Hi Everyone!
I know I know…I am 3 days behind…Yikes! So much going on each day especially since my friend arrived on Monday afternoon. So, if you have the time.- go fetch yourself a cup of coffee or tea and I hope you enjoy reading about the last 3 days of my adventures in Bangladesh. I am continually on the edge of my seat (literally!) with what surprises and shocks me in the bustling city and country.
Monday April 11, 2011
Big Kids – Small Cage
I woke up motivated to go for a walk/run at the local park again this morning thinking 2 days of exercise in a row will be good for me! Last night, we got spits of rain as the sky featured a wonderful lightning show. It looked like it was going to open up and pour down but the little spits of rain is all we got. If anything, some huge winds came around and the evening was very pleasantly cool!
I was able to again go with Milan to the local produce market to pick up our needs for the day. Today he showed me a traditional Bengali that is used by people sitting down and the knife is put in between their feet and the vegetables and fruits are chopped this way…very smart!
After returning I got ready to go to visit the American International School of Dhaka with Rick. He is slowly getting back to teaching all his classes and was going in to check in with some students. The school is indeed big and is surrounded by high walls. Rick tells me that there is a field for a helicopter to land if needing to evacuate people and the high walls also allow for snipers if necessary – Woah! There is only one entry and exit gate for security purposes. There is many kids whom are children of ambassadors at the school where protection is very important.
The lower school and high school are separated which Rick thinks is a good thing. His biology classroom and science wing building is very nice and big with new laboratory equipment. He took me on a little tour around – roof top tennis courts and a brand new gym with about 12 spinning bikes too. We got to have lunch in the dining room which was delicious. I went for the naan bread, beef curry, mixed fruit and vegetable salad. It was fun to meet other teachers in the lunchroom and I think it was the most American conversations I had heard and participated in for a while. The diversity of the school is so appealing to me. I flicked through a past school year book and there are kids that have incredible mixes in them such as Swedish and Chilean. There is quite a large Korean community of kids that stay here for all 13 years of schooling. Rick tells me this is common as the Korean businessmen in the garment industry stay a long time running and managing their businesses.
My title of today’s blog “Big Kids Small Cages” comes from the delight I get when I see the children go to school in these small caged bicycle rickshaws. The girls school in the morning and boys in the afternoon and their smiling faces are so great to see whenever I see them. I got to take a bunch of photos of them on the way home from school today.
Before picking my friend Alison up from the airport we headed to a new district right next to the airport that has obviously looked like its been strategically planned better than other areas (less trash, bigger roads). Anyway, we headed to the four storey garment store named “Aarong” – it’s the biggest NGO garment and goods store in Bangladesh. I was in salwar kameez heaven and its like the “Macy’s” of fashion for the country. There are billboards advertising them and this store is their biggest and newest one just opened last month. The prices reflect their popularity too of course but you certainly get what you paid for!
We headed to the airport to get Alison and she arrived without any hassles. Its about $3 per person to get a “visitor pass”. I was so excited to see her and show her around like a “local” over the next week! She loved Rick’s apartment of course and then I took her up to the roof top to watch the grey clouds slowly make their way in….Still no rain though! We learned that we will be on the same flight heading back to Malaysia in a week’s time which is perfect! Tonight we also met one of Rick’s Bengali friends who owns two fabric stores in the Gulshan circle. They met when Rick purchased fabrics there and he was eager to practice his English. He kindly offered to take us to the “Old Dhaka” area on Friday too. I had already done a walking tour on my first day there but did not cover much at all so I am excited about that.
After dinner, we all got to sit down and watch an episode of “The Amazing Race” when they were in Dhaka a year ago. Rick had the episode on his laptop for us to watch and it was soooo cool to see the sights on the screen. One of the girls pronounced the city “Dahaka” and we all laughed at that. They did have to do some very cool things such as assembling a rickshaw by hand and moving bricks on their heads in a construction site. I know FOR SURE that without the help I have had getting around this place with Milan’s translating and all of Rick’s help and assets, traveling through this city and country would be VERY difficult!
