Life, lately

A few weeks ago Nate got his official “Welcome to Post” email from the embassy in Dhaka!  It’s the little things, like this and getting our diplomatic passports, that I clutch onto and get excited about, because sometimes seven months seems so fricking far away.

The housing pool in Dhaka is shifting from single family homes to newly constructed seismically safe apartments, so it’s highly unlikely that a) our housing will be ready when we arrive, and b) we’ll have a yard.  We didn’t really expect to have a yard anyways, since Dhaka is one of the most population-dense cities in the world.  Although I am hoping for a nice rooftop….

Luckily it looks like it will be easier to get Athena there than it would be for other posts.  I think we just need to send a letter from our vet to the embassy and then they arrange a pet import certificate.  How exactly we are going to get her there, on the other hand, is another story.  That’s what I’m truly nervous about.

I’ve started learning Bangla through Mango Languages.  It’s free to anyone with a library card, which is pretty cool.

So far I’ve learned a couple of key phrases (“Hello,” “What’s your name,” “My name is ….” etc).  It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s more than I knew before.  I’ve also found that Bangla is hard.  It’s completely unlike any language I’ve ever learned.  The alphabet is a bunch of squigglies.

I completed Lesson 1 of Chapter 1 a few days ago, and I eagerly moved onto Lesson 2.  And as I was repeating phrases, I realized I didn’t remember half of what I’d learned in the previous lesson.  I know I’m being lazy and I just need to do a lesson a day and then practice with Nate.  I don’t need to be able to carry on complex conversations; I just need the basics.

In other news, Nate and I celebrated our fourth anniversary of our first wedding (yup, we had two weddings: one in the DC courthouse and then our reception was the following year) a few weeks ago by going for a seven-mile run and getting dinner at our favorite pizza place.  We’ll be moving around the time of the anniversary for our second wedding, which we treat as our actual anniversary, so we will either go big as we leave Alexandria or find a fancy place in Dhaka to celebrate!  Or maybe we’ll do both.

Yeah, we’ll probably do both.

Also, I’ve decided that running down King St in Alexandria when the weather is nice from the hours of 5:30-7:30 pm is completely impossible.  You might think this is because the rush hour traffic makes it tricky (which it does) or because there are just too many pedestrians on the sidewalk to be able to actually run in a straight line (which there are), but those things aren’t what make it unbearable.  It’s all the people sitting outside eating!

Running by huge plates of delicious smelling food is absolute torture.  Especially since I’m usually hungry.  It’s all I can do to not steal a slice of pizza off a table as I run by.

Oh, speaking of running, last weekend we ran the Freedom’s Run half marathon!  It was super fun, and I absolutely loved it.  The race started in Shepherdstown, WV, and ran along the C&O Canal and then through Antietam Battlefield.  It was really hilly, but I powered up all the hills and didn’t walk except for at the aid stations.  After the run they gave us pizza, bagels and free pints of Yuengling, which was pretty awesome.  Nate basically ate a whole pizza.  Next time we’re in the DC area around the time this race is run, we will be there!

What a beautiful morning for a race!