It's been a hard day's night...

This past week was a bit of a rough one with spells of joy intermingled.

My computer died again so I reinstalled windows on it. I then found out that I have lost Microsoft Office in the process. The computer now works better than it ever did but is still messed up in some ways. It doesn't do some things automatically like it used to (like switching to headphones when you plug them in) but I've figured out ways around such problems.

We had a visitor this past weekend. He was from MCC Nepal. The organization he is seconded to does similar things to what we do and it was great talking to him about that as well as just having someone new to talk to about life abroad.

Did I mention yet that this past week was pretty much the hottest and most humid week I've had in Bangladesh? Bangladesh just changed to daylight savings time last weekend as well. The time change has many people really confused. They call it, "the new government time." It was meant as an effort to conserve energy by having people go to work in cooler times of the day. I've heard that the Universities are all ignoring it and staying with the previous times. It seems to have had little affect on much except my sleep. Our business hours have not changed and my worst fears were realized in this transition. Bengali people don't normally go to bed until 11 or so normally and before the time change, the power would often go off from 8-9 or 9-10. I almost always go to bed at 10 because I like getting up early. Well because the power still goes out the usual times it is now going out at 9-10 or 10-11. Not only is it hotter when I'm trying to go to bed but several times the fans have gone out and I've been left sweating instead of sleeping. This meant that I was tired all week long. I couldn't think straight all week long and didn't manage to get much work done.

At the end of the week we all went to Dhaka. I watched about 30 episodes of the TV shows Chuck and The Office. I helped out with some interviews on while I was there on the weekend which was interesting. We also went to my new favorite place in Bangladesh. Today is one of my co-worker's birthday and she decided that we should celebrate it all weekend long. So we went bowling Friday night. It wasn't bowling that made me excited though. (I actually messed up my hand pretty bad doing bowling and was quite annoyed that the lanes weren't oiled because I can't bowl straight anymore since I learned how to spin the ball) They had a Dance Dance Revolution machine at the bowling alley! I fell in love with the game my senior year of college and once I got my rhythm back I was doing pretty decent at this one. At 45 cents a play for two people I think it's a pretty good deal and envision myself taking future trips to play when I'm in Dhaka.

I also got a chance to talk to some friends and family via phone in the past week. That's always a good time. At the start of this next week, it has finally rained and brought cool air with it. I hope it makes life a lot more enjoyable.