Tuesday April 12, 2011
Just Another Day in Dhaka
I was excited to wake up and take my friend Alison for a walk to “The American Club” and then around the park/lake that I have been doing my morning walks and runs on. The park track takes me about 10 minutes to walk around so its definitely more than a standard 400 meter track. The morning was very pleasant and one of the coolest since I’ve been here. We headed home for breakfast and then out to the market with Milan. We got to the dry and wet market today and it was funny hearing all the men ask “Madam Meat?” to us at the wet market. Milan headed home after grocery shopping and we stayed in the circle to explore the grocery stores, markets, fabric and antique stores that I have come to know well. We even found a DVD shop that sold pirated movies for $1. We decided to buy a Bangladesh inspired film named “Brick Lane” but even with the storekeeper’s money back guarantee, we were disappointed to find out later that evening that the DVD would skip continuously on my computer when watching.
Home for lunch (in a rickshaw of course for Alison’s first experience!) and a bit of a rest from the busy morning. Then our afternoon experience was something that no guided tour could ever buy. We were so fortunate to be able to visit Milan’s place on the other side of the river. Like I had written earlier, he lives in Dhaka working for Rick from Sunday to Thursday and takes the 4 hour bus ride home on Thursday afternoon to see his family. His place is about 25 minutes walk away and 10 minutes on bike…as you could imagine it’s very simple….a room inside a complex of about 5 other rooms and a washroom included. His pride and joy is his cable accessed tv (that Rick generously helped him to purchase!) and after an offered drink and cookies, we turned the tv on to watch some “America’s Funniest Videos”. I got my answer then and there what he did after work each day (3pm). He says he enjoys watching the news and keeping up to date with that from BBC and CNN. He also loves watching the football/soccer. Cable is about $4 a month is over 100 channels! The power went out while we were there and we got to experience just how warm it can get in the hotter months without electricity in the area that he lives in. Rick’s more modernized building area gets blackouts too of course, but with the luxury of a back up generator and the blackouts are definitely not as much as Milan’s area which occur one hour on and one hour off in the warmer climates.
Milan’s friend came to visit us at his place during the afternoon and she is the housekeeper for a family with the American embassy. They have been friends for a long time and she also invited us to her place to visit. An offered drink and conversation with her eldest son completed the afternoon. It’s so funny that both Milan and Misty were so excited to welcome us both into their homes. On Sunday, we will drive out to Milan’s village four hours away to visit his home and family too…he will then travel by car with us back to Dhaka….I am so excited to meet his son, daughter, wife, and mother that we have been talking so much about, but also to shop for gifts for them!
Heading home, both of us exhausted from a pretty full day. Dinner was amazing once again cooked by Milan earlier in the day --- rice, vegetables, curry chicken and a shrimp, spinach and coconut curry was the highlight for me. I think I need to learn such Bengali cooking methods next week from Milan!
Wednesday April 13, 2011
Day Trip Around Dhaka
We rose to a delicious breakfast and headed out to the main circle where he helped us secure a taxi driver for the whole day to the old capital of Sonogoarn. In our Lonely Planet, it said that it was a well worth day trip outside the city and about an hour’s drive away from Dhaka city. The book however, failed to mention that it takes about an hour and a half of crazy, bumper to bumper, smelly, dusty, hazardous and hot driving to firstly drive out of the city itself! We knew what we were in for though and finally reached the old city at about 11:30am after leaving Dhaka around 9:00am. We visited two folk and art museums and then walked to a close by street that previously featured absolute mansions owned by wealthy Hindus. These owners escaped the land when the Moghuls reigned and hence, left their mansions to squatters who have since let the buildings deteriorate.
On return back to the city, I only felt like I was going to be a victim of a car accident twice.
The first, when our little yellow taxi was completely surrounded by giant buses trying to win the battle of getting to their destinations first (I had pictured us being crushed in between!) and second, a very very VERY close collision with a rickshaw turning the corner with about 5 giant barrels (the ones that look like they would have oil in them) in his cargo. We actually did scrape another car but nobody got out and I think we were the lucky ones since the scrape was with a much nicer and newer SUV.
We stopped at a little shopping mall close to our house that I had been to since we had some time before the agreed to time our driver was going to drop us home. With our minimal English communication, we agreed that he would go and get gas and then come back to get us. Lucky that we had Rick’s cell phone to call him on since he was over an hour late to pick us up because the line for gas apparently was very long (I believe him!). We both got home absolutely exhausted from our day’s adventure, but very content on experiencing another piece of Bangladesh.
Now we enthusiastically tomorrow’s Bengali New Year festivities down in the main square. Seas of white and red saree and salwar kameez dressed women with food, arts, crafts, floats and more…..I guess I have tonight to think of what my Bengali New Year’s resolution should be….
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