As we launch into the month of October, it's hard to focus on anything but the impending arrival of #2 son, due around the 27th of the month. Crystal has been attending her doctor's appointments regularly, often accompanied by Tasman, and we're happy to say that all is progressing normally. In addition, she's taking afternoon classes in Bangla (Bengali) language, while Adham has classes in the morning. That gives each of us a chance to spend some quality time with Tasman. He's still doing various pre-schools and playgroups most mornings, and has recently made the leap doing one of them each week without one of his parents present. Our little boy is growing up!

Taking language lessons has been great for us; there are three FSO's assigned to Dhaka taking Bangla now, and all of the spouses are taking it too, so it's a good chance for all of us to get to know each other. We have three different teachers who rotate through our classroom hours, and each bring a different focus or style to the learning. Although it's still too early for us to have much of an in-depth conversation, we can all pretty much read the alphabet now and have made pretty amazing progress in a relatively short amount of time. For a peek at what Bangla looks like, you can check out the Deutsche Welle (German state overseas radio service) Bangla site - you may need to install the "Bengali font" listed at the bottom of the page to see it in all its glory.

Lots of Adham's A-100 colleagues have already gone off to their overseas assignments, so it's been fun and interesting to hear their stories from Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, and lots of other places around the world. We can hardly wait to file our report from Dhaka...