Engaged!

Just in case you hadn't heard. Esther and I got engaged this past weekend. In light of this fact, I'll spend this week's post relaying the story of how that went down since people always seem interested in such things and I don't have anything better to rant about given the heavy nature of the last two posts.

So last Friday was the 6 month anniversary of our first date. I've been thinking that would be a good day to propose for awhile now. To start off the day, I got up early and bought Esther flowers which I gave to her with a card which worked exactly as I planned. :-) I figured if I didn't get her anything other than a card she would be thinking that either I'm in idiot or I'm up to something. She loved the flowers and quickly devoured the card (as in read it, she didn't actually eat it). We then went to church as we usually do on Friday, spent the afternoon lounging around resting, went up to a worship time on the roof with friends, and finally went to dinner together. We went out to a nice Indian restaurant that we both like and just enjoyed dinner together. While at dinner we realized that in 6 months this was only our third dinner date by ourselves (though I just realized that it was actually our fourth since the picture above is of a dinner date which was not included in our count). I guess that is what happens when you have two extroverts. Anyways, I didn't do it there either. We went home to find that Esther's roommate had some friends over so we sat and chatted with them for a bit. Eventually they left and Esther went to turn the A/C on and get on her computer in her bedroom. I took this time to prepare by putting the ring in my pocket and getting out my second card that I had hid away. I went in to her and told her that I had another card for her. She thought that was sweet and as she went to open it I told her that she couldn't yet. I told her that I had one more small present to give her first. I then got down on one knee and proposed. In retrospect, her reaction was hilarious, at the time it was a bit scary. Every one of the thoughts she went through for the next 5-7 seconds was shown on her face. It started off with the "are you serious" thought which she actually muttered the words to as I got down on one knee and proceeded through a large amount of emotions before the ending, happy, yes came. My diversion worked, she had no clue I was even thinking about it all day. You could tell the whole thing had her pretty shocked which leads me to my pro tip of the day for all future proposing men: 11pm is a dumb time to propose, she is going to be incredibly wired right after the proposal and if she can't sleep, you can't either. I was dragging pretty bad come 3:30 am when we finally got all the people called that we absolutely had to call immediately so that she could announce it publicly. That was probably a good thing though as she probably would have had a hard time keeping it a secret as evidenced by the fact that she was in a daze for the next two days and kept muttering "were getting married" randomly throughout the day.

So yeah, I'm marrying a truly wonderful woman...eventually. No date set yet. Setting a date is a tricky balance of needing to save money to have a wedding and navigating MCC's policy on getting married on top of the usual challenges of doing this normally challenging enough activity. Prayers would be appreciated.

Our World

One of the things that I really enjoy about living outside of the U.S. is the experience in general. I'm not talking about the oppressive things that I often joke about on here. I'm talking about the things that you would likely never realize if you don't travel. Last week I was sitting in a meeting and events put words to the thing I had been feeling for months. I realized that one of the difficulties and beauties of living in Bangladesh is that we understand things in different ways. I think we sometimes take the foundations of our understanding for granted. Actually, we probably almost always take the foundations of our understanding for granted. The environment in which you grow up drastically affects how you perceive the world around you. If you grow up in a hut on the edge of the desert in Botswana, the spiders in your house are no big deal but rain is a huge deal. If you grow up in the rigid school structure and hierarchical system of Bangladesh, patiently waiting for things to occur is not a big deal but abstract processing is a challenge. If you grow up in the wealth and prosperity of the U.S., giving is not a challenge but sacrificing is.

