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)

Future Plans and Christmas

I placed my order for my flights home this next summer this week. I don't have confirmation yet but I should be in the States from April 30th to June 4th this next summer. It's hard to believe that I'll be home in a little over 4 months. Speaking of which, one of my co-workers suggested that I get a suit tailored for my brother's wedding. I just chuckled at them and told them I didn't want to dress better than the groom at his own wedding. That's just tacky and inconsiderate. I am still considering having the suit made anyway and just not wearing the jacket to the wedding.

I had my first moment of it actually feeling like a real Christmas season this week. A bunch of us went to Dhaka this week as there as a national holiday (victory day, their version of independence day) and we had a big cookie baking day at the Miller's house. The massive volume of cookies reminded me of the lead up to Christmas back at home. The best moment was not the baking though. The best moment was when we had a regular meal with a huge plate of cookies as the center piece of the table. That image hit me hard as one I have extremely strong memories of family and love. Times spent at Aunt Susan's, the Birkey Christmas get togethers, at the Bond's house, and with company over at my parents place came flooding back to me. I can talk about how comfortable I am with the fact that I'm here all I want but I'd be a fool to not miss those times. To be frank, I could be ok with doing away with Christmas gifts, but never in a million years would I give away those times together with family and friends (side note to family and friends, I do realize that I don't do a good job of showing this when I don't manage to send you Christmas cards).

I don't remember if I've mentioned on here or not that a group of us international people living in Bogra have started a home church. One of the things we discussed this week (as an aside to the message) was our different traditions. My favorite one was that in South Korea they have a Christmas Eve service that ends with them going around to peoples doorsteps at 2 am singing. Could you imagine someone showing up at your doorstep at 2am on Christmas to sing to you? Though I guess some of my readers are probably old enough that they are up at 2am for one of their many nightly bathroom breaks, so it might not be so much of an out of the way thing for them. :-)

I've been wanting to...

I've been wanting to write on here. I really have. I just didn't really have good motivation behind that desire. My mother sent me an email saying I'm failing to do this. I had been thinking about that before she sent the email but likely wouldn't be writing this even now if it weren't for that email. I do have to confess that my not updating this blog has not been the only way I've failed her. I managed to forget to call her on her birthday. Somehow it got sandwiched between a Colts victory and my housemates birthday this year. That's the best reason I can come up with as to how that brain fart happened.

Lately I've been riding motorcycle or bicycle to work. Unfortunately, it's dark when I come and when I leave from work. It's also very foggy at night now. The combination of the dark and the fog make already dangerous roads all that much more dangerous. That and the 20 minutes or so that driving them affords me each way gives me way to much time to think about life. Too many serene thoughts have been thought on that ride recently.

Speaking of thoughts. I made Nate a cake for his birthday the other day. Only we didn't have enough eggs when I wanted to bake it. Daniel told me to run to the village shop to get some. I hadn't been there before and didn't know the price of eggs. It wasn't a trip that I relished making. Armed with directions on how to find it and Daniel's word that eggs weren't that expensive I headed out because I really wanted to make the cake pretty badly. I got to the shop and asked for 8 eggs. She named her price of 48 taka for them (roughly $.75). I told her I thought that was a little expensive (based off of Daniel's comment). She proceeded to get very angry with me and give me a lecture (in Bangla of course) about how this is the only shop in town and that the price is correct. Still not knowing what was up I bought the eggs and high tailed it back to the house. Unfortunately for me, all the kids who had gathered on my shopping adventure thought my not knowing the price of eggs was hilarious. They of course quickly ran home to tell their families the funny story except for one boy. He decided to ride his bicycle right next to me and tell me how dumb I had been. If you know me, I was obviously not enjoying this too much. I ended up telling him to shut up (luckily he did) and got back to my house ASAP. The cake was delicious, but I'm sure I haven't heard the end of this story yet. After I'm gone I'll probably always be remembered as the silly Bideshi that didn't know the price of eggs.

I've also recently taken up playing badminton left handed. I got tired of my right shoulder hurting so I just switched arms. I'm absolutely terrible left handed. All the losing is tearing at my competitive side but I'm committed to this.

In Nepal, again...

So I've returned to Nepal again. I spent that last 9 days here attending the World Aprecciative Inquiry conference and visiting IDE projects with my boss. Those days were very interesting. Appreciative Inquiry seems like something that could have huge implications upon how we do our work as MCC. Basically, the concept was born out of someone looking at something like a newspaper and realizing that all we ever think about is negatives. The question is raised then, what happens if we start targeting positives instead? The idea that this has birthed is that by focusing on our strengths we can actually use them to cover up most of our weaknesses and in a much healthier way. As with all things, I think this has it's place in what we do but don't really see it as a perfect solution. The IDE visit was to see some of their agriculture work and we shared some really good information back and forth. That said, I'm still in Nepal even after those trips. All the flights are full so I've had to wait for an additional 2 days in Katmandhu by myself. It's given me a lot of time to think and here are some of my musings:

I've been sick in 5 different countries now. Canada is the only country I've been to in which I can't remember getting sick. I've thrown up in at least 3 of those 5 countries. I might have thrown up in a 4th one but that would require some double checking to verify as I don't remember.

Throwing up doesn't seem as horrible now as it used to when I was a child. The past several times I've thrown up it's seemed much more like a pleasent thing rather than a bad experience. I don't even recall having a bad aftertaste in my mouth after any of them. I can remember once here in Bangladesh in which I wished I could throw up and couldn't manage, it was horrible.

I'm hands down an extrovert. When I'm left by myself for too long I absolutely hate it. I've been on my own for about 36 hours now and am just fed up with it.

When I'm around people too much I get burned out. I take on more than I should sometimes just mentally other times physically. I should let that go and just do what I can.

"the kiss glows in his heart" (The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevsky) I read this quote in a different book but it really struck me anyway. I'm not one for setting specific goals in life because I figure I need to leave things up to God but I will profess to having one solid goal. When I'm dead and gone I want to be remembered as one who has left kisses that glowed on other's hearts. (I feel like I've done this in many relationships in life and yet know I have many more that I could do a much better job of this.)

8lbs of coffee is a lot

well, that's all I'll post for now...enjoy

Mufajil

On Saturday I worked outside moving some bricks around to make the house look nicer. My neighbor (You guessed it! His name is Mufajil) from across the street come over. I was chatting with him and he had his son with him so I asked what his name was. I would guess that his son is maybe 3? His name is Mitu (pronounced "Me Two"). I found this quit humorous but not as humorous as I thought it was when I saw little Mitu running down the street with his pants around his ankles about 30 minutes later.

Names I've had on Bus Tickets

Mr. Fil (Most common spelling.)

Mr. Feal

Mr. Feel

Mr. Feeel

Mr. Fiel

Mr. Fail

Mr. Phil (They actual ask me how to spell it occasionally.)

Things I saw on my way to work this morning.

The first thing I saw was something like 4 neighbor kids come out on the front porch of their house to yell at me. There is something about me on a motorcycle that they never seem to get tired of.

Then I saw a little girl (maybe 12?) brushing her teeth.

As I got out of my village I saw a fat short guy running at a pace that I'm sure I could walk faster than. He definitely seemed out of place.

I also saw a Muslim guy walking with prayer beads. I haven't seen too many of those either.

Some fields of rice were beginning to be harvested.

I saw a group of nomadic gypsies starting their day.

