Happy Lunar New Year!

Today, February 3, 2011, is the Lunar New Year in Vietnam, year of the rabbit, and China, year of the cat.

Happy New Year in Vietnamese

Ngoc and Tien-- I love their traditional dresses - I want to have one made when I go to Vietnam!!

Ngoc, Tien, Vinh, and Anh on the Vietnamese New Year!!

Lucky Money :) How cute is the money folded into a heart!! Lucky presents are given to enhance relationships and it can be bad luck to refuse a lucky present.

AUW Symposium

Here are a few pictures from the AUW symposium, "Imagining Another Future for Asia: Ideas and Pathways for Change" held in Dhaka January 19-22, 2011.

There were beautiful posters of our students and inspirational quotes all around the venue!

 Ngoc, one of my Vietnamese students from white group (my 2nd class last semester), and I at the conference.

 

Tien, one of my Vietnamese students from orange group (my 1st group of students last semester), and I at the conference. 

 Michelle, Karin, and I all dressed up for the first day of the conference -- Cherie Blair (AUW Chancellor) and Sheikh Hasina (Bangladesh's Prime Minister) both gave remarks to open the symposium. When the day had finished we all bused to the Parliament building where we were received for a lovely dinner reception and guided tour of the parliament building. Due to high security throughout the day (meaning no handbags, cameras, cellphones, etc. allowed), I only have a few pictures of us in our saris at the end of the day in our hotel.

My new sari from India :)

Back at AUW

So much to blog about, so little time....Kristen and I arrived back from our Nepal/India vacation the morning of the 9th, the day classes were supposed to start but thank goodness they were postponed - we are just now starting our classes (last week was our first week for the academic seminars!). Since arriving back in Bangladesh it's been a whirlwind of illnesses (thank you Dhaka for my food poisoning!), 80+ esteemed visitors at AUW, and a campus-wide symposium in Dhaka. Now my time is consumed with planning a semester-long course for 2 classes and finding my feet as the adviser for several clubs that need a serious action plan! Thank goodness for many wonderful connections at the symposium! Oh! and Saraswati Puja is right around the corner (Feb 8 and 9) and Claudio, an international photographer who has generously donated 8 SLR cameras to the photography club, is at AUW to run photography workshops with the girls and document the festival - I can't wait!!

India

So much to write about, so little time....I'm back from winter break and had a wonderful 3-week vacation in Nepal and India! Life has been pretty busy and hectic since returning. I spent the first couple of days home in Bangladesh sick (thanks to food poisoning). Then, 80+ esteemed board members and visitors, including Cherie Blaire - AUW's newly appointed Chancellor, visited AUW to observe classes, meet students, and see the site of the new campus - designed by Moshe Safdie. Following these events at the AUW campus, the entire campus (400+students, faculty, staff and families, and visitors) stormed Bangladesh's public transportation as we made our way to Dhaka for the AUW Symposium, "Imagining Another Future for Asia: Ideas and Pathways for Change." In the interest of time (lesson plans are calling my name!), check out Jess' blog for more on the conference!

I realize that was a very skeleton update but I'm teaching two semester long courses this semester, TAing, and advising three clubs....and sometimes sleeping.... I haven't even had a chance to look through all of my vacation photos but I thought I'd post a few that I have looked through. Of course when you go to India the first thing everybody wants to know is, "Did you see the Taj Mahal?" So here are a few pictures from the TAJ!

 

White Love

White Group (from left to right) back row: Nusrat, Nazma, Rabia, Me, Ngoc, Anh, Aaliya, Yagel, Sumitra, Jesmin

front row: Israt, Jannatul, Pahima, Meher, Vinh

Time is flying! but when isn't it? It's the end of another 7 week course and subsequently the end of the semester. This time around I'm ready for a break and ready for the change that awaits us all next semester. Speaking of which...next semester we will all be teaching semester long courses instead of 7-week classes. I've spent the past few days not only grading and planning for our winter break vacation but also beginning to plan a semester-long course. I will still teach business leadership but will expand on the existing topics and emphasize self-leadership development.

