Today I realized something.
When I work at a computer all day long I drink lots of water.
I think it's because I get bored.
Regardless, it makes me have to go to the bathroom frequently.
Sometimes I wonder if people think I have a bladder control problem.
No one has ever commented about it to me.
So I just keep on working and drinking.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
The birth of determination
Thank you all for being patient with me in my blogging absence the past couple of weeks. As some of you know, I’ve been really busy with work and on top of that, my Grandmother died. For those of you who know me, you probably know that my grandmother meant a lot to me. I suppose that is putting it modestly since I consider her my greatest hero. In light of that, I figured I should make this post about my reflections on her in the last week or two.
Two songs have been stuck in my head since I learned of her death. The first, a hymn, is “My Hope is Built.” The chorus of this song goes, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” Grandma stood on a rock and she was also constantly encouraging us to stand on one as well. I don’t know how many times I trusted her of all people with a prayer because I knew she had a faith that could move mountains. To be honest with you, during my toughest times here in Bangladesh I have taken a lot of solace in the fact that I knew grandma was praying for me and God would hear her prayers. The other song that has stood out to me was “Shine” by the Newsboys. The chorus of this song goes, “Shine, make them wonder what you’ve got, make them wish that they were not on the outside looking bored. Shine, let it shine before all men, let them see good works and then let them glorify the Lord.” Anyone that knew grandma, knows that she had great love and she shared it with everyone. She never knew a stranger. Above and beyond all that though, she always put God in front of everything she did. She truly shined. The thing about these songs that has stood out to me the most though is that this person is gone from this world and they are things about her that will truly be missed unless something is done about that. In light of this I’ve decided that I can’t help but view her death as a challenge to step up and bear whatever small part of that burden I am able.
The other thing that really hit me was something I got when I arrived in the Dhaka office this past week. I got a couple of letters in the mail and one of them was from my grandma. That was like a punch to the gut in how shocking it was. I debated for about 15 minutes what to do with it. Do I open it right away? Do I wait until later on when I have more privacy to open? What can I expect when I open it? Eventually I just decided to open it right there since I was at a desk in a room by myself. What was inside was something beyond even what I could have imagined was inside. The card said, "Let us be glad and rejoice. Revelations 19:7" and she wrote, "Merry Christmas, I love you,
Grandma Birkey." I’ll tell you what I told my dad in light of that situation, “I wish I could describe the myriad of different emotions and thoughts those simple words have caused me but I'll have to settle for telling you two things: I'm hanging in there and the extent that God worked through that woman just blows my mind.” I imagine that’s how I’m going to feel for a long time yet to come and I wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s how a hero deserves to be remembered.
Two songs have been stuck in my head since I learned of her death. The first, a hymn, is “My Hope is Built.” The chorus of this song goes, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” Grandma stood on a rock and she was also constantly encouraging us to stand on one as well. I don’t know how many times I trusted her of all people with a prayer because I knew she had a faith that could move mountains. To be honest with you, during my toughest times here in Bangladesh I have taken a lot of solace in the fact that I knew grandma was praying for me and God would hear her prayers. The other song that has stood out to me was “Shine” by the Newsboys. The chorus of this song goes, “Shine, make them wonder what you’ve got, make them wish that they were not on the outside looking bored. Shine, let it shine before all men, let them see good works and then let them glorify the Lord.” Anyone that knew grandma, knows that she had great love and she shared it with everyone. She never knew a stranger. Above and beyond all that though, she always put God in front of everything she did. She truly shined. The thing about these songs that has stood out to me the most though is that this person is gone from this world and they are things about her that will truly be missed unless something is done about that. In light of this I’ve decided that I can’t help but view her death as a challenge to step up and bear whatever small part of that burden I am able.