I also saw a group of about 50 soldiers in shorts and "A" shirts finishing up their morning run.

My final joy of my morning ride into work was seeing an older man with a very nicely trimmed beard and Muslim tupee (prayer hat). That description is only from the head up of course, from the neck down he was wearing a full windbreaker running suit which was complete with many large patches of vibrant colors like purple, yellow, and red. It took me back to my childhood when I small part of the US population thought that such things looked good.

To be truthful with you, I was sad at how few people I did see brushing their teeth this morning. For some reason Bengalis seem to like to stand on the street while they do it and often times I'll see 5 or 6 people brushing their teeth before I'm even out of my own village.

Blargghhhh

Why Blargghhhh, you might ask? Some might have noticed a certain amount of lack of creativity and motivation occurring on my blog the past several weeks. If you didn't notice, just trust me, it did happen (I know, I was there, does that mean I have street cred?). I think the problem is a result of my missing a mundane life. I've been missing the nice life that I had when I spent weeks at a time at home in Bogra. Even when I have been in Bogra, I managed to spice up that life a little bit by moving into a new house. Now I'm attempting to settle into said house without being here for more than maybe 3 days in a row at any point in time. Makes me miss my childhood when I would spend 99% of my time at home on the farm because my parents weren't dumb enough to torture themselves by taking me places when they had someone else at home to watch over me in a controlled environment (I can't blame them). That's one snippet of life. Here are additional random snippets.

I slammed my finger in a window today. It bled.

My big toenails are getting long. I should probably trim them.

I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and decided I should probably work on being a little more diligent in how I approach my faith. I then read Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and decided that some memorization work might be a good start since he talks about how that's where the Jewish children in Jesus' time started. I chose Psalms because it seemed like a good mixture of praises and laments that you could pull out and "chew your cud" on. I then took one last practical step and gave myself 2 years to complete this task. This is an effort to do this as something I enjoy and not ruin the pleasure of enjoying it by pressuring myself into difficult measurables. I'm not on pace to reach my goal currently but I'm hoping I get a snowball effect later on maybe even beat it.

My pants got ripped the other day. I really liked those pants and now they will be out of commission until I have time to take them to be patched. I got those pants for free from a coworker.

I bought new sandals last night. My old ones broke and were getting pretty nasty even before that. I wore my new ones out of the store. I told the salesman that I didn't want the old ones. I thought they might have someone they sell used ones to. I was wrong, he picked them up, walked to the front of the store as I stood there watching (fun fact for you, the comma that would normally go in this location is called an Oxford Comma and is actually totally unnecessary, which is why I will leave it out) and just threw them into the street.

I have a fake Christmas tree sitting on the desk in front of me. I never put it away from last year and it seems that there is no rush now.

We plan on having a real American turkey for thanksgiving this year. Someone is coming to Bangladesh in Mid-November and will be throwing a frozen turkey in their suitcase for us.

Those new sandals I bought, yeah, totally rubbing my feet raw in a spot or two. I'm hoping the problem goes away if they're broken in or even if I just build up calluses I'll be ok.

I haven't been to the dentist in a while. Just thought it was worth mentioning.

I do think I'm going to get new glasses soon. I had talked myself out of them about a month ago but since the dry season has arrived the dust is starting to build and that is reeking havoc with my contacts. This has put the prospect of wearing my current glasses more into focus (laugh, it's a pun) and since they are half broken, that seems like a bad situation.

Oh and I was talking to my boss earlier this week. He was telling me about this thing called appreciative inquiry. Next thing I know he is mentioning how there is a workshop on it going on up in Nepal later this month and that a few people from MCC will be attending. Next thing I know after that he says, "you should go too, I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner." Within a couple of hours I had a plane ticket back to Katmandhu on Biman Airlines for November 15. Part of me wanted to turn it down and just stay put for awhile but frankly, this is a really interesting concept to me and I can see where it might help me directly in the work I do.

Oh and I also got a cold yesterday. It's a fun life

I'm ready to get back to Bangladesh

Our flight from Katmandhu to Dhaka got canceled yesterday after they forced us to wait in what is the most disgusting airport I've ever been in for about 4-5 hours. That really stinks (literally and figuratively). Oh and yesterday was my dad's birthday. Happy Birthday Dad, here's 7 hours in an airport that smells of BO and urine! I'll write more about the rest of the journey later but they put us up in a hotel for the night and are sending us on a different plane this afternoon.

A Long Anticipated Day

Today was the day Steven and Dad arrived in Bangladesh. Thus begins almost 2 weeks of adventures together. Dad walked out of the Airport terminal this morning and had the exact same reaction I had almost a year ago. "Whoa!" This came out as his glasses quickly fogged up. Up until that point I had thought the morning was actually rather cool and pleasant. I'm going to chalk that up to adjusting. We quickly hopped into the car and started our drive to my place. They spent the next 3.5 hours fighting exhaustion from the flight and fear from the roads. It has been decided that my mother would absolutely hate this place and would not be able to handle the traffic. If she thought my driving in Chicago was bad...

I got a ton of goodies. There was more candy than I should eat in a month or two. (What my mother lacks in courage, she makes up for with love.) I'll definitely share. We all took naps after arriving. We all needed them. After our naps we went around and met the office staff. We probably should have taken a little more time doing this but it's a rough call when you are completely jet lagged. Dad and Steven got their first taste of Bangla food for lunch. They seemed to think that it didn't suit their taste buds all that well but felt better for having ate it. Then we went for a walk around town. We went to the stinky fish market. We took a riverside walk. Dad stopped and took pictures of goats every time he saw them. On our way back from our walk it started raining. We got stuck under an overhang for over half an hour. Finally, we grabbed some rickshaws and headed back to the office. Only when I looked back from my rickshaw, Steven's rickshaw was not behind us like I expected. He doesn't know a single word of Bangla, so I immediately started worrying. I told our driver to stop and pretty soon I saw Steven coming. "whew" I could exhale. I told our guy to go again, but Steven's guy managed to pass us before we got up to speed. Then of course our rickshaw's chain came off and we had to stop to put it back on. This meant that we had now lost Steven ahead of us! Luckily, I realized that the guy would just take him to the bus stand and then neither of them would know what to do or where to go because Steven doesn't have Taka (Bangladesh Currency) or know Bangla. Pretty soon we found them there and finally got back to the office.

All of us Ex-pat workers (non-bengali workers) got together with our boss Mokhles for dinner at a resturant. On the way there we made a side trip to Jodi's flat where Dad and Steven are spending the night in her spare bedroom. That means they get an actual soft bed rather than the boards covered with a hard mat that is available at the office. We road all three of us on one rickshaw to get there. We took this picture to commemorate the event and vowed never to attempt the stunt again. We are all too big to share a rickshaw.


Dad has considerable troubles getting in and out of rickshaws because of the giant first step you must take. I try to help him the best I can but you should probably pray that he doesn't fall and break a hip in his fragile old age. ;-) Ok, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but he is about as graceful getting into a rickshaw as he is doing Wii bowling.

Dinner was good. We went to a chinese place. I almost accidentally ate shrimp. Now it's time for an early trip to bed for all of us. It's been a long day of travel and we need our beauty sleep.

Better late than never?

Life's been a little hectic around Bangladesh lately. That and since my camera was broken I had to get these from my housemate, they're a little late. I might add some more from housemate Nate as well at a later time. All the credit for the following pictures goes to Daniel Thomas.

