Monsoon rain

Hi family and friends,

Thought I'd send a little longer update, since I haven't in a while. So here you go...sorry if I already talked to you and I'm repeating myself!

Salma's doing good! She's pulling herself up on furniture all the time now. I think she's gonna walk soon. And she's learning words like crazy--Bengali and English. Her new word today is "brishti" (rain). We're having a monsoon today, so I guess it made an impact on her! There's about 3 feet of water in the road right now. The road is literally a lake. It's quite entertaining watching the cars go by--they look like boats. And I feel sorry for the poor rickshaw drivers who are trying to peddle through this rain--they're completely soaked. It's supposed to keep raining for 3 days. Guess we'll have to hole up in our apartment till then. I'm not brave enough to venture out in the monsoon.

Well, we just had our first trip outside of Dhaka, finally. We went to the beach (Cox's Bazaar) for four days. It was so nice to get out of the city for a few days! And Salma loved the beach, especially getting totally dirty in the sand. We also saw two people get drowned in the ocean, though--they went out too far. Scary. We saw their bodies being brought to shore. So sad. And there are so many poor kids there (as there are everywhere), begging for food while we're playing on the beach. Feels a bit out of whack for us to be having our expensive holiday while people around us are starving. But we did have a fun time. I'll send some pictures when I get them uploaded on the internet.

Teaching is going well. I'm really enjoying it. We just finished our first semester about a week ago. I think students like me so far. I've had alot of fun with them, anyway, especially in the literature class. Next semester I teach American literature again, and public speaking and composition. We don't get much of a break between semesters--just a couple of weeks, so I'm just trying to catch my breath before plunging in again!

Azfar says hi. He is certainly is in the limelight here. TV interviews, newspaper articles, journal articles, political lectures, all kinds of stuff. I went to my first Bangladeshi political rally the other day--it was in protest of police killing of some organizers against a coal company that wanted to do open-coal mining and destroy the land of lots of poor people. Although at least 6 people were killed by the police, the people had a small victory in this battle! They managed to kick the coal company completely out of the country. It was pretty exciting to watch all this happen!

Anyway, I am trying to get some work done on my dissertation before the fall semester starts up next week...I'm plodding away, doing some reading now. I found a book called _Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day_, by Joan Bolker, which is helping me feel less panicked and a bit more organized about the whole thing. I've also gotten involved with a women's reading group here--a group of feminist activists. So I'm excited about where these conversations with the group will lead--not only for my dissertation, of course, but for working in solidarity with them.

Well I hope to talk to you soon! Love you all!

Love,

Missy