The other thing that really hit me was something I got when I arrived in the Dhaka office this past week. I got a couple of letters in the mail and one of them was from my grandma. That was like a punch to the gut in how shocking it was. I debated for about 15 minutes what to do with it. Do I open it right away? Do I wait until later on when I have more privacy to open? What can I expect when I open it? Eventually I just decided to open it right there since I was at a desk in a room by myself. What was inside was something beyond even what I could have imagined was inside. The card said, "Let us be glad and rejoice. Revelations 19:7" and she wrote, "Merry Christmas, I love you,
Grandma Birkey." I’ll tell you what I told my dad in light of that situation, “I wish I could describe the myriad of different emotions and thoughts those simple words have caused me but I'll have to settle for telling you two things: I'm hanging in there and the extent that God worked through that woman just blows my mind.” I imagine that’s how I’m going to feel for a long time yet to come and I wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s how a hero deserves to be remembered.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Beards: The Right Stuff.
Yesterday I was riding my bicycle back to our house from town. A kid who was probably in his early teens rode up next to me and started chatting. His name was Mohammad, big surprise huh? He was on his way back from playing cricket in town and he had his cricket bat on the back of his bicycle. Cricket bats cost about $1.75 here but that isn't really important to this story. We talked a bit and eventually he asks what my religion is. I tell him I'm a Christian. He then asks me why I have a beard (it has been cold so I've refused to trim it until it warms up). I said that Christians in America have beards. He asked if all of them do. I said no, but then mentioned that not all Muslims in Bangladesh do either. He then said a bunch of stuff that I didn't understand. I did catch one particular word that he used a fair amount and so I looked it up when I got home. The word was, "pap" which means "sin". I don't know what he was saying about it but I get the feeling he thought I was doing a lot of it.
One other note of interest. I also noticed another word while looking in the dictionary. Just a heads up, if you are in Bangladesh and someone starts saying that you are a "papi", it isn't a term of endearment. It means you are a hardened sinner who is set in the ways of sin. Bengali people are much kinder than any other group of people I've ever met as a whole, but if they start calling me that, I think I'll be stepping up my awareness a couple of notches.
Speaking of my beard, I've decided to grow it for the next while. I will shave it off for my trip home but it's just too good of a conversation topic here to pass up growing it. That said, it isn't all that pretty so I'll probably not be going out of my way to post pictures, lol.
One other note of interest. I also noticed another word while looking in the dictionary. Just a heads up, if you are in Bangladesh and someone starts saying that you are a "papi", it isn't a term of endearment. It means you are a hardened sinner who is set in the ways of sin. Bengali people are much kinder than any other group of people I've ever met as a whole, but if they start calling me that, I think I'll be stepping up my awareness a couple of notches.
Speaking of my beard, I've decided to grow it for the next while. I will shave it off for my trip home but it's just too good of a conversation topic here to pass up growing it. That said, it isn't all that pretty so I'll probably not be going out of my way to post pictures, lol.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Meeting my mother's demands...
Over here it has been getting down around 50 degrees F most nights lately and some nights it has even dipped into the upper 40's. In the States I would think nothing of this, here it becomes miserably cold for me. It's not bad at all while you are sleeping at night, we do have nice heavy blankets that keep you toasty at night. What gets to you is that once you are out from under the covers, you are almost always touching wood, plastic, or concrete, all of which are things that never warm up. Materials in this country are made to be as cool as possible because for 9 months of the year that is important here. I deal with this by wearing all of the following while I work at my desk: undershirt, long-sleeve shirt, hoodie, coat, shawl, and sock cap. I find myself wishing dearly that I had thermal underwear for under my pants but I didn't anticipate that need and by the time someone could get them to me here winter would already be over so I just tough out having cold legs. I also wear socks and shoes during the winter which is something I don't normally do in Bangladesh. I don't have gloves but that has lead me to recognize something.