In the background is probably Kangchenjunga which is the world's third highest mountain at 28,169 feet. If I am correct about this being Kangchenjunga (say that 3 times quickly, I dare you) then we are about 50 miles from it in this picture. The point being is that it's still absolutely huge.

We figure that the spot we were standing on for these views was right around 12,000 feet high. Not bad when you consider that the locals would call it a hill and not a mountain.

Yeah, it's the same mountain in 3 straight pictures, get over it.

I would just like to point out that there are still cows at 10,000 feet.

Sandakphu to Phalut ridge hike is definitely a recommended hike. The entire trip is one scenic view after another. (When you aren't in the clouds that is.) Also, we had several encounters with groups of 2 or 3 local shepherd boys playing soccer near very steep hills. One would have to be very careful not to lose a ball over the edge.

We all got sunburns and we all came up with our own way of trying to protect ourselves on our last day. We all also managed to look pretty silly doing this.

They buried me under about 5 or 6 blankets to help me warm back up when I had hypothermia. The bucket was for just in case I threw up because I was nauseous as well.

I also talked to Grandma B this morning. She's found the strength and steadiness of hand to start quilting again. It gives her something to do to pass the time but she's afraid she'll run out of quilting to do. It also seems like some of the treatments she has received are starting to work. She hasn't had to be given platelets for several days and has stopped having nose bleeds. I guess her doctor was even talking to her about what point things would have to reach for her to return to the nursing home. She's not out of the woods yet but she seems to be heading that direction. Thank you to anyone who might have seen my earlier post and prayed for her.

Follow up on thoughts

The following are a list of thoughts I had on vacation:

"Wow, Darjeeling streets have tons of crap on them." (feces not junk)

"There are a lot of people with dread locks here."

"That artwork is kind of kinky and strange...I bet my cousin Ed might like it."

"GOSH, DARN IT!" (Upon reaching the top of yet another hill only to realize it's just a ridge and you get about 50ft of flat ridge to walk on before you climb the next hill which when you reach the top you realize is only a ridge and...)

"Why did I decide to do this? I hate climbing mountains. I'm going to move back to good ole' flat Indiana and never leave again in my life." (My dehydrated, exhausted, hypothermia ravaged self)

"WOW!!!!! This is beautiful enough to be worth the suffering for...maybe I could get used to this if I was just in a little better shape." (the morning sunrise after)

"Darn it, I've been pronouncing 'yak' wrong my entire life, how was I to know that it's pronounced 'yauk'."

"Mmm, bacon sounds good right now."

"Mmm, I could really go for a salad right now." (This one really caught my housemates off guard.)

"Agh! I need music..."

"Does God really have emotions or do we just impose those unconsciously on God?"

"Wow, when I'm by myself, I'm actually pretty lame."

"I wonder if I really can influence everyone around me just by smiling."

"I'd really like to find my sister a gift because she would appreciate that...but she likes things that are pretty and I just don't have much of a clue what that is...what could I find that wouldn't have to be pretty and still be good?"

Greetings from Glenaries

Hello from Darjeeling, India.

I've spent the last 5 or 6 days doing some traveling. My adventure started out with a bus ride at 6:30 in the morning. We caught a bus to the India-Bangladesh border. That was about 6 hours long. It was a pretty nice day and other than being small and packed the bus wasn't so bad. We got the the border and were joking about how foreigners probably don't pass through this border very often when we ran into three other foreigners. They were a group of friends from Mexico, Lithuania, and China. The border crossing process was a pain in the neck and took about 3 hours. Once we got to the other side we realized that we were going to get into Darjeeling really late. We talked to the other group going through the border and convinced them to join us in hiring a jeep to take us directly to Darjeeling. Our jeep driver was crazy in many ways that reminded me of drivers in Bangladesh (not a compliment by any means). He still managed to get us there at about 8:30 unscathed.

The next day we just hung out in Darjeeling and made our plans for our actual trek. It turns out that most of the places here don't open up until mid-morning which was weird for us because there is a 1.5 hour time difference between Bangladesh and India which left us getting up early. We also bought some snacks for our trip. Raisins, Cashews, pistachios, some fruit, and dried coconut covered with sugar were all delicious finds. (Elevation approx: 1900 m)

Our trekking adventure itself started out the following day with a 6:30 am jeep ride. We hopped in and they proceeded to try to cram as many people in the vehicle as possible. They soon realized that with the big foreigners you can't fit 4 to a seat like normal. The actual drive was probably only about 70km but it took something like 5 hours. The driver stopped at almost every village along the way and even stopped to change brake pads in the middle of the trip (this wasn't the only mechanical break we had). We finally got to Rimbrik and grabbed some soup with momos for lunch. We then hiked the final 7km to Sri Khola where we were going to stay the first night. Sri Khola is absolutely beautiful. The hotel we were at was in a deep valley along a river rapids. The family that ran the hotel was ever so kind and the rooms were clean even if there wasn't any showers available. Once you hit the trail you are supposed to rough it after all, right? (Elevation approx:1500m)

The next morning we got up early and a couple of us took a swim in the river. It was cold but bearable. It reminded me of polar bearing at Camp Amigo as a kid. By the time we had breakfast and packed our guide showed up. Our first days hike to take us to Sandukphu. We now estimate that it might have been a 12-15km trek. At the time if felt like 20-30km to me. It was up the steepest hills I've ever been on in my life. We kept marching up to the top of a hill only to realize when we got there that it wasn't the top of the hill but rather just the top of a ridge with another ridge to climb looming within a few hundred feet. We finally arrived at Sandukphu (elevation 3600m) at about 2:30 pm. Did I mention I've never climbed a mountain before? That's a key bit of information because I managed to get dehydration and hypothermia at the same time on this climb. On top of that, it's really hard to breath at 3600m high when you've been within about 100m of sea level for almost an entire year. I spent my first four hours or so up on the hill shivering under about 5 blankets while drinking 2 liters of water. I started feeling a little better by nightfall.

The next morning we got up at 4 am. That might sound crazy to some but if you want to watch the sun come up over one of the most amazing places in the world, that's what you have to do. We marched up a hill and waited for the sun. The view was everything it was billed to be. You can see Mt. Everest and about 30 other massive mountains from Sandukphu. They are all huge! After a wonderful start to the morning I was feeling considerably better than the night before so I decided to press on. Our second adventure was to Phalut. At 3500m, it is slightly lower than Sandukphu but is supposed to be another really good place to see the mountains in the morning. The walk to Phalut is mostly around a ridge with a little bit of up and down climbing. The total distance was 21km and we managed it without too much difficulty (especially since I was drinking tons of water). Unfortunately, what we didn't think of was the fact that in the 3000m high range, the atmosphere is really thin. As a result of our ignorance, we all got matching sunburns on our face, necks, and hands. The ridge walk itself was absolutely beautiful as well. Phalut town, was not so impressive. It was literally just a government run trekkers hut near an army outpost. The only good thing to say about it was that they allowed us plenty of blankets. We were all in bed by 7pm this night.

