A Bangladeshi Barn Dance

You might think that being in a Muslim country where it's warm and they've never even heard of cranberry sauce, we'd miss all the excitement leading up to Christmas. Well you'd be wrong. I'm very pleased to say that the temperature has now dropped, the sky is grey and misty, there's fairy lights all over the place and we've got our Christmas decorations up - yay! So now feeling fully festive.

When I say the temperatures dropped, what I mean is it's gone down to a very pleasant 17 C but of course for the locals that means scarves, hats, jumpers - the full works! It actually does feel pretty chilly cause we're not getting that much sun and there's a lot of mist around but I suppose compared to the cold spell you've been experiencing it's nothing drastic.

Anyway, irrespective I think this weather's great - much easier to get into the festive spirit when it's grey and misty outside.

We went to the British club last night and managed to have a roast turkey dinner with home made mince pies to finish, accompanied by festive Christmas tunes playing in the background and lovely tacky Christmas decorations.

Tonight I've been making paper chains to add to our Christmas decorations, so our apartment is all dressed and ready for the occasion. I'm also told you can buy Christmas trees from the other side of town and even tacky flashing light things and tinsel and stuff - home away from home. I'm not sure we'll go that far but it's nice to know we can find a little corner of Christmas even here in Dhaka.

Anyway, enough of my Christmas ramblings... on to the subject of the Blog.

On Tuesday it was Victory Day here, which is where the locals were celebrating the anniversary of their victory over Pakistani rule following a 9 mth war, which ended on 16th December 1971. So for us that meant a day off work and for the locals it meant a day of flag waving, song singing and general merriment.

In the evening one of the international schools had their staff end of year party and so Andy was asked to lead a barn dance - clearly his Barn Dance calling reputation has preceeded him! So, being accompanied by a colleague on the violin and a Barn dance CD we all engaged in a bit of dosie-doeing and the occasional right-hand star. Needless to say it was lots of fun - definately not something we expected to be doing in Bangladesh.

Since then it's been a gradual wind down at the office as more and more people leave for their Christmas vacations.

We're off ourselves on the 23rd up to Sylhet, which is on the East side of the country and is said to be the coldest part of the country - yay! I never thought I'd say this but I was actually starting to miss the cold (...well slightly). The region we're going to is also the tea garden region, so is supposed to be very picturesque. We're going with the local church that we have been attending, so we're expecting a very Bangladeshi experience - we're not holding out much hope for turkey and stuffing but there might be the chance of the odd carol here and there.

There's also quite a lot of activity in relation to the forthcoming election, which is due to take place on 29th December. This election is quite a big deal over here because there's been a caretaker government in place for the past 2 years and for the majority of that time the country has been under emergency rule, so this will be the first time in 2yrs that there's an elected government in place. As a result there's a lot of demonstrations, loudspeakers chanting some election manifesto and tonnes of flyers and posters everywhere with the faces of the political leaders in place. There's nothing dangerous about the activities (in case you were wondering) but it's certainly something you can't avoid witnessing.

Anyway, hope all the Christmas plans are going well and you're all in good festive spirits.

We'll try and put up another posting before we go away.

Love Nic (and Andy) x