I've been badly wanting gloves for about a month now. This is especially the case on mornings when I ride motorcycle to work. On those days I get to work and my hands are just beet red from the cold winds. The sad thing is that they have gloves in the marketplace here and I've known that this entire time. I was reflecting upon the fact that I haven't gone and gotten them the other day when I had an epiphany. I realized that I had been saying for weeks that I would go get them after work but when it came time every day I wouldn't go after all which lead me to recognize that I have a fair bit of the mentality I picked up as a child still in me. It seems to me that growing up that there were always a bunch of tasks that needed done around the farm. More importantly, any number of those tasks might require the expense of money. Those kind of tasks normally get pushed aside (if they aren't desperate needs) until such a time when they become more or less important in the bigger scheme of things. This makes total sense when you are a poor farmer but not so much when gloves cost 45 cents. Anyways, after further reflection I decided not to buy gloves after all. I figure it's bound to warm up someday soon and it hasn't killed me yet to not have them. The moral of this story is that we often have learned ways of approaching things that we don't even notice we have most of the time.
Back to the story... I do have a hot water heater. This is not always the case though. Many houses still don't have this feature and so they have to heat water up on the stove top. That I have it is more as a result of me living with Nate than anything else. Nate weighs about 125lbs. which means he has very little to keep him warm and he thus values a hot shower very highly. He says that a hot shower is the last creature comfort he would be willing to give up. Speaking of showers, this also reminds me of my epiphany of the morning which was a rather odd one.
I normally take a shower in the morning. I've come to believe that this is another farming thing. It comes from the concept that when you go off the farm to someplace where you don't want to stink like farm, you take a shower right before you go. Growing up it didn't make sense to take a shower in the evening and then have to take another one in the morning after chores so I just developed the habit of showering in the morning. You may be wondering where this is going at this point and I'll tell you in a second. I had just finished taking my shower this morning and as I walked back into my room this morning, I noticed my bed. This jumped my thoughts to a lament of mine and an argument for taking a shower in the evening. If you take your shower in the morning your bed gets much dirtier much faster than if you take showers in the evening. That's about the time it hit me. If I ever get married I'll probably have to change my habits. It seems to me that not too many women like a man with a full day's stink built up or dirty beds for that matter. I imagine if I had a girlfriend I'd be forced to think more about this, but I don't, so I didn't.
Speaking of stinking, I have no clue how to respond to my mother's question about whether my coat starts smelling and needs washed. I work in an office where everyone goes out to work with farmers on a fairly regular basis. As a result, no one is going to care or notice smells. The only time I really notice if I smell or not is when I'm in the Dhaka office and that's because it is air conditioned.
I don't wear my blanket while riding motorcycle. I'm going to assume you are referring to my shawl. The shawl is a wool shawl which means it is super warm but not air tight at all which makes it super useless on a motorcycle. For those of you who don't know, Larry is my cousin who tried to ride a bicycle while carrying trash bags only to get them caught up in the tires and give himself a concussion. That made for an interesting family get together but is not all that likely to happen to me.
I think I've covered all the bases now and probably managed to throw in a pitcher's mound to boot. Hope this satisfies your curiosity and provides you with some amusement this week. Feel free to send other questions to me. I can't promise that they'll be used or have such odd tangents but I'll see what I can do.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Expectations...
I'm sorry I haven't and won't meet your expectations of me actually writing my post when I say I'm going to. I'm on the Bangladesh time system now. You know, the one where I say I'm going to be ready in 5 minutes and no one is too surprised if that means 1 hour. I'm not sure how the adjustment back to the American time conscience is going to go for me when it does happen. I hate waiting around doing nothing myself but definitely see how nice it is when there is no stress caused by the timing of things. Anyways, I'll get you back to your previously scheduled programming.
Unfortunately, my computer's card reader is not working, so I can't show you the pictures I intended to show you. I'll let you use your imagination for the time being as a replacement. If you don't have a very good imagination, I suggest you draw the scenes out with stick figures.
Dimla trip:
The past week started off with a journey to Dimla. I think I've made mention of Dimla before but for those who might not know, Dimla is in the far north of Bangladesh. It's a 4 hour drive by truck from our office. I was told we were leaving at 8 am. We didn't leave until 9 of course. Along the way we stopped and had some nan with boot dal (chickpea curry) for breakfast. On this day a film crew for a tv station in Bangladesh followed us up so they could do a short segment on our work. This, of course, took precidence over all other work as they were our guests and guests always get precidence in this culture (something you have to learn to live with as a foreigner which results in you almost always being the most valued guest). This resulted in the head of the partner organization coming from his head office to assist in the hospitality and our project manager organizing lots of activities to happen on that day on very short notice so the guests could see what we do. The activities ended up being vaccination drives. We had the farmers gather their animals in a clearing so our workers could quickly give them vaccinations against anthrax. We did three seperate groupings. One for goats, one for cows, and one for sheep. The cows were by far the most impressive.