We got up at 4 am the next day again. We hiked to the top of the hill and got a mildly good mornign view. The clouds messed up part of it this morning. One thing that really caught our attention was that Kachenzunga (the mountain closest to us and the 3rd largest in the world behind Everest and K2) was absolutely crazy big. We looked later and it seems we were only about 60km from it and it looks every bit the 26,000ft tall beast that it is. This day we were concluding our hike with a 15km hike back to Sri Khola. It sure sounded like music to my ears to be walking down hill on our third day of hard hiking. We must of walked downhill nonstop for at least 3.5 hours. That is a lot of downhill. By the end our knees and feet felt like someone had taken a hammer to them repeatedly. My right hamstring was trying to cramp up on me so I had to shuffle down and use my left hamstring as much as possible. I had survived my first long mountain trek though and now have a good idea what to expect on my next one.

The next day we just hung out in Sri Khola and relaxed. I ended up finishing 1 book and completely reading another. It felt good to have nothing better to do and a beautiful river to do nothing by.

This morning we got up at 4 again and started hiking to Rimbrik to catch our 6:30 jeep back to Darjeeling. On this jeep they realized that if they split us up they could still manage to cram people 4 to a seat. At one point I counted 16 people in the three front bench seats (including children on laps of course). We again had mechanical breaks (apparently really common). We got in to Darjeeling at around noon and had a nice lunch of soup and more momos. I had my first shower in about 5 days and then found myself here at Glenaries. Glenaries is a bakery/cafe in Darjeeling. They also have some computers available. It's a very nice atmosphere. Tomorrow, I'll head down to Siliguri so that I can catch an early bus and a long day of transportation back to Bangladesh. It's been a wonderful vacation despite a lot of hard things physically.

News

I spent this past weekend/beginning of the work week traveling to Dhaka, doing lots of work, and getting very little sleep because the Colts game started at 12am here.

A coworker who was on home leave came back and that has added some excitement to Bogra (the town I live in).

I'm going with a couple of my co-workers to Darjeeling this next week for vacation.

Then I got an email about my grandma's medical situation. She's been having some trouble with her blood platelet levels. Apparently she is now reaching levels where "she could bleed to death internally at any time." Those are rough words for me to read. They are still treating her and they still hope to get them back up via the same treatment that worked last time. Prayers are very much welcome.

For those of you like my mother...

It turns out that some people don't know how to use a hyperlink. So I will put up a quick explanation. You know how your computer screen has buttons that you click on that take you to websites? Well, words can be those buttons. The secret to knowing when a word is one of those buttons is if you see different colored words (like the ones I just typed) in the text. Some, may take you to strange places and others might take you to places that might blow your mind. Others take you to see pictures of me.

BEHOLD! the power of the internet.

Go forth and prosper in your new knowledge.

For my Mother

My camera is dead but other's aren't.

Salty Love

This past week was spent mostly in Dhaka the capital. I had some business in the office that I needed to get done. As is my luck, as the weekend approached I got sick. I'm pretty sure this on was food poisoning. That's a new one for me. I think it's because I'm an idiot and ate a bunch of dates that I didn't wash first. All I know is that when I spent the better part of 3 hours yacking and feeling miserable in the bathroom, my housemate was there to make me multiple batches of saline water and make sure I stayed hydrated until I felt at least somewhat better. I really appreciate that a lot.

That killed most of the excitement of the week but it didn't stop me from going to a fancy Korean restaurant for supper tonight. It was delicious and a great atmosphere. Maybe next time I'll even work up the courage to try sushi. (didn't figure it would be smart after having just been sick)

The dieing breaths of my camera.

It seems that my camera has decided to stop working. I think that the battery charging system is just dead from dealing with all the power surges here but I'm not 100% sure that's the case. Regardless, I figure that means this is a good time to share some final pictures from said camera since you won't be getting any for awhile.

Mufajil, is our neighbor out in the village. I'm pretty sure I've written about him before but the man is a wonderful guy and a real hard worker.

This is a very typical knife in Bangladesh. You see them everywhere and people walk down the street carrying them all the time. It was weird for me to get used to seeing people nonchalantly carrying one of these or similar looking wicked knives down the street. It just isn't that common in American society for someone to carry a knife in public anymore.

I only put this picture in here because when I saw it, I thought, "Wow, from some angles I really do look a lot like my brother Jon."

Snacks anyone? This is just a picture of a common shop on the side of the road. Complete with tiny bananas that just aren't really all that amazingly tasty. Consider it like a gas station in America. You see them everywhere and each has a slightly different selection even if they are mostly the same.

This is the very last image I captured before my camera stopped working. Lokhon (the guy on the right) is taller than I am. One of my housemates was up on the roof pointing out some work to be done when the roof gave out on him and he fell about 15 feet. He fractured his wrist, had a concussion, and lots of bruises but he was very promptly taken care of as well as prayed for and is doing pretty good. I have never been on the roof and have no intentions of going there, I'm just glad he's ok.

I've still got some more pictures to share but I think maybe I'll wait for another time when I've got nothing to write about to use them. :-)

Ramadan

Just a quick update on what I've learned about Ramadan.

Apparently you may eat up until the first call to prayer. That call to prayer is currently at about 4:30 am. Then you fast all day long, neither eating nor drinking until around 7:30 pm at the evening and last call to prayer. Then you scarf down some food before heading to prayer. Then come back and eat a very large dinner at the usual 9:30 or 10 pm time frame.

The explanation I got from one of my co-workers as to what Ramadan is about is as follows. She said that they are supposed to fast so that they might understand how the poor people feel. She also said that they are supposed to give the money that they save from not eating all day to the poor. She also happened to say that many people have lost sight of this.

Also from a neutral point of view I find it perplexing that the prices of food go up during Ramadan because that would mean that this time is actually harder for the poor to get food.

Interesting...very interesting...

The Good News

While Jesus is good news, that's not what I'm going to talk about here.



Sorry if I'm disappointing the evangelical in you.



The good news I'm talking about isn't even from Bangladesh. The good news is basically that all the news from home is pretty much great. I found out from one brother that I'm getting a new niece or nephew. I found out from another brother that he's getting married and has a new job. Not only that, the wedding date is set and I'll likely make it home for Bluffton's graduation, the wedding, and my birthday next summer. Tons of other people I know are getting married next summer (I count at least 5 weddings off the top of my head). I will be very surprised if I make it to any of them but I can still be happy for people right? My mom is even managing to sell some of my goats. That's kind of cool.

There is a little bit of bad news too. One of our bucks died and it appears that my car has done the same. I'm not too worried about those though. I definitely had an affinity for both but in the larger scheme of life they aren't really all that important.

In other news, Ramadan has started here. I find it very amusing that they mark the beginning and the end of the fasting times with a tornado siren. I find it less amusing that the first one goes off before 6 in the morning. I've heard that the poor people (like rickshaw pullers) don't keep the fast because they have to eat to work. I wonder how that affects their mentality on life? Feel free to ask any other questions you might have about Ramadan. I'm learning about this myself and I can't profess to know all that much.

Double Jeopardy!

Ok, I must start off by admitting that this post doesn't really have anything to do with double jeopardy. It just sounded like a fun title. I hope I didn't get your hopes up or crush your hopes already.

