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.