there.  So, after 3 hours, I left the computer market with a brand new laptop with my old hard drive and the promise of maybe having something more.  At least we have what we need to make it through the next few weeks.

If I was in the US, I could have a better laptop fully loaded with software (and an operating system...) for less than I paid, but considering where I live, and considering that USPS still has their lithium battery shipping issue, I'll be happy enough with our outcome.

A Schedule Emerges

Now that school has been in full swing for over a month, we have developed a definite pattern to our life - in a good way.  B has made some friends and enjoys a fairly active social life.  K has been out with Suchona quite a bit recently delving into the ayah-run play group world.  I've gotten out a bit myself and find that I now have people I can hang out with as well.  It's only taken... well... 7 1/2 months.  Every place I go, I learn something new.  Here, I have learned that I just need to jump in and get involved.  It's funny, because I thought I learned that lesson when we lived in California, but apparently it didn't stick and I needed to learn it all over again here.

But all of this is good.  I'm feeling very happy with our lifestyle here.  My classes are going relatively well - halfway through the semester already and only 4 more big homework projects to go.  Josh has been super-busy since his return from India.  We haven't really seen all that much of him at all.  Many nights, he makes it home just in time to go to sleep and then heads back to school first thing in the morning.  The current exercise will end soon though (this week!) and then I think he'll actually be on a normal schedule for a whole week :)  It would be really nice if he didn't actually have to work this weekend, but we'll see.

I purchased tickets for the upcoming Marine Corps Ball yesterday, and I have to admit to being really excited to get all dressed up (western style) for a fun evening.  Josh will actually get a chance to wear his mess dress for the first time (making the cost per wear still fairly high...) and I've got a dress on its way from eBay as we speak.  Online shopping really takes on a whole new life over here.  Everything has to be planned out weeks in advance to deal with shipping delays.  I've already started our Christmas shopping just because I know it will take forever for the packages to get here, and I need to have time to figure out what I've got and what I still need to get.  Good thing Josh and I have generally favored a "less is more" approach for Christmas so the kids won't be expecting to find a room full of presents...

Well, that's about it from here.  The protests have almost completely died down (thankfully) and the weather is really starting to be beautiful outside.  It's funny because we spent over a year in Monterey - which is admittedly a beautiful place - and got used to cloudy, cool weather year round.  Now, here we are wearing pants in 90 degree heat every day.  But there's really something beautiful about this place.  And can I even begin to mention how nice it is to live near the Equator and not have to worry about daylights savings time???  It's so refreshing that when I get out of bed, the sun is up.  Year round.  I could absolutely get used to that.

Clear and Present Danger

A great movie.  A really great movie.  However, not what I'm referring to currently.

"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that the United States Congress has a right to prevent.  It is a question of proximity and degree.  When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."
                                                                                                                               --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

As I'm sitting here watching news reports of the embassies in various countries being stormed, I can't help but contemplate our rights and freedoms.

Please keep all of the affected families in your thoughts and prayers.

Don't you hate it when...

You just have no time?  No time for anything.  B has officially started kindergarten (more on that later), and with Suchona - my helper - here to take care of everything in the house and watch K, you'd think I'd be bored out of my mind.  And strangely, I find myself swamped.  Literally - and yes, rainy season is drawing to a close - thanks for asking :)

With B starting school, I decided it was high time I make use of my Post 9-11 GI Bill and go back to school.  My options are a bit limited by the reality of my life - have you noticed that we move a lot?  So, I decided to do the easiest thing and go for an all-online program.  Since I didn't make the decision to at least get one semester under my belt (hopefully two) before we move again, I had only about a week or two to find a program, register for classes, apply for my GI Bill benefits, and order books so they would be here before classes got underway.  In the end I decided on UMUC.  Not to knock their program, but it was simply the most convenient.  Plenty of programs to choose from, all programs are completely online (no random seminar that must be attended in residence), and best of all, no entry requirements other than an undergraduate degree.  This last one was key since being overseas limits me even more than usual in my ability to take any of these tests.