This past week started off with lots of bike rides. One bike ride included a funny story but I can't tell you about that because I've promised my friend Jill that I would tell her about it first and she reads this so it would be a spoiler for her. So I guess you'll just have to come back next week and read about it then. Several days of bike riding were followed by 2 days of another head cold. I got better though and ended up coming to Dhaka for the weekend because there was a car coming and I had to be here for work today anyways. Thursday was a national holiday. I'm not sure which one it was but I stayed inside all day. No one else was in the guest house with me all day long. It was a good reminder that, while I like my alone time, I'm definitely an extroverted person. That evening I joined several co-workers for a wonderful dinner and game night. The next day I headed with my boss' family to the American Club. I watched several games of basketball but wasn't allowed to play since I didn't bring shoes. :-( I found it amusing that the American Ambassador turned out to be exactly what the stereotype of those people is. He was an older gentleman who would call fouls but wouldn't let you call them on him. I have no clue how he is professionally but I've heard that the American Embassy workers themselves are pretty rude (I've never been there, just heard). After watching some games, I went and played with the boss' daughters in the pool. After that was lunch, I had a Chicken Caesar Salad. You might question that choice but hey, a good safe salad is a rare thing here so it was what I desired. It turned out to be a really good choice. I spent the afternoon relaxing and reading a book before spending the last half hour at the club trying to teach the girls how to do cartwheels. They didn't quite get there yet but I told them that they are way ahead of where I was at their age since I didn't figure out how to do cartwheels until last summer.

After leaving the club I actually went to church. There was one final English speaking church in Dhaka that I hadn't been to yet. The reason for that was that it's a pain in the butt to get to. I really enjoyed how welcoming and friendly everyone was. I think I'll be coming back to this church. I met two Bengali guys there that lead to two vastly different experiences. I met one Bengali guy who was only 27 and single, and like me, had nothing to do for the rest of the evening. We ended up hanging out for the evening. I felt pretty comfortable with him and he knew a few of my co-workers through other connections so we had some stuff to talk about. The other Bengali man, well that's a different story.

He was what I've found to be the typical baptist missionary here. I met him and he invited me over for tea at his office. I immediately knew this was a ploy to ask me for assistance but I couldn't see a polite way going through it so I agreed to come the next day. That said, I wasn't going to be stupid about how I did it. I told him that 5 in the evening would work best. Bengali people usually eat lunch around 3 or 4 and I didn't want to risk being forced into a meal. I also made plans to have to go to dinner somewhere with friends. This gave me a rock solid excuse to get out before I got suckered into a 9 or 10 pm dinner invitation. I reached his place at about a quarter after 5 (don't show up on time, it's not normal here). He immediately went into a lecture about the mission work that his organization does. His office was in his house by the way. He did introduce me to his wife and daughter. I then spent the next hour trying to promise as little as possible as to how much I would be able to do for him as he lectured me on the good work they do and how God would provide through me. In one moment he started out saying, "the Bible says," and I immediately knew I was going to hear "seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you", sure enough that's exactly what he said. That said, I did make the man a promise and he did seem pretty sincere to me. His organization (SNEHO) is a local Bengali run Christian development and ministry program. They apparently have 5 schools and they use a room in those schools as a church on Sundays. He said that $30 a month would pay a teacher's wage. (That actually seemed pretty low to me and the teachers in the picture he had looked really young, so I'm not sure what the deal is, they might only be part time or maybe they don't actually have a teaching degree.) Anywho, if you want more information about the things they are doing or how you can help fund the work they are doing. You can send me a message and I'll help you do that. Personally, I'm choosing to support him by praying for his work. I would encourage you to at least do the same.

Just for the record, my dinner plans got me out of there by 7. He also commented about how willing I was to try and help. I wonder how hard it is to get these kind of commitments out of other people for him? All in all I would count it a successful misadventure and am very happy with how I managed it.

Well you gotta have faith

I'm not sure where I want to go with this post but "faith" is a topic I've been thinking about lately. I think it's a good topic to be thinking about. I also have an admission to make. Mine isn't all that strong.

In fact, it really bothers me when people make my coming to Bangladesh out to be some sort of giant, scary show of faith. What one does in daily moments no matter where they are, are the giant, scary show of faith things. Thus far, I've been pretty lost as to what that means here. I have lots of dreams as to what that could mean back in the states but very few here. I'm not sure what that says about me.

That said, just saying that I'm going to recommit myself to trying to figure that out isn't the answer. That is one of the weaknesses of my personality. I'm just not really driven to push myself like I should and really never have been at anything. I don't know that I have the answer as to how to fix this but my boss gave me a new idea a couple of weeks ago.

He was talking about doing development work and how a friend of his from his days in Africa had developed a system for getting the poor to help themselves. Essentially you get a village together and you just talk to them about their problems. Then you ask them what they could do in the next 6 months to make a difference in those problems. Then you ask them what they could do in the next 15 minutes to make a difference in those problems. The emphasis isn't solving the problems, it's on working towards making a difference in them. It seems to me that this might be worth checking out.

What can I do in any given 15 minutes to work towards my goal? I think I'm just going to start by trying to talk to people for longer than I usually feel comfortable.

Any thoughts? You wanna try it with me? (not my 15 minute goal, but your own based off of this method)

Random thoughts from the week

Wow, I can still do almost no sleep as long as I have really busy days!




What's big, yellow, and stares at everything? That truck with 30 Bengali's in the back.




Did he really just upset an entire toll both staff for just an eight cent overcharge?




Why do they call it "taking" a picture? What connotations does the word "taking" have? What alternative words could one come up with instead?





HURRAY!!! Good news!





I wonder if I should work on breaking in my hiking shoes.





I wonder if I should start exercising for trekking in general... especially since I'm not sure what kind of shape Steven and Dad will be in... ;-)




Rain has come again!

Sadness, Joy, and a day on the Road.

This was a rough week for my Grandmothers. Grandma Reisner passed away this week. Grandma Birkey fell and broke her hip. There is a lot of sadness for me in both those statements but surprisingly a lot of joy as well. Grandma Reisner had been in a nursing home for the past couple of years in a declined state of health. That said, before I left, I figured it was the last time I would see her. I made my peace and accepted it then. More than that though, both of my Grandmothers were and are true women of God. As such, I have this strange trust that no matter what the situation, they will be happy and God will be happy with them. That is the Joy that I find in suffering times.

Today I spent 12 hours in a vehicle. We drove to the India/Bangladesh border to pick up people for a conference that is being held right here in good ole' Bogra. That is what I'll be up this week. I just hope the rest of the days aren't 5:30am-10pm like today was.

Also worth noting: I said "warshroom" today. I thought I had broken myself of that "r" habit but it appears that deep down inside, it is still a part of me. I would like to thank my mother for that. ;-)

This a picture of my future home from the road.

The front lawn area, also from the road.

This is what you see if you look out the front door.

This is what you see if you look out the back door.

This is a bedroom, the angle and lack of curtain make it seem smaller than it is.

Living room/dining room/kitchen

The sign out by the road.

I baked a cake.

I cut my finger with a knife while baking a cake last night. That in and of itself is not that big of deal. I cut my finger opening milk....


Also, once I got done baking I realized that I forgot to put the vanilla in.


Oh well, it still felt good to bake a cake.


Okay, bye now.

UNLIMITED! and Farewells

So you remember how we had the Korean's over for the 4th of July? Well, they invited us over the very next night and like always they way outdid us on the quality and variety of food. I definitely enjoy Korean food! They had us over because it was our last chance to all be together. Two co-workers headed to the States this past week for vacations and this next week another co-worker will go home for good while one of the Koreans will leave for good too. It's a sad fact of life when living internationally or even in college for that matter, people will finish and go elsewhere.