That last one is something I'm learning from a situation with some Bengali Christians I am currently dealing with. The wife is working as a cook/househelper, the husband is a blind guy who has a dream of running a center for the disabled. They have a faith that says that they can trust that the Lord will provide. I have a faith that says the Lord will provide but we also need to be good stewards of what God provides. They keep asking me for money. I keep telling them to be good stewards and telling them that I'm poor too. When I really think about it though, I'm not really poor. I'm just bad at sacrificing my ingrained american desires so that I might share. I rejoice though because I wouldn't be challenging myself like this if I didn't take a step away from home. I don't think we see ourselves as clearly in a mirror as we do in the eyes of someone different than us. If you look closely enough, that reflection in their eyes just may shake your foundations and from this, stronger ones may arrive.

Back in Bangladesh

Now I'm truly back in Bangladesh. 7 hour bus rides, cockroaches, staring, rain, heat, crazy prices just because I'm white, and my first bout of sickness are the stories of the past week and part of the reason why I'm late in blogging this week. I am happy though that I haven't had too much trouble with mosquitoes just yet.

Ramadan is an interesting time of year. It is a month long lead up to the first Eid. The two Eids are essentially the equivalent of Christmas and Easter (in scale only) for the Muslim calendar. Ramadan is the month of fasting. My understanding is that this is meant to be a time of remembering the poor and hungry around them and a call to be generous. It is also a time to purify yourself of bad habits in the lead up to Eid. During this month, no one eats or drinks from sunrise to sunset. For me as a Christian westerner it has its ups and downs. One upside is that our office hours shorten by an hour each day. I much prefer this shortened day to long days that drag on even if you aren't overly busy. The downside is that all restaurants are closed and so you spend pretty much all month staying at home rather than meeting friends places. Another downside is that as a Christian, I may not be fasting, but I still need to respect that others around me are. This means no eating or drinking publicly for me. That makes long bus rides a drag.

In keeping with the thinking about poor people though, someone showed me an interesting video this past week and I would invite you to watch it if you have time. It's called The Story of Stuff and while I don't endorse everything it says (I think they badly over-dramatize), I do endorse the general concept. You can watch it here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8).

The Return!

Some of you may have noticed that I have been gone for the last two months. Your eyes did not deceive you, I really was gone. I gallivanted around the USA, UK, and surprisingly the UAE. Actually to tell you the truth, didn't do that much gallivanting in any of those countries. In the USA I took exactly two trips farther than a couple of hours from my parents house. I mostly just relaxed. In the UK I traveled a bit but it was mostly just going to 4-5 places to see people. Then there was my unexpected day in the UAE. On my return to Bangladesh I got to have some fun. I boarded my flight an hour early because that is when they were boarding us but then the two Malaysian pilots managed to screw up our paperwork so we had to wait until an hour after we were supposed to leave to get clearance to leave. We taxied out to the tarmac and then a nasty storm delayed us for another 1.5 hours. Of course when the storm finished we had to wait another half hour while all the planes that were circling landed. Eventually we got going though and by that time I knew the Catholic couple next to me and our stewardess pretty well. Unfortunately, all the time on the tarmac sitting with the engines running meant that we had to stop and refuel in Kuwait which eventually meant that we landed 2 hours after my plane to Dhaka left. Given the lack of a time machine in Abu Dhabi to transport me back and get me on the plane I missed; I had no alternative but to wait in line like everyone else who missed a flight to get rearranged. Unfortunately again, I had to wait 2.5 hours to get to the front of the line. Luckily, by the time I reached the front of the line I knew the Bengali American Professor standing next to me decently well. Since we both had American passports we could get free visas on arrival so they offered to put us up in a hotel and send us out on an Emirates flight later in the day. We said sure to that and they told us to go have a seat while they arranged the details. 30 minutes later they finally had it figured out and asked if we would mind sharing a room. Neither of us minded so they set us up with a room with two single beds. It then took us 2 more hours to get through customs, baggage, and getting a car to the hotel. By the time we reached the hotel we had 5 hours before the vehicle they had arranged for us take to Dubai for our Emirates flight came to pick us up. We decided that sleep would be silly so we both called our families, took showers, and perused the internet for a few hours. Then we went downstairs for our free breakfast at about 6:30 in the morning. We ate large amounts of food at the buffet since there were no arrangements for lunch and our flight left at 1pm. We had a great conversation over a long breakfast and by the time we got back up to our rooms and packed up, it was time to go. As my older brother predicted, there wasn't much other than sand in between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Coming into Dubai was pretty cool, there are a ton of sky scrapers in that city and the Burj Khalifa is ridiculously tall. We got the airport 3 hours before our flight which was a good thing since we spent the next hour walking from counter to counter trying to figure out why no one could figure out our ticketing. The Dubai airport is insanely big. To give you an idea of scale, we walked in the front doors and the nearest desk area was over 100 yards away. The entrance and check in area alone had to have been 6 acres or more. Eventually one of the check in people figured out our problem and explained to us that Etihad had screwed up the paperwork. Once they realized this they were extremely helpful and nice to us. The flight went smoothly and I arrived in Dhaka about 16 hours later than originally planned.