I have been fairly pleased by my ability to keep up with coursework while not being totally absent from my real life, but having Josh out of town for the past 2 weeks has also helped.  It's given me the opportunity to totally devote myself to classwork every night after the kids go to bed.  Hopefully it won't always be like this (since my husband might eventually notice that I'm not around), but it's been helpful to get me back into the school routine.  Um, and as a side note, I totally hate being back in the school routine.  I think I must be getting too old for this.  Or maybe it's just my impatience with people taking graduate level classes who can't (or can't be bothered to) use proper grammar when posting on the classroom conferences.  <sigh>  For those curious, the program I chose is a Masters of Management with a focus in Emergency Management.  I'm still not exactly sure what I'll do with that, but it seemed like a good combination of my human bio undergrad degree and my logistics work experience.

As I mentioned, B has started school now.  There's a part of me that's super-glad he's finally out of the house - and I'm totally guilt-free about feeling that way.  He's getting too old to be entertained sitting around.  He needs the social interaction with other kids his age, and I just can't give that to him at home - especially not here.  So we had a great start, a minor setback, and now we seem to be back on track.  After being really excited and (strangely for him) eager to go to school and try something new, B suddenly developed a fear of school.  I got a letter from his teacher (naturally while Josh was gone) that he had not even entered the classroom to attend class for several days.  Instead, he was choosing to sit outside his classroom in the hallway.  Several days, he ended up sitting in the office reading books rather than going to class.  Sadly, this was much more the behavior I was expecting when B went off to school the first time.  He is generally very reluctant to try anything new, and definitely does not care for new or unexpected social situations.  So after a brief meeting with the school counselor (who advised putting B on a half-day schedule until he could figure out how to assimilate) and his teacher (who felt this was just a phase and B was going to work through it naturally), we decided to do nothing and wait to see what happened.  Well, I'm happy to report that B was apparently afraid of one of the kids in his class - for a reason that no one really knows - and after they painted together the other day, B has been a totally different kid.  He's happy and has lots to talk about when he comes home now (instead of looking like he's seriously going to break down sobbing during his every waking hour - you think I'm exaggerating - I'm not).

So many things are really working out well for us.  K is thriving with more one-on-one attention, B is now back to thriving at school, I am enjoying (reluctantly) having something intellectual to do again with my time, and Josh...  Well, he's happy for all of us :)  And he's been gallivanting around India for the last 2 weeks, so even if he's not super happy, my sympathy level is very low.

But, as I mentioned before, I feel swamped.  I've been getting involved more with social activities and there are lots of new families with kids that have arrived recently.  It has made life here a bit more enjoyable, but busy as well.

A good sort of busy.  Naturally, we're on the downhill slide although we still have no idea where we're going, or when, or for how long.  I have to share something from another wife posted a few days ago.  The unwritten beatitude - Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not break.

With the end of Ramadan...

... comes the return to a busy social calendar.  While we got off to a bit of a slow start on the social scene here, things with Josh's school have picked up steadily in the months since.  All things considered, Ramadan - while an important religious observance for the local populace - was a welcome break from evening activities.  It was a great time for us to spend time together as a family in the evenings.

While we had the opportunity to share iftar (the fast-breaking meal) with some of our friends on three occasions, this meal happens relatively early in the evening (somewhere between our normal dinner time and their normal dinner time) and is guaranteed to end in a timely manner since everyone heads to the local mosque to be there in time for 8:30 prayer.  So this was a great opportunity for us to get our kids out at dinner-time which we usually avoid because it can lead to very long evenings (and let's face it, kiddo behavior definitely does not improve after bedtime).