In the spirit of Who Moved My Cheese here are the Writings on the Wall (with no editing) that the presentation groups created to inspire themselves and their classmates to practice leadership in regards to each specific topic from our course.

Ethics: “The more you’ll be ethical, the more you’ll take the world up.”

Psychodynamic: “Respect yourself and others to build a bridge of a good relationship.”

Transformational: “Transformational leadership is like a mountain, climb on it. If you succeed in climbing you can become a good leader.”

Culture: “If you don’t know anything about me you can’t make friendship with me.”

Women: “Never prefer to be the follower because of being a woman, other than make this fact as your straightness to be the leader for others.”

Our students really do say and write the cutest/funniest things all the time and it's hard to remember to write them down...I didn't do too great of a job recording cute sayings from the white group but here are two:


- "In first class I failed, second year I studied two classes and I became third position and then first position. Oh God! A big change!!" -- Rabia

- "I want my teacher to keep smiling because it rises the value of your face." -- Meher (in her first writing assignment where they had to tell me about themselves and their expectations of the teacher)

Never Never Land

'Tis the season for Christmas markets, gluhwein, schneeballen, and shopping....in Europe! After two Christmases in Europe, I will be spending this one in Asia. Thanksgiving usually marks the beginning of Christmas for me, cue the Christmas movies, cookies, and music but this year it's been a little harder to get into the spirit without the reminders...there are definitely no Christmas lights or gluhwein stands around Chittagong and certainly no snow! With the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes it feels more appropriate to think about having a picnic, with lots of OFF, on the Sea Beach in Chittagong. Despite all the reminiscing about my time spent in Germany I am looking forward to spending this holiday season traveling through Nepal and India. Even though Christmas night will be spent on an overnight train in India I have no doubt that it will be a memorable one. Anyway, after spending the past two years in Germany, Christmas Eve has become more important to me than the 25th....oh how I will miss Stille Nacht in the Partenkirchen Kirche this year :/

This reminscent post came after seeing many of my friends from Germany tagged in a note by a fellower GAPer. When I first arrived at ELR in January 2008 I heard quite a bit about this goodbye letter but nobody seemed to have a copy of it. Now she, Bethany, has posted her letter on facebook. Below is most of her Goodbye letter. I feel that it resounds with me even now that I'm in Bangladesh.

From Bethany, November 2007, taped to the back of every bathroom stall and above every urinal in the Abrams:


I have learned so much about myself and this place just in these last weeks, all things I wish I had grasped early on. I am passing my reflections on in hopes they will help you make the most of everyday here.

Look around, you are not the only one that has to leave their room to cook, do laundry, go to the bathroom, make a phone call or go online. You’re not the only one that has to wake up early, walk in the weather and put on an ugly uniform along with a fake smile. You are not the first overqualified person to scrape food into a slop bucket. This is a tiny price to pay for a humungous experience!

Never sell yourself or this experience short out of boredom or loneliness. You will not die if you are not the life of the party or the center of attention. You will not stop breathing if you don’t have someone to hold hands with in the hallway. The coolest person you could ever get to know out here is yourself.

Spend your time and money on the things that matter. Why get hammered every night in Garmisch when you can sip champagne in the south of France? Travel, travel, travel then travel some more!

We are not animals, better example; we are not 16 year old boys. For crying out loud go take a cold shower (alone). Go for a hike, read a book. Remember I got lucky; I ended up with “an amazing blessing I don’t even deserve” and not a terminal virus.

Develop an independent routine that forces you out of the Abrams. Frequent a coffee shop no one else goes to. Take a good book as a lunch date. Get an entertaining Deutsch lesson at the local theatre. There will be parties even your best friends forget to mention. It is better to know how to happily survive solitude then to have loneliness take you by surprise. You may otherwise end up eating the entire contents of your fridge, guzzling a 3 euro 2 liter bottle of wine and wake up on the kinderpath next to a pile of slugs with sheep poop in your hair…I’m just sayin.

Go outside everyday and take in a slow-mo 360 view of the Bavarian Alps. Trust me the goose bumps will never get old!

