Well I have something fairly interesting for this posting. Yesterday I received an invitation from the president of Bangladesh to attend the national youth day celebration in Dhaka. This should be a rather interesting experience. There are only two of us going, the other person has to speak, thank god it is not me. But I have a sick feeling that they are going to ask me to speak. They always want the foreigners to speak if we are there. I hope they dont ask me to sing a song, that will be really embarrassing. Another thing that kind of worries me is the proximity to a high level figurehead in the government. The country is way too unstable for me to be hanging out with a guy that has a death warrant. Oh well we will see what happens.
I am selecting students for my class right now. I have four guys applying that are from Madrassas, which are the fundamentalist Islamic schools. They all have long beards and look like Ossama Bin Laden. They have really good grades and speak a little English. I think I am going to except them based solely on their fundamentalist religious views. It is going to be really touchy ground but I think I want to work with these youth. They are the ones that need this more than the poorest of the poor. They are extremely misguided by the imams that are preaching this jihad stuff. They really need some outside perspective; I think that I am the person to give it to them. They are the same age as us, 22-25, it is so sad how badly they are brainwashed. I hope it doesn’t backfire on me; it very well could in these trying days of this country. I am not sure how am going to go about it but I will just start by teaching them a little English. Maybe teach them some geography, show them that there is much more to this world than just the villages of rural Bangladesh.
I will try to post again after my meeting with the president to let everyone knopw how it went.
shada shoitan signing off.