The next day I went to Dhaka for some business. I got to sit next to a Bengali guy who has lived the past 11 years in Philadelphia on the bus. He is home taking care of some business and gave me a lot of interesting but small updates on what is going on at home. He even bought me a sandwich at the rest stop. lol

The next day I and two of my co-workers went to visit a possible location for an all staff training this fall. As we pulled away from the office for an hour long trip, I asked if they knew what our budget for this training was. My one co-worker, sounding quite sure of herself, responded, "Unlimited." That was one of those moments where you just want to slap your hand to your face and sigh. I'm glad I find those moments funny. We went to the place and found it to be quite a nice situation for our needs. I went back and asked the manager in charge of finances what our actual budget was and he gave me a ball park figure that we should stay in. It looks like we can manage it if we are careful about how we spend our money.

The next day I went to go and try to buy some books from the market. I found one of the books I needed and the man told me the price so I tried to barter down like usual. He went nuts on my in really nice english about how I had the wrong ideas about book merchants and the prices they charge! I thought it was hilarious that he posed such a well thought out argument in such correct english. I ended up paying a little more than I would have originally thought I could bring him down to, but sometimes you have to give credit where credit is due.

Following that the only other major happening of the week was my getting sick. It was just some head cold that gave me a fever, runny nose, sore throat, and terrible headaches. I'm not going to lie though, the thought that it could be what is commonly referred to as, "swine flu" did cross my mind. I looked it up and all my symptoms were indeed swine flu symptoms but I lacked a few key things, like flu.

The rest of this will just be pictures...I haven't posted any in awhile and I'm catching flack from home for it.

Just to Clarify, he isn't actually mad.

My Boss

and this is evidence of child labor...



Montu and me hanging out while I had the beard




What I look like now that I've shaved.

In and out with a Bang...

This past week had two big events that book-ended the week.

The first was a big disagreement with my roommate. I'm not going to go into details but we both talked about it later and agreed that being in Bangladesh for 8 months without taking a vacation probably hasn't helped. It is also worth noting that doing a communal living situation while also adjusting to a new culture isn't easy. I think it's safe to say that things are going much better now. A mistake doesn't become a problem unless you refuse to correct it, right?

After that I got to join a couple co-workers for the first mediation seminar that our program did. It was a great thing to see. They essentially brought together the local people who would deal with small conflicts and had a discussion about peace with them. They were all very excited about it which was very encouraging to see. Unfortunately, who knows whether the rubber will hit the road on that one when it comes to these guys actually acting on their new knowledge. This is Bangladesh, where corruption is king and breaking loose of that world is extremely difficult.

Later in the week I got to work on a meal plan for a 4 day workshop. I never thought it would be as much of a headache as it was. Putting together meals with people from 4 different countries and very different cultures is difficult in a country that seems to think that rice and oil are the only major food groups that should be at every meal. We did our best and then handed it over to a co-worker who understands creating healthy meals better than us. I am extremely grateful to him for taking the revision on. I fear it could be difficult.

Some other stuff happened at work.

Then I decided to make a road trip. A couple of months ago I visited Piergacha. While I was there I said I would return sometime during pineapple season. Well, it is pineapple season and I needed to go. I didn't really feel like spending the time or the money being there for an entire weekend. So I decided to make it a one day trip. Friday morning I got up at 5 because I know there is a bus that leaves for that direction at 6. It turns out that it goes at 7 now because of the time change. It seems that everyone has pretty much ignored the government changing the time which completely defeats the purpose of them changing it in the first place. I finally got my bus after an hour of waiting. I got some sleep on the bus and it was highly refreshing. Unfortunately, the bus conductor forgot me when it came to my stop and the rains had changed it enough that I didn't recognize it. We were about 5km past my stop when he realized it. He ended up dropping me off with some federal police at their stand watching the road. They put me on the next bus heading back to where I was going. In the process of this I saw them taking a bribe. They stopped the bus and immediately the bus conductor came out and shook the policeman's hand. I just happened to notice that as he shook the policeman's hand he also slipped him some money. (This was before he knew why the policeman was stopping him.) I finally did get to the road I needed dropped off at. I got a rickshaw to take me the rest of the way. Unfortunately, the road was fairly muddy and I got dirty on this next section of the journey. I did see a point in the road where a military transport truck and a regular pickup truck were both stuck in the mud because a small bridge was out and they tried going around it. I finally got to their house at about 12. I hung out for several hours and ate way too much pineapple. Then at about 4:30 I started my return journey completely loaded down with two huge bags of pineapples as a gift for the office staff in Bogra. My guess is that they weighed at least 30 lbs each, maybe as much at 40. This wasn't a problem, but the fact that there aren't a lot of buses that head to Bogra in the evening was a problem. I ended up not getting one until around 7:30. It was a local bus. I had to stoop because I was tall enough to touch the ceiling with my head by at least an inch. Fortunately, the seats were far enough apart that I could sit comfortably. Unfortunately, everyone on the bus thought I was the coolest thing ever and proceeded to want to be my best friend. After about 1/2 an hour of this I decided it would be a good time to listen to some music. I put my headphones on during a lull in the conversation. They proceeded to continue trying to talk to me. When they realized I couldn't hear them they poked me to get my attention and then managed to get another 5 minutes of conversation in. They even asked if they could listen to my music with me. I said no and eventually got my headphones back on. This time I did what I've learned is the best trick for buses with annoying people. I pretended to sleep. Eventually, I actually fell asleep and spent the next several hours pretending or actually sleeping. I eventually made it back to Bogra at about 11:20 and was dehydrated. I know that feeling well now. Stomach pains and a headache mean dehydration. Unfortunately, eating way to much pineapple has the same effect as eating too many oranges. My mother used to warn us against eating too many oranges but never said anything about pineapple. If you don't know what I'm talking about by now, I'm not going to tell you. I slept very fitfully that night and ended up fighting dehydration all night long. Thankfully, the worst of it was behind me by morning. Which was very good because it was the 4th of July and we decided to celebrate.

The celebration was the other big bang in the Big Bang. We decided we would do hamburgers and have friends over. So we invited the Korean's over. The meal was good but fairly plain because we forgot to get toppings for the burgers. The after dinner entertainment was excellent though thanks to Dave. He managed to find some fireworks and we went outside to set them off. You ever seen those strips of fireworks that do nothing but blow up very violently and make a loud noise? I know that they are illegal in most US states because they can blow up your hand. He got some of those. I mentioned beforehand that they were very dangerous. I was right and we had two close calls with the two bundles we had. Other than that the fireworks worked like a charm and the neighbors all came to their windows to enjoy the show. After the fireworks some people stayed up and watched the movie Independence Day. I watched a bit of it but I headed to bed before it finished because it was past my bed time. I would consider it a very nice 4th of July party considering the circumstances.

This week looks to be a mildy intersting one. I have a business trip to Dhaka in the middle of the week and upon my return we are going to finish up that meal plan. Who knows what else may happen.

It's been a hard day's night...

This past week was a bit of a rough one with spells of joy intermingled.

My computer died again so I reinstalled windows on it. I then found out that I have lost Microsoft Office in the process. The computer now works better than it ever did but is still messed up in some ways. It doesn't do some things automatically like it used to (like switching to headphones when you plug them in) but I've figured out ways around such problems.

We had a visitor this past weekend. He was from MCC Nepal. The organization he is seconded to does similar things to what we do and it was great talking to him about that as well as just having someone new to talk to about life abroad.

