It's HOT!!!!!!

Just a quick update from this part of the world...our camera has broken, unfortunately, so there will be a bit of a break in sending pictures until I can get it fixed. Anyway, the summer semester has started, so Azfar and I are back into the swing of classes. I'm teaching research writing and "business and professional speaking." I'm not exactly thrilled about teaching such a business-oriented course, but I'm trying to move beyond the traditional parameters of such a class and encourage students to think critically about how education has been increasingly turned into a business. It's particularly clear in the private universities in Bangladesh that education is a business--it's all about how fast you can get your degree so you can go out and make alot of money. So much for the concept of critical education. (Sigh.) Anyway, Azfar is teaching creative writing, a course called "the Experience of literature," and a graduate seminar on contemporary literary theory. He is also still writing every week for the New Age newspaper. You can read one of his recent articles at this link: http://www.newagebd.com/2007/apr/27/liti.html. Other than that, the other exciting news is that we recently joined the American Club, which is quite close to our house (we can just take a 10-minute rickshaw ride to get there). The most exciting aspect of this is that the club has A POOL, which is a relief to have in this sweltering heat. So Salma and I frequent the club quite often to cool down. As the weather has been heating up, the electricity is getting cut more and more often. It's basically an inverse proportion: if the weather is cool, we don't get the electricity cut. And when it's hot, the electricity gets cut all the time--at least 3 or 4 times a day. So that's really frustrating, not only because it's HOT, but it's also hard to get anything done on the computer, etc. Anyway, enough griping. Generally, we're all doing fine. Salma will be two years old in a couple of months, which I can't believe! We just celebrated Jasra's (her cousin) second birthday the other day, which was alot of fun. More soon...