All Night Par-tay!

It is 11:30PM here in Dhaka, but the party has just begun at the apartment building next door, and the music is PUMPIN!  You might think that noisy neighbors hosting an all night party would be a bit annoying, but I'm actually really enjoying it even from the apartment next door.  And let me tell you, from the sound of it, these people know how to party.  Right now I'm listening to a mishmash of "Down Under", "I Will Survive", and "That's the Way I Like It" with more classics on the way.  I'm telling you, these people have good taste!  And not only do they have good taste, they picked a great location... the roof of course!  Why didn't I think of this?


Well, I'm not leaving anytime soon, so I may have to get on with planning one of these parties.  


Just wanted to give a little midnight update.  A more comprehensive one is on the way shortly.  I couldn't let the night slip by without giving props to the next door neighbors.  Oh, and "We Are Family" is playing now.

বর্ণমালা স্যুপ (Alphabet Soup)

A week and a half has gone by since I arrived in Bangladesh.  The rhythm of life has become normal for me and I’m feeling very good about the way things are going.  

Last Monday we started language school.  Our classes meet five times a week, Sundays through Thursdays for two hours (here in Bangladesh Fridays are like American Sundays and Sundays are like American Mondays).  I’m finding that Bangla classes are much more intense than high school Spanish class.  One big difficulty is that I have to relearn the alphabet.  Now let me tell you, this week I have gained an enormous amount of respect for Kindergarteners.  You don’t realize how hard it is to memorize a list of brand new letters until you have to learn it all over again.  It is no piece of cake to memorize 11 vowels, 10 medial vowels, and 39 consonants, especially when those letters look just as confusing as Chinese. 

Catherine and I in class with our teacher, Ishrat

On top of that, there is absolutely no dozing off in Bangla class.  If you were to add another 20 students to the class then maybe, but when you have one teacher and three students it’s hard to avoid individual attention.  It may sound like I’m complaining, but truth be told, I’m glad that this is an intense class.  I can’t say I’ve been able to retain a lot of what I’ve been taught yet, but by the end of this month I think it will be impossible to walk away without being able to use at least some very basic Bangla.

Now aside from Bangla classes, this week has been a great week to become a little more acclimated to the city of Dhaka.  Even the daily drive between my apartment and Bangla school is an awesome way for me to just become more familiar with the culture.

The view from the van on the way to language school.

Also on the way to language school, looking out the window about to cross the bridge from Gulshan to Banani.

One thing that I have noticed is that Bangladesh is much louder than America.  If it isn’t a honking car, then it is a yelling man, or a singing man, or some other form of noise coming from outside the apartment.  I can’t say I’m completely used to it, but I’m getting there.

On the weather side of things, it has been relatively mild.  During the daytime the highs are in the low 70s, maybe even a little lower than that.  But I hear that the cold season is very short lived.  Yesterday I could feel it was a bit hotter than the other days, and over the next few months things will really start to heat up.  One thing that is very different from home is the smog.  The only way to know if it is cloudy or clear is to look straight up.  If you can see blue, then it is a clear day.  But if you were to just look straight ahead, you can trick yourself into thinking it is an overcast day. 

A smoggy afternoon.  As seen from the roof of my apartment.

Aside from school, we were able to go to Uttam’s Place this week.  It is between 20 minutes and an hour away from the apartment, depending on how bad traffic is.  Uttam’s Place is an establishment that tutors young girls living on the streets in that part of Dhaka.  It sounds like we won’t be working there a lot until the end of the semester, but it is something that I am looking forward to.  On Friday morning we had a fun time hanging out and playing with some of those street kids, both boys and girls.

Catherine looking down from the roof of Uttam's Place.

Joe and I looking pretty boss on the roof of Uttam's Place.

The whole gang walking down the road outside of Uttam's Place.

As far as day to day life goes, I am living in an apartment down the road from the girls with my roommate Joe.  We’ve got a pretty big living area, but we still head over to the girls’ apartment every evening to hang out and eat dinner.  As a team I feel like we’re all meshing very well and I can’t wait to work with everybody in the semester to come.

The crib.

The White family dinner.

The First Report

This is belated by several days, but yes, I am in Bangladesh.  Catherine and I arrived at around 9pm Bangladesh time on Wednesday in Dhaka.  The past few days have been ones where I’ve been able to settle into this new environment and get used to the culture of Bangladesh.  I think that right off the bat, the very first thing that reassured me that I was in another country was the traffic.  On the car ride from the airport to my apartment it became clear that being able to drive down 405 during rush hour does not qualify you to drive in Bangladesh.  However, if you are able to drive between traffic lanes, interspersed with merging into areas about half the size of your car in standstill traffic while using your horn liberally, you may be better off than most people.

Today was my first day to really get out and explore the city with the intent of exploring the city.  Part of the reason that this is my first blogpost from Bangladesh is because this was also the first time I took pictures in Bangladesh.  You see, when you are jet lagged, taking pictures is not your first priority.  But today right before walking out the door I caught myself, turned around and grabbed my camera.

It is a whole different world when you go into the city here.  I think that the sound is one defining aspect that makes Dhaka very distinct.  Like I mentioned, car horns are just a part of driving here.  In the U.S., if somebody honks their horn it is a huge deal.  The person who honks is expressing that they are VERY frustrated, while the person being honked at is usually highly offended.  The honkee may respond by covering their face in shame, or honking back in rebellion.  Regardless, the point is that a honk in the U.S. means that somebody screwed up and a person is angry about it.

Here in Bangladesh a honk seems to be used for just about every aspect of driving.  If you are merging, honk, if you are turning, honk, if you are about to pass another car, honk.  Honk, honk, honk.  But there are other aspects of the city that are more familiar than you might expect.

They still have grocery stores with a fairly good variety of food and whatnot.  They are small, but grocery stores none-the-less.  And of course, they have video stores as well.  Are any of the movies they sell legal?  No.  No they aren’t.  But if you are going to sell pirated movies you might as well go all out, and trust me, these stores aren’t lacking in their selections.

When I think about it, it’s kind of hard to know exactly where to start when you describe a new country, because when your whole world completely changes in a matter of days, you are left with a situation where you are trying to describe to another person a culture that you yourself haven’t fully processed.  So even though I really haven’t painted any pictures of Dhaka with my words, I’ll leave you with some pictures of Dhaka that I took with my camera.

1 Down, 3 to Go

Just wanted to check in from San Francisco before we get on the long flight to Asia.  It is about 11PM and our flight leaves in an hour.  Basically all we've done in SF is check in again, and then we ate our last dinner in the U.S. for a while.


So far, so good!

On Our Way!

The journey is beginning!  I'm sitting at the gate in Seatac with Catherine Brakke.  We are about to start our 37 hour travel to Bangladesh.  Next stop is San Francisco, then Hong Kong, then Singapore, and finally Dhaka!

I was pretty proud with my checked baggage.  The limit was 50lbs and my lightest bag was 49.0; the heaviest: 50.0 on the dot!  That is what I call skilled packing!  My dad was leaving about an hour and a half before us to go up to Canada on business and we got to our gate just as his plane was pulling away.

Everything still feels a little surreal even though we are just an hour away from leaving, but hey, I still have a day and a half to realize that this is actually happening!

I'll try to keep everyone updated as we go, but we'll see if that works out.

Ta ta for now!

Ready to go!