Did I mention yet that this past week was pretty much the hottest and most humid week I've had in Bangladesh? Bangladesh just changed to daylight savings time last weekend as well. The time change has many people really confused. They call it, "the new government time." It was meant as an effort to conserve energy by having people go to work in cooler times of the day. I've heard that the Universities are all ignoring it and staying with the previous times. It seems to have had little affect on much except my sleep. Our business hours have not changed and my worst fears were realized in this transition. Bengali people don't normally go to bed until 11 or so normally and before the time change, the power would often go off from 8-9 or 9-10. I almost always go to bed at 10 because I like getting up early. Well because the power still goes out the usual times it is now going out at 9-10 or 10-11. Not only is it hotter when I'm trying to go to bed but several times the fans have gone out and I've been left sweating instead of sleeping. This meant that I was tired all week long. I couldn't think straight all week long and didn't manage to get much work done.

At the end of the week we all went to Dhaka. I watched about 30 episodes of the TV shows Chuck and The Office. I helped out with some interviews on while I was there on the weekend which was interesting. We also went to my new favorite place in Bangladesh. Today is one of my co-worker's birthday and she decided that we should celebrate it all weekend long. So we went bowling Friday night. It wasn't bowling that made me excited though. (I actually messed up my hand pretty bad doing bowling and was quite annoyed that the lanes weren't oiled because I can't bowl straight anymore since I learned how to spin the ball) They had a Dance Dance Revolution machine at the bowling alley! I fell in love with the game my senior year of college and once I got my rhythm back I was doing pretty decent at this one. At 45 cents a play for two people I think it's a pretty good deal and envision myself taking future trips to play when I'm in Dhaka.

I also got a chance to talk to some friends and family via phone in the past week. That's always a good time. At the start of this next week, it has finally rained and brought cool air with it. I hope it makes life a lot more enjoyable.

My Wish for You

Do you ever wish people could just see and experience something so that they could understand what you really mean?

I had one of those moments this week.

I was out in a village watching a group of women work with a Micro-Credit lender. It wasn't the group that caught my attention, it was the man sitting in the chair behind them.

He was about the age of my father, but that wasn't what stood out to me.

It was his breathing.

In and out it went just like you and me. Except, it wasn't just like you and me.

Every time he breathed in I could see his ribs as clear as day through his pectoral muscles. I could count all of them.

I've seen tons of skinny and malnourished people here in Bangladesh but I hope I never forget that man.

He made it real for me.

My wish for you is that you could see something like this.

Not because these things are good, but rather because these are the things worth understanding about our world.

Long time...

So a few things have transpired to make this post horribly late. The most important would be that I have been on the road for 8 out of the past 9 days. The second most important would be that my computer decided to delete one of it's loading files so that it wouldn't work at all. Luckily, once I got back to the Dhaka office where I am currently, it only took our IT Administrator about an hour to fix. I love Vista. I also love sarcasm.

My first travel was to Dinajpur. I got to see a couple of partner organizations that I hadn't been to before. I also got to see an HIV/Aids training going on with a group of men that were probably an age range of 20's to 50's. It was really refreshing to see how extremely interested they were in the subject. Sometimes my job has me so much focused on looking into possible weaknesses of our program that I begin to forget all the amazing things that we do.

Upon returning from that trip I had one night of rest before we spent the next night in a ferocious game of Littlest Pet Shop Monopoly with the Koreans. With ended up being next to last, but I was pretty proud of my effort because I only ever was able to purchase 3 territories. I even almost outlasted another person which would have put me in 3rd place out of 5. That didn't finish until about 11:30 pm and I did some more stuff until 2 am when I finally got to sleep. Later that morning I got up at 6 to pack for my next trip. Unfortunately, my lack of sleep did have some adverse effects on my cognative abilities at that point in the morning. I somehow ended up convincing myself that it made sense for me to wear shoes on my trip. Mind you, my current trip is a 9 day adventure to 3 different locations. Also, I have only worn shoes twice in the past 5 months or so. I didn't even bring sandals along because I thought they would take up space. My rationalization at the time had something to do with hiding money in my shoes (which I have never done before and still haven't done) and the idea that I could wash 1 pair of socks while I wore the other (unessasary if you don't have to wear them in the first place!). These are the kinds of things that make sense in my mind on four hours of sleep. I also managed to forget my extra short sleeve button up shirts that I was going to wear for work purposes despite the fact that I set them on my bed right next to my bag. As a result of that I'm pretty sure I've worn the same shirt for at least part of the day on 5 out of the last 6 days. Luckily I did manage to pack two T-shirts thinking that I would wear them on the weekends. (Also a success was that I managed to pack plenty of clean underwear, I can't imagine what I would do if I messed that up instead.)

The start of my larger trip took me to Mymensingh to see the city and see what other wings of MCC are up to. I must say, it was a really refreshing weekend. The town was beautiful and the projects we do there are absolutely amazing. Many of the activities we visited are suppliers to Ten Thousand Villages and their stories are pretty amazing. Maybe I will take time later to advertise their products on here with the stories behind them as I hear they become available in Ten Thousand Villages. After that trip I headed straight to Comilla again with a co-worker. We spent the last several days there visiting with farmers and some previous agriculture partners we have had. It was hot, humid, and miserable enough to make the beauty of the area not worth it in my mind. I gathered some intersting information and found getting other information very frustrating. It didn't help that I still hadn't caught up on sleep yet. I also had an interesting evening my last night there. At about 9:15 or so I decided to wash my clothes and take a shower. I am pretty terrible at washing my clothes by hand (but that's really not important to this story). While I was taking my shower it started raining. I was not alarmed by this and was actually pretty tickled that the power didn't go off. The previous two nights it had rained and both times the power went off for a period of time during the storm. Unfortunately, that high didn't last long. I walked out of the shower to realize that I had left my window open and a half inch of water was standing on my bed. I quickly went over the options in my sleep deprived mind and quickly decided that telling my hosts was out of the question. It was about 10 at this time and I just wanted to go to bed. If I told them, they would make a big fuss, find me another room, and it would be a huge ordeal that I didn't feel like messing with. So I decided to quietly deal with it on my own the best a could. I pulled the covers off the pillows a set the pillows wet side up on a section of the floor that wasn't drenched like the bed. I hung up the covers. I then took the sheet off the bed (they only give you one here) and used it best I could to mop up as much water as I could. I then wrung it out in the bathroom before taking down the mosquito net and using the mosquito net frame on the bed as a drying rack. I then used the towel I had just dried off with to soak up a large majority of the remaining water on the bed. Luckily, I noticed that the foot of the bed was dry and they had given me an extra towel. I threw the extra towel over the dry part of the bed and curled up into the fetal position on top of it for a decent nights sleep. In the morning everything was dry enough that you couldn't see that it was wet, so I put it all back together the way it was and pretended like it never happened. Other than a big puddle of water under the bed and a slightly damp mattress, they are probably none the wiser to my night of mayheim.

Since this adventure I have come to Dhaka where I am finishing out the week working in the office before staying the weekend. I have borrowed a pair of sandals from my boss who is in the States right now. I hope he isn't upset with my for it but I would say he likely isn't. (I doubt MCC would let him fire me for such a thing even if he was.) I'm also saying goodbye to another co-worker for the second time in about a month of time. That's always a sad event and two more co-workers will be leaving us next month.