I have now been back for a weekend and am getting back to regularly scheduled life. I've been surprised so far by how natural slipping right back into my life here has been thus far. My Bangla doesn't seem to have slipped too horribly and my patience is sky high right now. I slept great my first night back but have tossed and turned the last two nights. I would guess that is jet lag getting to me but it hasn't caused me too much trouble during the day. I went to church on Friday and got to see everyone I haven't seen for two months and meet a few new people. Then Esther made it back safely on Saturday morning so I went to pick her up from the airport and help her get home. We both took a nap in the afternoon for a short bit and then we got invited over to dinner by a friend which was a blessing because it created the kind of exciting atmosphere you need to keep you awake when you need to fight sleep like Esther was. On the way over we got our first good drenching as the rain poured out on us with a vengeful fury. Luckily our host had a bunch of dry clothes for people to change into!

So far, so good. Tomorrow morning I will head back to Bogra and settle into home. For the next month I'll be dealing with Ramadan and the shortened office hours and strange times that come with that (more details will be shared in next weeks blog). I'm excited to get back to work and feeling really good about how refreshed and energized I am to be productive.

Until next week,

Phil

Elephants

This past weekend I was riding a motorcycle through town and got stuck behind a van. I had resigned myself to being stuck behind this van for a good distance because of the way traffic was at the time when as we rounded a slight bend in the road...an elephant appeared. You may wonder what this has to do with the van? Well in Bangladesh it isn't that uncommon for people with elephants to just wander around taking money from cars in exchange for not tearing up their car. It is just one more form of corruption. Fortunately for me, an elephant cannot hold up a motorcycle and I was able to pass the van just fine. I was in a truck once that was held up by an elephant but our driver saw it coming and managed to squeeze around the elephant quickly because the truck is more agile and quick than most vehicles in Bangladesh.

In other news, I'll be back in the US next week for a two month home leave. Maybe I'll see you there?

Desire to Rage

One of the biggest challenges for me in being in Bangladesh is anger management. You are constantly bombarded by things that are just incredibly frustrating. In the last week alone I can think of 6 things that have made me very angry. When I was a child, I used to go into rages. I'd yell and do things like throw objects at the ground (sometimes breaking them). As I've gotten older I've realized the wisdom there is in controlling your anger through that initial storm of feeling but that isn't to say I'm perfect. I try to forgive when I calm down. I know I need to. Without further ado, the 6 things and my reactions.

1: One of my coworkers tells me about the trouble they are having getting government approval on something because the officials in various places want them to pay bribes. This annoys me so much and it happens everywhere here but I have no face to put on it so it just simmers with resentment inside of me. I take a deep breath and let it go as just something I can't control here.

2: Riding on rickshaw with one of my friends in Dhaka. Our peddler swerves at a young woman for absolutely no reason. He comes with a fraction of an inch of hitting her with a rickshaw axle (which hurts pretty darn bad). Before I know it, I've jabbed the rickshaw driver in the back with my umbrella (briefly forgot I was a pacifist). He turns to look at me and in the moment I realize how stupid I've just been. I apologize to him. Here in my anger I jabbed a poor oppressed guy for nearly hitting a poor oppressed woman. I felt like a real idiot for doing that.