I think the camera crew was stunned by them. Imagine you are in a dusty clearing surrounded by trees that provide shade for bamboo houses. Out of the trees pours 400 cows kicking up dust like some sort of wild west cattle drive. Only these cows are being led by men in lungis and women in colorful saris. The clearing (about the size of a football field) is filled with with cows and colorful Bengali people all kicking up dust and mingling in caos. The camera crew ended up having to climb a tree like Zaccheus to take it all in. Then the staff went to work giving vaccinations. This was an impressive process itself. One guy was so fast and good at giving shots that he could literally be looking for the next cow as he in a fluid motion gave the shot without spilling any as the needle slid in and out. His perfection of this action brought to mind images of Benny Henn at one of his revivals knocking people down with "heals" to the head. As a result of all this the crowd dissapated quickly and smoothly within about 30 minutes.
One thing that also stood out to me as I watched this process, was how good the cows that MCC helped these people earn looked on average. It has been many months since I had been to this project. The last time I had come, we spent the entire day walking around diagnosing diseases and dealing with sick cows. This time the only visiting that we did after the camera crews left was to people whose cows had given birth so we could see how well the cow and calf were doing. In my job I spend a lot of time crunching numbers and writing/editing reports for these projects and a couple of hours of seeing how much these cows mean to these people along with how quickly they are learning makes it all worth it. I remember how many years it took our family to "figure out" how to raise goats well and am just amazed that these people (who don't have years to figure this out) are getting it to some extent in only months. I'd throw credit for this to a dedicated staff and my co-worker Jodi who has done a remarkable job of trying to teach the farmers proactively instead of just fighting the problems as they come.
The trip went well and there is more I could say but this is getting long so I'll move on to the wedding.
Catholic Wedding:
This adventure started off with a 9 hour car ride in a full vehicle. This time we went to a more southern part of Bangladesh. I think someone once mentioned that the Ocean is only about 10km from where we were but I can't be certain I'm correct on that one. We arrived the night before the wedding and relaxed at a guest house. The next morning at 9 was the wedding. As always in Bangladesh, things turned out totally different than what I expected. Apparently, going to the wedding itself is not a very Bengali thing to do, it's the reception that everyone goes to. There ended up only being about 50 people at the actual wedding. I had never met the bride and groom before, the bride was the daughter of our current Country representative and the groom was an American whom she met while she attended EMU. We arrived right before the procession to the church. I was promptly handed a video camera and told to film without much more detail. It turns out that my housemates and I played some pretty important roles in the service. Nate was designated as the official wedding photographer and Daniel got to be the best man in the wedding since none of the groom's family was able to make it. We were all more than happy to help them out.
We heard that the wedding was a little atypical. The Father preached for about 20 minutes on such subjects as: single people going crazy if they don't marry, the need to have lots of children, and death. Impressively, most of this was in English. I don't imagine the subjects of the message were very atypical, but would guess the short length was. There was communion, but the Father handled the exclusion of non-Catholics with great tact. The most peculiar thing to me was how during the important parts of the wedding people would crowd around them trying to get pictures and block everyone elses' view in the mean time. Bengalis have no concept of this being rude or disruptive at all. Other than that, there isn't much to report on the wedding itself. I have seen various parts of the rest of the wedding in weddings I've attended in the USA.
After the wedding we went to the bride's house and did some picture taking with the family and they cut the cake. Since Derek, our Country Representative, has two brothers living abroad, there were lots of family members around with very western mindsets. We had a good time talking with them and I finally met Allison (sp?) and Richard the bride and groom for the first time. Allison knew me and called me by my first name which was really freaky until she explained that she reads my blog. I didn't realize other people read my blog. I just figured it was a few family members and friends. It quickly became apparent that for all intents and purposes, they are very normal American people. After awhile of hanging out with them we all headed to the reception.