This is Josh's first full week back to class after the Eid break - the official end to Ramadan - and here's how yesterday went.  First thing in the morning, I got an SMS (that's text msg for you non-locals) from Josh letting me know that his classmates were scheduling a syndicate dinner either for that night or the next (tonight).  So, we opted for tonight.  Oh, by the way, we also have an AMARDESH country presentation this evening at Mirpur, and I was scheduled to have a rehearsal for my "being a US Army wife" presentation this afternoon.  So, I would leave the house around 1:30 and not return until sometime around 10:00 tonight - assuming of course that we could convince the syndicate to have an "early" dinner.  Then, tomorrow night, I have the actual presentation of my briefing with the Ladies Club at Mirpur - did I mention that just yesterday they called me and asked that I increase the length of my presentation from 15 to 30 minutes?? - so Josh will be home with the kids.  Wednesday night we have off - for now - and then Thursday, we have been invited to dinner with another foreign officer and his family (with kids).  There's a big part of me that really enjoys spending all of this time "experiencing" things locally, but it's obviously a huge change from life at DLI where a "big week" might entail a mom's night out for me - one night.  My social interaction there was generally during the day with other moms and wives.

I think it's easy for me to see that military culture here - with what I'll casually refer to as "mandatory fun" events - is a bit different from back home.  There's a large emphasis on wives being actively involved on a weekly basis - in fact, no event is considered "optional". If wive's choose not to participate, it can have a negative impact on their husband's chances for a successful career.  I can only imagine the drama it might cause state-side if a unit "required" spouses to participate in some sort of after hours event.  It wouldn't matter if spouses were available to attend or not, there would be some who would immediately choose not to attend just because "the Army can't make them do anything" and another group (I'll lump myself in here) who would ask what childcare arrangements had been made by the unit.  Not so here.  And yet there's a part of me that wishes more spouses and families would participate in Army events stateside because there's such great diversity out there, and lots of great opportunities to meet new people, but it seems like the same people attend all of the events.  Being a former FRG leader, I think there's a big part of me that wants to participate in things just because I know you put the same amount of work into setting up an event for 5 people as you do for 35, and I want people to know their efforts are appreciated.  I feel that our family social events might actually be better if we could convince more people to participate.  Less spouses and families would feel like "they don't know anyone".  I know, I know.  Two sides to every coin.  But I think it's important to acknowledge the good with the bad and always be open to see how just because things are different, they're not necessarily better or worse.

Oh, by the way, last night at 11:00, Josh got a text message rescheduling my rehearsal for my presentation.  Now we're meeting after AMARDESH and then still (maybe) going to dinner with the syndicate.  Because I don't need any advance notice to completely change my childcare arrangements, right?  Here, not really.  This would totally not fly in my real life, though ;)

Mysteries Solved

So I've had two totally unrelated things bugging me for a while now.  First, just about every day, at least once a day, I eat something that has a perfumey taste to it.  It's not overwhelming, but it's enough to make me feel a bit strange.  I know when we looked at packing up our consumables, we were warned over and over again not to put laundry detergent, dry sheets, or soap/cleaning products in with our food items as it would make everything smell and taste a bit soapy.  So we absolutely followed this advice.  I was starting to wonder if perhaps the items we bought at the commissary were all shipped in a single large container (with soaps not split up) or something along those lines.  I thought maybe the chemical preservatives in some of the foods we have didn't react well when exposed to heat for prolonged periods.  Regardless of the reason, I had essentially given up on finding an explanation.

Until last night.  Last night, I happened to be packing B's lunch for his first day of school, and as I pulled the sandwich baggies out of the box, I caught a whiff of the smell.  So, this whole time, it hasn't been the food, it's been the bags.  Josh was less than impressed with my revelation - truth be told, he claims there IS no smell.  But I smell it, and when I eat things that are stored in the bags, I taste it.  Garlic bread with just a hint of Bounce dryer sheet.  So, note to self, when packing the consumables, not only do I need to keep the food items away from the soap items, but everything that might even come in contact with my food needs to be away from the soap.  Lesson learned for next time.

Second mystery involved strange stains that were appearing on our walls.  Dark brown/black stains kept appearing at totally random intervals on our walls in places where we knew the kids could not reach.  I'm not actually sure if we have the real explanation on this, but it's just gross enough and plausible enough to be true.  Remember how I mentioned we have geckos that roam our house?  Yeah.  You see where I'm going with this, right?  So apparently they are being extremely well fed by all the bugs we have hanging around and when you've gotta go, you've gotta go.  Nice.  Please pass the rubber gloves...