3: Several CNG (local small 3 wheeled taxi) drivers asked for ridiculous prices just because I'm a foreigner at various times this past weekend. I tried to haggle them down or if the price was just way too crazy, I just walked away. I need to remember to not show my frustration with them when haggling. If you act cheerful, they are much more likely to continue bartering with you. If you show your anger in any way, they've won and it is impossible to barter a good price out of them.

4: I got home after a week and a half away to find a huge cockroach staring at me from the top of my bedpost. I grabbed the broom and went ballistic on him. I yelled all sorts of mean things as I repeatedly crushed him with that broom. I then grabbed a can of bug spray and killed a bunch of his family in the kitchen. It was not a good day to be a cockroach in my house. In this situation I was tired from a long week of traveling and realization that I have a lot of house cleaning to do. I still would have killed them regardless because I have guests coming this weekend who have made it very clear that they do not appreciate cockroaches. There was no need for me to do it with the anger with which I did that.

5: Yesterday morning a plan that we had to go to a partner fell apart at last second because one of the guys had to go to a meeting which they were supposed to have finished the previous evening. I got strait up out of my desk chair and went to his boss who had made the decision and we had a discussion about the merits of both decisions. I accepted that he really did need to go to the meeting but voiced my feelings about how I really need him to come on the partner trip. His boss suggested that we postpone our trip by a few hours if we could. After a few minutes of discussion about whether this was possible we arranged for this change. It all worked out fine in the end. I was still annoyed that it had happened but glad a solution could be found.

6: This morning I got up early to come into the office and use Skype to call my family. I've been so busy lately that I haven't had much of a chance to talk to any of them. I have a couple of issues I really need to talk to several people about. Unfortunately, the internet was down at the office and I ended up getting up early for nothing. I tried everything I could to get the internet going again. I was so angry, I slammed my fist down on my desk. This has happened to me several times now in the last couple of months since we switched internet providers. It is so frustrating when I have so little time to squeeze in these calls and just can't manage it. Then I get to thinking about the other things I could be getting done instead during the time that I wasted coming into the office early and that only makes me more upset. It makes me want to yell at my boss for making the decision to switch providers (even though I know and respect why he did that). It makes me want to break down into a fit of throwing things and has me on the verge of tears it is so frustrating. But eventually, I take some time to cool down and realize that stuff happens in life. This is beyond my control. Getting angry does nothing but make me feel terrible. So I calm down and try to forgive myself.

Missionary Midnight

How many of you have ever heard of missionary midnight? It is a joke based on the idea that 10pm is a missionary's equivalent to midnight and therefore you are almost always in bed by then. Last night a group of my friends (a wonderful group of people) threw me an early birthday party. During the later stages of this party a new idea sprung forth. MISSIONARY TWISTER! Larry wanted to play twister but we didn't have a board. So we got some dry erase markers and labeled the tiles on the floor with Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green. Unfortunately, we didn't have colored markers, just black, so we just labeled them with letters. This lead to Dave's now famous comment, "Missionary Twister, we're so poor we can't even afford color!" We then skipped out on the spinner (because we didn't have one) and used four dutch blitz cards (just happen to be red, yellow, blue, and green!). Our designated caller, Gill, would pick a limb based off her random whim then draw a card for color. At times, it was very questionable whether these choices were random at all (they most definitely were not) but it was a good challenge and lots of fun. There are lots of pictures from this event that I hope never find their way to the internet! Esther threatened to send them directly to my mother but I assured her that no pictures of me doing anything silly would be surprising to my mother at this point.

Moral of the Story: Just like my childhood, in Bangladesh sometimes creating your own fun beats commercialized fun.