This is where things differed greatly from American weddings. Everyone and their brother comes, greats the bride, groom, and their family, then eats lots of food. During this time, the bride and groom sit on a stage in front of everyone eating and don't eat. They sit there and greet people for hours on end. There was seating for a couple of hundred people to eat and throughout the early afternoon it was generally full with a steady stream of people coming and going. There were also plenty of people standing outside chatting. The purpose of this all is to please the community. Rumor has it that they butchered 12 goats, a couple of cows, and a full flock of chickens for this meal. I think someone was speculating that in the end only about 1200 people showed up to this rather than 1500. Can you imagine having to greet and feed 1200 people!? After a bit it finally came time for us to leave and we missed out on any additional details of the post wedding activities. When we left at about 3pm the people were still coming. The final ending to all the activities was a 5 hour car ride in a van full of merry but tired people.
After the wedding we went back to the bride's house
Unfortunately, my computer's card reader is not working, so I can't show you the pictures I intended to show you. I'll let you use your imagination for the time being as a replacement. If you don't have a very good imagination, I suggest you draw the scenes out with stick figures.
Dimla trip:
The past week started off with a journey to Dimla. I think I've made mention of Dimla before but for those who might not know, Dimla is in the far north of Bangladesh. It's a 4 hour drive by truck from our office. I was told we were leaving at 8 am. We didn't leave until 9 of course. Along the way we stopped and had some nan with boot dal (chickpea curry) for breakfast. On this day a film crew for a tv station in Bangladesh followed us up so they could do a short segment on our work. This, of course, took precidence over all other work as they were our guests and guests always get precidence in this culture (something you have to learn to live with as a foreigner which results in you almost always being the most valued guest). This resulted in the head of the partner organization coming from his head office to assist in the hospitality and our project manager organizing lots of activities to happen on that day on very short notice so the guests could see what we do. The activities ended up being vaccination drives. We had the farmers gather their animals in a clearing so our workers could quickly give them vaccinations against anthrax. We did three seperate groupings. One for goats, one for cows, and one for sheep. The cows were by far the most impressive.
I think the camera crew was stunned by them. Imagine you are in a dusty clearing surrounded by trees that provide shade for bamboo houses. Out of the trees pours 400 cows kicking up dust like some sort of wild west cattle drive. Only these cows are being led by men in lungis and women in colorful saris. The clearing (about the size of a football field) is filled with with cows and colorful Bengali people all kicking up dust and mingling in caos. The camera crew ended up having to climb a tree like Zaccheus to take it all in. Then the staff went to work giving vaccinations. This was an impressive process itself. One guy was so fast and good at giving shots that he could literally be looking for the next cow as he in a fluid motion gave the shot without spilling any as the needle slid in and out. His perfection of this action brought to mind images of Benny Henn at one of his revivals knocking people down with "heals" to the head. As a result of all this the crowd dissapated quickly and smoothly within about 30 minutes.
One thing that also stood out to me as I watched this process, was how good the cows that MCC helped these people earn looked on average. It has been many months since I had been to this project. The last time I had come, we spent the entire day walking around diagnosing diseases and dealing with sick cows. This time the only visiting that we did after the camera crews left was to people whose cows had given birth so we could see how well the cow and calf were doing. In my job I spend a lot of time crunching numbers and writing/editing reports for these projects and a couple of hours of seeing how much these cows mean to these people along with how quickly they are learning makes it all worth it. I remember how many years it took our family to "figure out" how to raise goats well and am just amazed that these people (who don't have years to figure this out) are getting it to some extent in only months. I'd throw credit for this to a dedicated staff and my co-worker Jodi who has done a remarkable job of trying to teach the farmers proactively instead of just fighting the problems as they come.
The trip went well and there is more I could say but this is getting long so I'll move on to the wedding.
