After settling into our first day of classes here in Chittagong, Peter ad I succumbed to our exhaustion and each promptly got sick: I got some kind of gross bacterial/staff infection on my ear which spread a little to the side of my head and neck and just last night Peter was up all night with a terrible cough.
I taught my first day of class, my ear covered with a gauze bandage. My friend Margaret laughed, joking that "Bangladesh has claimed its first casualty!" Peter, ever the optimist, dismissed his hack, downed some orange juice, threw back a shot of cough medicine and bounced out the door about a half hour ago to teach. He got home yesterday around 3:30pm crawled into bed and slept until about 7:30am this morning, ready to go. That man has an amazing immune system and an uncanny ability to fall into a deep sleep within 5 minutes.
Being the insomniac, hypochondriac that I am, I came armed with every type of vitamin, Chinese herb and or herbal sleep remedy to face the strange and terrible onslaught of germs that may await me here...of course to no avail.
The upshot to all this was that my visit to the doctor was free (thank you AUW and or perhaps, socialized medicine!) and though it's highly recommend, you can actually get any type of pharmaceutical here without a doctor's prescription. And the cost of the medication was ridiculously cheap. I walked out of the pharmacy with a bag of about 4 medications for under $20. It makes me wonder why the cost of health care is so out of control in the US?
Anyway, I think the meds are working and I'm hoping for some improvement soon.
We hit the grounds running on Sunday with our classes on Sunday. Most of the students are excited about the art and drawing classes. Peter had them do self-portraits on the first day just to get a gauge of their skill level. There were a number off students who were quite good.
The students in my acting class are fascinating. They are curious and engaging. They have this innocence and shyness and at times, vacillate between that and this uber-abundance of confidence. Best of all, they're willing to try anything, which has made the first couple of days doing the acting exercises a whole lot of fun!
Trying to find a point of reference to any type of acting or theater training, at least in the process that myself and most Westerners are trained in, is nonexistent. I asked some questions using acting and theatrical terms to get a sense of what they may have been exposed to and was met with only blank stares and people shaking their heads... Come to think of it, it's really not that different from teaching an acting for non-actors course back home. Ah well, onward.
Oh, by the way, we started to read MEDEA and they are really excited about doing this play.
I taught my first day of class, my ear covered with a gauze bandage. My friend Margaret laughed, joking that "Bangladesh has claimed its first casualty!" Peter, ever the optimist, dismissed his hack, downed some orange juice, threw back a shot of cough medicine and bounced out the door about a half hour ago to teach. He got home yesterday around 3:30pm crawled into bed and slept until about 7:30am this morning, ready to go. That man has an amazing immune system and an uncanny ability to fall into a deep sleep within 5 minutes.
Being the insomniac, hypochondriac that I am, I came armed with every type of vitamin, Chinese herb and or herbal sleep remedy to face the strange and terrible onslaught of germs that may await me here...of course to no avail.
The upshot to all this was that my visit to the doctor was free (thank you AUW and or perhaps, socialized medicine!) and though it's highly recommend, you can actually get any type of pharmaceutical here without a doctor's prescription. And the cost of the medication was ridiculously cheap. I walked out of the pharmacy with a bag of about 4 medications for under $20. It makes me wonder why the cost of health care is so out of control in the US?
Anyway, I think the meds are working and I'm hoping for some improvement soon.
We hit the grounds running on Sunday with our classes on Sunday. Most of the students are excited about the art and drawing classes. Peter had them do self-portraits on the first day just to get a gauge of their skill level. There were a number off students who were quite good.
The students in my acting class are fascinating. They are curious and engaging. They have this innocence and shyness and at times, vacillate between that and this uber-abundance of confidence. Best of all, they're willing to try anything, which has made the first couple of days doing the acting exercises a whole lot of fun!
Trying to find a point of reference to any type of acting or theater training, at least in the process that myself and most Westerners are trained in, is nonexistent. I asked some questions using acting and theatrical terms to get a sense of what they may have been exposed to and was met with only blank stares and people shaking their heads... Come to think of it, it's really not that different from teaching an acting for non-actors course back home. Ah well, onward.
Oh, by the way, we started to read MEDEA and they are really excited about doing this play.
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