I hope you find the happy balance. I hope you never have to grow up and can stay in our Never Neverland forever…seriously though you are not really Peter Pan. Gravity does exist even at the Abrams and you cannot actually fly. Please stop sitting on second story windowsills it makes me nervous!

Bethany's letter reminds me to enjoy the day-to-day moments of anywhere I may be and that happiness isn't a destination but a daily ingredient of life. My time in Bangladesh is already passing too quickly and I know that these nine months will be just as integral as my time spent in Germany to my sense of identity on my quest to find direction in life.

Below are pictures of our AUW family Thanksgiving meal and 2 pictures from the past.

 Thanksgiving Dinner on the rooftop of Panclaish - How many times do you celebrate Thanksgiving on a rooftop?

 Our Thanksgiving buffet spread

Remembering the alps - the view from my bedroom window in the Abrams for 2 years!

Tallin, Estonia: One of the MANY Christmas Markets in Europe where I spent time enjoying caroling, gluhwein, cold weather, and Christmas trinkets

Photography Field Trip

November 26 and 27, 2010, Twenty-three students ventured the streets of Chittagong for our first photography field trip to the War Cemetery. There are 755 soldiers buried in the War Cemetery from the Indo-Burmese war front of World War II. The cemetery was very beautiful and provided lots of photo opportunities for the students. Below are a few photos I took during the field trips.

 Pahima, one of my current students and a member of the photography club, smelling a fragrant-less flower...but it still makes a cute picture :)

 One of our new friends hanging from a tree limb

 1st group of shutterbugs on the 26th

 A few of the students - they were so excited to finally learn how to take photos! Unfortunately none of them have cameras and the University didn't quite have enough so that each student could have her own camera for the day.

 In the shadows

On the 27th we came back to the University to find the basketball club practicing, so the photography girls tried their hand at basketball

Masooma snapping a photo

Eid-al-Adha

November 17, 2010: This was the day of the second Eid, Eid-al-Adha, the "Festival of Sacrifice." Our friend, Mamun, invited us to his village again to enjoy the festivities. Below are a few pictures from the day.

Cue the sacrificing. After the men have bathed and prayed at the mosque the sacrifices begin (around 10am at this point). Twenty five cows were sacrificed in Mamun's village this particular Eid day. Most of the men and children in the village help with the sacrificing -- either holding the cow down or later when they cut the meat. Above, the village travels from the first sacrificing to the next...slightly primal at this point but overall honorable sacrifices.

 The first of 5 sacrifices we saw that morning

At first, I wasn't completely sure about the necessity of this woman's job of watching over the meat until she left and the black crows came pecking at the meat...

The cow is sacrificed in one location and then carved open for meat, which is transferred to a location closer to the home (seen here). Then the family gathers around and begins to cut the meat and separate it into thirds - one third to eat that day, one third to save, and one third for the poor.

 Fresh coconuts from Mamun's sister!

Our beautiful saris!!

Where I spend my days

Life as a volunteer, teacher, adviser, and sometimes mother has been a great adventure the past three months. The days can be long as I usually take the 7:15am van to school and do not return home until the 7:30pm van returns to Khulshi. However, I have made my workspace more welcoming and motivating with a little help from my first group of students and several pictures of past adventures with great friends.

 My desk and bulletin board -- notice the 2 large posters that Orange group gave me as a "We Miss You" gesture

 

The other half of my space -- thank goodness it's not a cubicle!!

  

The poster from my 15 wonderful students in Orange group

 

Beautiful note from Saika, a Bangladeshi student in Orange group

A note from Aaraby, the crafter behind the gorgeous posters

Lost in Translation?!

My most recent assignment for my students required them to write a personal code of ethics. Of note, one of my students wrote the following three statements:

1. Break the rules.
2. Balance student and personal needs.
3. Harm others to protect yourself.

Perhaps I failed to teach the importance of ethics and what it means to be an ethical person....FAIL. *She did go on to explain her statements and say that she shouldn't break the rules and harming others should be stopped....who knows what happened with her statements...*