Ants

So I just remembered something important.






I made some Koolaid the other day.






I forgot to strain it...














We've been having troubles with ants in our sugar lately...






That Koolaid is all gone already...




I don't think he noticed but I must say, Sorry Nate, anyway...







You know what they say about ants in your Koolaid though right?






Great taste, goes down smooth!

It's new years here...so I thought, "hey, why not post"

I have a bicycle and I'm not sure why this is underlined and blue...Veronika the girls cook and the look I often got from her this past weekend while we were visiting her home in Pirgacha.Rajon, Veronika's son, is making a kite out of newspaper, rice, bamboo, and a piece of string...I challenge you to give it a try. I don't know what is up with the underline thing...from what I understand this sight doesn't even give me the option to underline...ugh, I should have gone with a wordpress site for my blog instead...Have any clue what this is? I'll give you a hint, several of my co-workers thought they grew on trees.The girls being sweet and innocent, meanwhile, Rajon is Rajon...BTW-the goats they are holding are less than a week old and adorable.I don't know this little guy's name but we had a good time together.Evidence of said good time...(I don't know why it's making me do this in bold either)

Lena my co-worker, a rickshaw wala, and myself gliding along a brick road on a hot day...this was actually on a vangari though, not a rickshaw...

Suddenly it's letting me not underline? I don't get this program right now. Whatever though. In the past week I went swimming at the local hotel's pool, spent an evening hanging out at the Korean's apartment, went out for a field visit on the back of a motorcycle, went on another field visit (but took the bus this time), and finished up with another trip to Pirgacha.

The trip to Pirgacha was the highlight. I continue to love my trips to the places where indigenous people live. It was beautiful and peaceful. The people were wonderful and I got sick again. Lol, it wasn't all that bad this time other than when we went on the hike. (I thought I was feeling better but wasn't.) For the most part though, I still got to enjoy myself and spent a fair amount of time just playing with the kids which I always love to do. A group of 4 of us went and stayed from friday until sunday. We attended a couple of services at the local Catholic Mission. They were pretty packed. After having lunch on Sunday, we caught a ride to town so we could catch our bus back to Bogra. We almost missed our bus but got there on time with a little bit of help from some really nice people. I was happy and so I tipped our rickshaw wala a generous amount, which made him really happy too. We got back at a decent time and I was even able to skype my family who were at Steven's house for the day.

I have one more comment about cockroaches before I let that subject go to rest for awhile. Nate jockingly commented last night that he was going to have to send an awkward email to our boss about how I talk to things. He made a reference to Tom Hanks and Castaway. All because I yelled at a cockroach that he wasn't supposed to come into the living room as I smashed him with my sandal. I was kind of in a grumpy mood already last night and that darn cockroach didn't choose a forgiving time to make his move. Also on my bad side is Lena's male rabbit who she claims can't be replaced for awhile. All I know is that he is looking pretty tastey. I would imagine this streak of hostility is brought on by the heat. It has been very hot lately. Yesterday I was out riding motorcycle and realized that even at around 30 mph the wind was barely keeping me cool. I'm to the point were I probably drink close to a gallon of water a day just to keep hydrated. The worst part is that it isn't even humid yet most of the time. I'm sure I'll find a way to survive but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it. So for everyone back at home who got snow last week, send some this way!

*edit* so it turns out that they aren't blue...and they're all bolded...I'm probably going crazy

Issues Brewing...

So you remember the saga of Hank, Jake, and Gary right? Well there is some new pertinent information about them. I have now learned not to just throw open the door and walk in to join them. One night I was doing this to go brush my teeth and Hank landed on my shoulder. I wasn't wearing a shirt at the time! Lets just say I stood up very straight in the second it took him to jump back to the wall. I still managed not to kill him though, I mean it wasn't his fault I came barging into his home right? The other thing I realized tonight is that I got the names wrong. They should be Hank, Jake, and Mary! Yeah, that's right there are little ones running around. They seem pretty skittish so I'm assuming they are Hank's but maybe Jake's just been telling horror stories about what happens when you cross me and they're scared by me still. Either way, it's still weird to see the little brood running around when I thought it was just me and the guys.

The Clock

So I was writing an email the other day and I had one of those aha moments. I was thinking about how I approach things and I realized that very little about me has changed since I was a little child. Please let me take the time to draw you an analogy as to why I think this is true. My grandma loves to tell the story about the time when I destroyed her clock. Any time we are talking about things I did as a child she brings it up. You see, I'm a deeply curious person and always have been. I want to know why things work and all the factors behind them. So you can imagine the torture a clock would have been for me as a child. What makes the dials turn and why so steadily? So one day I got my hands on my grandma's clock and probably a screw driver. I dismantled it completely and of course grandma caught me at the end of the act. She asked me why I had done it and I of course came up with an intelligent response of something like, "I don't know, I wanted to know what was inside." (I wasn't conniving enough yet at that age to lie) Here comes the key part though, as grandma tells the story she always comments about how we never did get that clock back together again. That was the aha moment in my reminiscing! You see I love to try to dismantle everything in the world around me so I can understand or even just partially understand how they work. Sometimes this is a physical dismantling and sometimes it applies to concepts which I take apart in my mind. Unfortunately, as in the case of the clock, oftentimes my attempts to reassemble things would be an utter disaster. I mean with time, I have gotten better at getting them back together but it isn't always the case. I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is watch me! I might take apart your clock and not be able to put it together again! At the same time though, there are probably some things you can allow me to do. I think maybe under supervision I could clean the clock or just open the case and look at how it works. If you let me do these kinds of things you might learn a few things about said clock yourself and maybe come out of it with a better clock in the long run of things (through the cleaning or in a better understanding of what you are looking for in the next version). For your everyone's sake though, don't let me destroy clocks.