I haven't heard any recent time lines for moving into the new house lately but I'd be willing to guess that we don't stand a chance until at least late this month. We are going to henna my beard tonight which should be pretty funny and a good picture to publish on here later. I'm going to shave it off tomorrow. I'm ready to see it go.

Hope you've enjoyed the catch up.

The War has begun...

The other night I was going to the bathroom and when I opened the door there was about 6 cockroaches right inside of it. Two ran at my feet, THEY RAN AT MY FEET!!! I don't appreciate that kind of action at any time and especially not when I have to pee. So I naturally went on a killing spree. I started by letting them go back to their hole in the wall. I then went and got a can of bug spray. I fogged their hole pretty good and they came spilling out. So I of course turned tail and ran away like the big baby I can be sometimes. The next morning I walked into the bathroom and saw eight cockroaches on their backs. I was pretty proud of myself and immediately thought it would be funny to scare a friend with them (she later informed me that if I had succeeded she would have killed me). I got a box to put them in but as I started to scoop the first one into the box it suddenly sprang back to life and started scurrying rapidly! I of course followed the previous night's actions of running away. I came back quickly, armed with a sandal and meaning business. I didn't leave it to chance on any of them. That was how it began. Since then I have probably killed close to another 15 cockroaches in my house and another house. We had a nice deal, but they broke it by running at my feet.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was that it was 41 degrees Celsius here last weekend. That's something like 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine that with some humidity and it was down right nasty during the middle of the day. But then a cyclone came through. It cooled things off but also took out our power. Where I am it was pretty much just a bunch of wind with a little bit of rain. Unfortunately for at least 155 Bengali people it was also their cause of death. At this point there are also a fair amount of people without food or drinking water as a result of the storm. Prayers for them and the families of those who didn't survive would be very welcome.

The only other interesting thing from this past week was probably my bike race with a couple of nice young Bengali men. I was out on a bike ride with one of my co-workers and a young guy rides up next to us. His buddy who was riding on the back luggage rack (a very common site here) started trying to talk to us in english. Not being in the conversation mood we just sped up to try and leave them. They increased to follow suit and tried to talk to me again. So I accelerated to a pretty decent clip. They matched me and from the smile on their faces I think they thought they had me, but then I really started sprinting and try as he might the guy pedaling could'nt keep up despite the fact that both of us left my co-worker a little ways back. I think they got the point because they soon disappeared. Most of the time I would have just sucked it up and talked to them but sometimes it I just don't feel like it.

This past week was a very interesting one.

My boss and I were standing outside of a truck waiting on our driver to use the bathroom before continuing our journey to visit a former partner. While we were standing there a guy walked up to the curb and just starred at us for awhile. After starring for awhile he started talking to my boss and the result was roughly the following:
man: "is he Muslim?" (referring to me of course)
boss: "yes" (he lied just to mess with the man)
man: "where is he from?"
boss: "Bogra" (the town we live in)
man: "where was he from before that?"
boss: "Bogra"
man: "are you sure he's Muslim?" (someone's starting to catch on! lol)
boss: "he's not actually Muslim, he's Christian"
man: "oh, bad luck on him then"
boss: "why's that?"
man: "he has a Muslim beard but isn't Muslim, it's bad luck"
boss: looks at the beardless man, "it's bad luck for us to be Muslim and not have the beard then"
man: "oh, right" (he didn't have a good comeback to that one)

I saw 3 different places with actual green grass yards in one day on a trip this past weekend!
(excuse the excitement but it's the little things that seem like home that excite me sometimes)

Along with those grassy areas I got to see a fair amount of beautiful things in a trip to Comilla this past weekend. I also got to hang out with a fun group of people. It was fun despite the fact our host tried to kill us by over feeding us. (I also discovered that despite the fact that I can eat a massive amount to appease people (a handy skill to have here), I can only do that for a couple of meals before even I can't force myself to do it any longer.) Then there was the boat ride back to Dhaka at the end of the trip.

We were discussing the fact that we could take a boat back to Dhaka instead of a bus and since it seemed like a good idea to us we were asking about it. Our co-worker told us there were 2 boats that go. One boat leaves at 12 and another leaves at 2. He was also suggesting that we should get on the 12 boat because the 2 boat has troubles sometimes and doesn't run. This worked out well for us because the 12 boat would get us back by the time we were wanting to return but the 2 boat wouldn't. I still asked him what kinds of troubles the 2 boat has though. I kid you not his reply was, "well sometimes it sinks because it has leaks, but the 12 boat doesn't have any problems with leaks." We got on the 12 boat of course, but unfortunately we got there too late to get seats so we had to stand on railing space. We got a lot of stares, but that isn't unusual. Despite our annoyance at the not getting seats part we soon settled in and just enjoyed the ride which was indeed better than the bus because it didn't involve a ton of swerving and honking.

My birthday went pretty decent. It started off in Dhaka. One of my co-workers baked me a cake the night before and it was delicious just like her cooking always is. On my actual birthday I woke up early with some sort of stomach bug and began a series of trips to the bathroom. I'll spare you those details though. I figured it was my birthday gift from Bangladesh. It seemed a fitting one, but I told it that it really shouldn't have. I called home and talked to the family for about an hour which is always good. Then I went to the office and got to say hi to all the staff there while also attending the weekly meeting. I then hopped on a bus heading to Bogra. It was a rather pleasant ride just like it was the last time I took the same bus. The driver on the 11 am TR bus from Dhaka to Bogra is a pretty good driver other than the fact that he doesn't know how to ease into the breaks. He loves to slam on them at every chance he gets but I rarely feel like I'm going to do at his hands so I am ok with it. It was also nice because there were only about 20 people on the bus, which means I didn't have to share a seat. I got to Bogra feeling pretty good. I went to the office and said hi to everyone one. Then sat at my computer and did some tinkering before watching a movie in the evening. I went to bed at 9 because I had done a lot of traveling in the previous several days and hadn't gotten a good sleep. That was my birthday and it was nice and simple. I like it that way.

I will likely have a little bit more to post in the next couple of days.

;-)

So I was reading an article on ESPN.com today and a quote from Wayman Tisdale stood out to me as something worth sharing.

"Nothing can change me," Tisdale told The Associated Press last June. "You go through things. You don't change because things come in your life. You get better because things come in your life."

That's how I strive to see life.



This past week was a rough one at times but in the end it was a very self-fulfilling one. I've been able to refocus on some things and resolve them in my mind and that's always a blessing. Life isn't perfect but I'd be surprised if it was.

On a lighter note I had a chance to reflect on some things I never would have known I would see here as I rode the local bus this week.
- I never would have guessed that I would see my dumb ideas from back in the states being used successfully by bengali people. I saw a man successfully working on telephone wires in the middle of the street at the top of a 25ft. bamboo ladder being held up by 5 men at its base. This, as I reflected at the moment, was much dumber than my idea of using a tripod ladder to change the light bulb in the stairway back at home.
- I never would have guessed that I'd meet a Muslim man working for a Catholic Mission via a Mennonite Organization. That is the power of MCC I guess. We even had a nice discussion on religion at lunch.
-Finally, I never thought I would have a guy rubbing his sweaty butt up and down my leg for 1o minutes while I rode that local bus. He spilled his rice so he just turned towards his seat in the aisle and squatted with his bum against my leg like it was no big deal. Being that I am who I am, I let him go and used that moment to reflect on these oddittees.