I am a young lady!

There is nothing more refreshing than going to the (hot) doctor and him calling you "young lady" on a rainy day. So, I was pretty happy yesterday about that. I was also very happy that I did not have a strep throat, which is what Son currently has.
Son, by the way, has entered a pretty crappy stage in his life where almost every answer from him is a "no." He sounds worse than the Catholic church, frankly:
Me: Hey, would you like some milk?
Son: No.
Me: Do you want some water?
Son: No
Me: Do you want a banana?
Son: No
Me: Do you want to play with mommy?
Son: No
Me: Are you mommy's boy?
Son: No
Me: I am getting a bit frustrated here!
Son: No
Me: Do want to go outside to play?
Son: No
Me: Do you want to stay inside?
Son: No
Me: What do you want, intractable child???
Son: No
Me: I am leaving?
Son: OK, OK, OK!!!

He did hand me one nice surprise however: yesterday, I told him to go to the bathroom and take of his shoes in anticipation of his bath. After some serious banging and shuffling coming from there, I poked my head in to see him sitting primly on a very eschewed child potty seat, his pants pulled down, huge grin on the face, peeing happily. Wow. He has never previously indicated an ability to 1. pull down his pants and underwear, 2. climb on the toilet on his own. I must be an awesome mom!

Bengali studies at the fabulous Foreign Services Institute are not going so well for me. This past week our topic of learning was shopping, so we spent the whole week reading large, incomprehensible texts about shopping around Eid, prices of various types of fish (whose names I strongly suspect we are supposed to know), and how everything is just going up. I just don't think I have it in me to read one more article about the shocking rise in prices of the banana fish before and after New Year's day, or another comprehensive description of a Dhaka market. I think the worst part of Bengali articles is that half of them are in English but with Bengali script--so you spend 2 minutes reading a long word that sounds like this "dee-dja-een" or "be-do-ko-bhar" only to realize that they mean "design" and "bedcover." Then you feel stupid while the rest of class snickers.

And one last piece of very exciting news is that I bought pretty shower curtains for both bathrooms here, both of them on sale! Nothing quite like it, eh?

A couple of blogs of Foreign Service folks who have just landed in Dhaka have posted pictures of their housing. Guess what is the one unifying feature of them all...they are ALL BEIGE! So, my new colorful shower curtains are coming with me next year.