In other news, I would like to thank my younger brother Jon for a wonderful idea. Last year through a process of family trips to visit him at college we would often go to a local pizza buffet because it was cheap. He liked talk about the peanut butter and jelly pizza they had sometimes and how amazing it was. Well, I had never had it but seeing as how we have peanut butter, jelly, and a cook who does a good job making pizza crust here, we decided to try it out. It was amazing! I would suggest anyone and everyone try it if you haven't already. That said, I also got really sick last night and ended up throwing some of it up. Turns out it's also the best tasting puke I've ever had too! I'm feeling a lot better this morning and hope you can forgive me for ruining this post by adding that last bit.

The battle of the bulge...

Over the last month I've been eating a lot of ice cream and pretty much not exercising since it is too hot for Badminton and push-ups now (or at least in my mind it is). I kept looking in the mirror and thinking I was gaining back some of that weight I had lost. That thought was kind of sad because I can't say that I missed it. Then I came to Dhaka yesterday and all the Bengali's at the office were commenting on how I had lost weight. I was so confused but just figured they hadn't really seen me in two months so they just were misjudging. As I'm sure you figured out by now, they weren't. I'm now down to 205 lbs. Apparently, since I stopped doing push-ups I've just transitioned back to a little more fat but have continued to lose weight. I'm still not complaining, it just would have been nice to know this when I was feeling slightly guilty for having ice cream 4 times that one week.

Hank, Jake, and Gary...

I made some new friends this week. At first I didn't know how to treat them. They're just so different from what I'm used to. After a few awkward moments I decided to like them. Hank is the coolest of the three. He is warm and friendly but still aloof in a way that all the cool ones are. Gary is really shy. He fades away very quickly when you address him. I hope to bring him out of his shell a little over time. Jake though, Jake is special. Jake is curious. I was fine with how Jake stared at me in wonder but when he started to walk towards me to check me out, I warned him. At first, he got the warning and it was all ok but eventually the curiosity got the best of him. So I killed him. Now, some might say to let it go and make the argument that he was just a cockroach. I named him, called him friend, and all he wanted to do was check me out while I brushed my teeth. Fortunately for me, this possible guilt trip was stopped the next day when I walked in the bathroom to see a younger cockroach staring at me in the same old way Jake used to, except this this time he stayed his distance while I brushed my teeth. "Welcome back Jake," I said, "I'm glad you learned your lesson."

Have you ever attended a goat training in a language you don't really know? I have now. I spent the better part of two days observing a goat training this week. It was entirely in Bangla. I didn't understand much, but that wasn't what I was there for. I was there to observe.

I did some more work on the spreadsheet this week. I'm hoping to be mostly done with it this weekend.

It looks like I might start spending a lot more time out in the field. A lot of the next phase of my job is observation so that I can know what questions to ask and what problems might exist. It looks like this might be starting tomorrow. I was debating all week long whether to go to Dhaka this weekend and finally decided against it about two days ago. Then tonight at about 8:30 my boss calls me and says that there are people heading to Dimla for 4 days starting tomorrow at 6 a.m. He says that there is no pressure to go and that I don't have to but I knew right away deep down inside that I will be going. I spent a good while debating it trying to come up with good excuses to not go but upon finding a lack of truly good ones, I'm just going to go. The sad thing is that as much as I know I don't want to go, I also know that I'm going to love it and that it is the right choice.

That said, don't expect to hear much from me for the next couple of days.

Dear World

Dear world,

Nothing is wrong with me. Lol, I have gotten lots of comments from friends and family wondering about my silence lately. Sometimes, I just feel like being quiet and sometimes I just don't feel like responding to emails because of how much time and thought they require. The reason I didn't blog last week has nothing to do with this though. That actually has more to do with being angry and stubborn. You see, I tried posting, but it wouldn't let me. Then the internet died. By the time I got done dealing with all of that it was Monday and I just thought, forget it!

So what's new? I have some more friends. We met a group of Koreans here in Bogra. They are all pretty cool and two of the three of them have joined our worship group. We have also hung out with them a couple of times because like us, they often stay in Bogra on the weekends. The British girls (who we also just met recently) on the other hand don't stay the weekends. As a result we've only hung out with them once. They seem nice enough too.

What have I been up to? I read a very good book called "Two Ears of Corn" which was a tremendous help when thinking about the big picture of my job. It did a great job of giving me a concept of a people centered agriculture development program. I immediately gave it to my boss to read when I got done. Then I had a couple of frustrating days in which I couldn't do the work I wanted to do because the person who I needed to get me access to some stuff was on vacation. Upon his return though I went into a storm of what finally has felt like "real" work. I've been pouring over excel spreadsheets for the past several days. Unfortunately, one very important one wasn't finished, so I set out to finish it so I could continue my work. Also unfortunately, in the process of finishing that spreadsheet I found all sorts of frustrating things about it and the way all the spreadsheets are set up. Let's just say I've never been so annoyed with eggs and bananas in my life. On the whole I felt really good about how that work is going. I even got a chance to use some of the knowledge gained in the one computer programming class I took in college!

So life is pretty good.