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.

;-)