Catholic Wedding:
This adventure started off with a 9 hour car ride in a full vehicle. This time we went to a more southern part of Bangladesh. I think someone once mentioned that the Ocean is only about 10km from where we were but I can't be certain I'm correct on that one. We arrived the night before the wedding and relaxed at a guest house. The next morning at 9 was the wedding. As always in Bangladesh, things turned out totally different than what I expected. Apparently, going to the wedding itself is not a very Bengali thing to do, it's the reception that everyone goes to. There ended up only being about 50 people at the actual wedding. I had never met the bride and groom before, the bride was the daughter of our current Country representative and the groom was an American whom she met while she attended EMU. We arrived right before the procession to the church. I was promptly handed a video camera and told to film without much more detail. It turns out that my housemates and I played some pretty important roles in the service. Nate was designated as the official wedding photographer and Daniel got to be the best man in the wedding since none of the groom's family was able to make it. We were all more than happy to help them out.
We heard that the wedding was a little atypical. The Father preached for about 20 minutes on such subjects as: single people going crazy if they don't marry, the need to have lots of children, and death. Impressively, most of this was in English. I don't imagine the subjects of the message were very atypical, but would guess the short length was. There was communion, but the Father handled the exclusion of non-Catholics with great tact. The most peculiar thing to me was how during the important parts of the wedding people would crowd around them trying to get pictures and block everyone elses' view in the mean time. Bengalis have no concept of this being rude or disruptive at all. Other than that, there isn't much to report on the wedding itself. I have seen various parts of the rest of the wedding in weddings I've attended in the USA.
After the wedding we went to the bride's house and did some picture taking with the family and they cut the cake. Since Derek, our Country Representative, has two brothers living abroad, there were lots of family members around with very western mindsets. We had a good time talking with them and I finally met Allison (sp?) and Richard the bride and groom for the first time. Allison knew me and called me by my first name which was really freaky until she explained that she reads my blog. I didn't realize other people read my blog. I just figured it was a few family members and friends. It quickly became apparent that for all intents and purposes, they are very normal American people. After awhile of hanging out with them we all headed to the reception.
This is where things differed greatly from American weddings. Everyone and their brother comes, greats the bride, groom, and their family, then eats lots of food. During this time, the bride and groom sit on a stage in front of everyone eating and don't eat. They sit there and greet people for hours on end. There was seating for a couple of hundred people to eat and throughout the early afternoon it was generally full with a steady stream of people coming and going. There were also plenty of people standing outside chatting. The purpose of this all is to please the community. Rumor has it that they butchered 12 goats, a couple of cows, and a full flock of chickens for this meal. I think someone was speculating that in the end only about 1200 people showed up to this rather than 1500. Can you imagine having to greet and feed 1200 people!? After a bit it finally came time for us to leave and we missed out on any additional details of the post wedding activities. When we left at about 3pm the people were still coming. The final ending to all the activities was a 5 hour car ride in a van full of merry but tired people.
After the wedding we went back to the bride's house
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Standby
Standby for incoming post...2 days from now. I'm heading to a wedding and just got back from another trip the other day. Expect a post 2 days from now detailing both events. Can't you just feel the anticipation!!!
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Christmas!
It's not one of those fancy Christmas card pictures with my family and pets but I figured some of you might enjoy a Christmas picture of me. I got new glasses since my last publicly released photo but the lighting makes them hard to see.
This was my second Christmas in Bangladesh and my first in which I didn't have a trip planned (some of you may remember I joined some co-workers for a trip to Cox's Bazar and St. Martin's Island last Christmas). In a sense that made it much more awkward than last Christmas. The lead up to it didn't feel much at all like Christmas other than the cookie baking day at the Miller's flat, Nate's constant playing of Christmas tunes, and some Church services referencing Christmas' coming. I did have a tree thanks to my mother sending me one last year, but without everyone being in the spirit of Christmas is just doesn't feel the same. I also remembered how much I truly enjoy Howard-Miami Mennonite Church's Christmas eve service. In spite of all that, Christmas day was about as normal of a Christmas for me as I think I'll ever have in Bangladesh. A bunch of us gathered at Jodi's house where she had cooked up a storm and served us a nice brunch. We then read the story of Christ's birth and did some hymn singing. We followed that up by lounging around, talking, watching Christmas movies, and eating lots of snack foods. At the end of the day, I called home and found out that I was wrong in speculating that someone might be up by 7:30 (I figured they would at least be getting ready to do chores by then). They all managed to wake up and chat with me despite their sleepiness. That's really all there is to say about my Christmas. It was good to have friends to share it with but I think I might want to consider going on a trip for Christmas next year. It just works better that way in my opinion.
Today is some sort of holiday (Muslim I think?) so we've had a 5 day weekend here. Other than the Christmas activities, it's really been mostly boring. No one has even been at the office to play badminton with me. I've dealt with this extra time on my hands by taking my time when I'm traveling back and forth from the house. This allows me to gawk right back at those watching me as I ride by. It's really quite a fun game to play when you are bored because bengali's are doing all sorts of stuff everywhere.
I've also done a bit of free lance cooking. I made a dish that is a rice-a-roni like dish. Or at least what I imagine a rice-a-rone dish might be like because I've never actually had rice-a-roni. I basically did some vegetable and rice mixed in with some beef but flavored taco meat style where you boil off the water. Serve it with some fresh cabbage from the garden and some nan picked up from a resturant in town. Nate and I both thought it was a tasty meal.
I have also managed to get most of the way through both books that my mother gave me for Christmas already. She sent me a couple of her copies of books from the Home to Harmony series by Philip Gulley. They are a good humorous light read. Great for lazy days like the last couple of mine.
Here is hoping that all your Christmas' were more exciting than mine! (but not in a bad way of course)
This was my second Christmas in Bangladesh and my first in which I didn't have a trip planned (some of you may remember I joined some co-workers for a trip to Cox's Bazar and St. Martin's Island last Christmas). In a sense that made it much more awkward than last Christmas. The lead up to it didn't feel much at all like Christmas other than the cookie baking day at the Miller's flat, Nate's constant playing of Christmas tunes, and some Church services referencing Christmas' coming. I did have a tree thanks to my mother sending me one last year, but without everyone being in the spirit of Christmas is just doesn't feel the same. I also remembered how much I truly enjoy Howard-Miami Mennonite Church's Christmas eve service. In spite of all that, Christmas day was about as normal of a Christmas for me as I think I'll ever have in Bangladesh. A bunch of us gathered at Jodi's house where she had cooked up a storm and served us a nice brunch. We then read the story of Christ's birth and did some hymn singing. We followed that up by lounging around, talking, watching Christmas movies, and eating lots of snack foods. At the end of the day, I called home and found out that I was wrong in speculating that someone might be up by 7:30 (I figured they would at least be getting ready to do chores by then). They all managed to wake up and chat with me despite their sleepiness. That's really all there is to say about my Christmas. It was good to have friends to share it with but I think I might want to consider going on a trip for Christmas next year. It just works better that way in my opinion.
Today is some sort of holiday (Muslim I think?) so we've had a 5 day weekend here. Other than the Christmas activities, it's really been mostly boring. No one has even been at the office to play badminton with me. I've dealt with this extra time on my hands by taking my time when I'm traveling back and forth from the house. This allows me to gawk right back at those watching me as I ride by. It's really quite a fun game to play when you are bored because bengali's are doing all sorts of stuff everywhere.
I've also done a bit of free lance cooking. I made a dish that is a rice-a-roni like dish. Or at least what I imagine a rice-a-rone dish might be like because I've never actually had rice-a-roni. I basically did some vegetable and rice mixed in with some beef but flavored taco meat style where you boil off the water. Serve it with some fresh cabbage from the garden and some nan picked up from a resturant in town. Nate and I both thought it was a tasty meal.
I have also managed to get most of the way through both books that my mother gave me for Christmas already. She sent me a couple of her copies of books from the Home to Harmony series by Philip Gulley. They are a good humorous light read. Great for lazy days like the last couple of mine.
Here is hoping that all your Christmas' were more exciting than mine! (but not in a bad way of course)
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