Our Fri, Sat weekend

Hi all, Just a quick posting to say we've had a great weekend!

Friday we had to stay in in the morning because the men were coming to fit our Air Conditioning (much needed as its been soo hot!). In the afternoon we went to meet with the Christadelphians. There were about 18 people in the service and it was led in Bangla.

Everyone was really friendly and most spoke good english.

Today (Saturday), Jo took us to a local shopping area called road 27. We found some good book shops with english books and even a place I could buy a guitar from (lucky Nicola ;) We stopped for lunch at a Pizza hut type place which was really yummy!

Getting a lot more used to the Rickshaws now and they;re great fun for moving around in (although a bit scary and warm at times!) Traffic is always bad but kind of works. Generally if theres a gap in the road some type of transportation will be filling it shortly. It's everyman for himself and everyone seems to have right of way! Look at our 2 new videos (on left) for more of an idea!

Anyway, the postings may get a bit less frequent as things start to become more 'normal' to us but hopefully we'll take it in turns to update every few days.

Its kin dof odd but we're both really looking forward to going to work tomorrow....

Over and Out!!

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End of the Week

After my previously waffley email I thought I'd briefly let you know what we've been doing this week since Tuesday.

On Tuesday we bought quite a lot of our home furnishings for our flat, which has made it look a lot more homely. Although still no wardrobe (ARRR!)

It was the intention that Andy would go on a boys road trip to the bamboo plantation / factory site in the north of the country. However, the inevitable Delhi Belly finally struck at completely the wrong time, so at the last minute Andy had to pull out (much to his disappointment).

On Wednesday Andy stayed at home waiting for the internet people to come and nursing himselft back to health. I went into the office for the day. We were a bit later into the office as we had to drop our furniture off and Andy.

At lunchtime we had a team lunch, which they do every week and which was really nice authentic Bangladeshi food. Apparently the way to eat Bangaldeshi food is to have loads of rice on your plate and then you put a bit of the first curry dish on your plate. You eat that with some of the rice then move on to the next dish, which you eat with a bit more of the rice. There was then a final dish, whcih was more like a sauce and you use that to eat the rest of your rice (all eaten with fingers of course). There was also a plate of chillis and limes. Apparently you're supposed to squeeze the lime over your food, eat half the chilli and dab the remaining half in the rice to flavour it. I decided to save that for another week, despite the best efforts of the boys in the office.

In the afternoon one of the lovely people in the office took me to try and buy AC. We went to 3 shops, which was an exciting experience. The process of deciding on a unit and buying it took ages and I was definately a tourist attraction in the shop (being white and female). The manager of the shop is also an English teacher, so speaks pretty good English, which was nice. He told me that he was a Freedom fighter in the 1971 war (the Bangladeshi people are very proud of their origin and success in the war) and gave me a cup of tea, which was lovely. All the staff were very attentive and were keen to make sure that I always had a seat.

On Thursday we caught a CNG into the office with Jo (who lives round the corner). The traffic was really bad, although I'm told that's normal. We spent the morning in the office. I was mainly doing reading and meeting with the boss to plan the next few weeks. Andy was very excited to be let loose on some bamboo and tools and get involved in making candle holders with the workshop lads and his design colleague.

In the afternoon we went back to our flat to have our bedroom measured to see which AC unit would be best. We then went to the AC shop to buy it, which again was quite a long process. Having bought the Unit we went back to the flat and one of the shop staff took the unit on the back of a bike back for us and then loaded it on to the lift. The strange thing here is that they seem to employ a lot of people to do a job that 1 or 2 people could do but it's great to be able to give jobs to people and I think it comes down to them all being so attentive and wanting to work and help.

After that we went to buy a microwave and toaster and then we were left to our own devices. So, we went to the nearby market, which was very exciting. Full of fruit, veg, sacks of rice, spices, haberdashery, fish. The smell in places was revolting but the atmosphere was amazing and once again we were the star tourist attraction. We tried our first bit of bartering with relatively little success. Each place we went into seemed unwilling to barter but we were happy that we got a pretty good deal (although probably not as good as a local would have got).

After our adventure and having taken all our stuff back to the flat on a rickshaw we rewarded ourselves with a drink at a local cafe place. This place is wonderful; it's on the 4th floor of a building and is a women's restaurant but men are allowed in if accompanied by a woman. You sit on the floor on cushions and eat / drink at a low table. So, we sampled some lassi which was really refreshing and very cheap. Definately somewhere we'll visit again.

After that we returned home and ate our lovely Bangla meal that had been cooked by our domestic helper (yummm!)

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Snapshot of 11.00am in our Flat

Well we've come to the end of our first week here and we're sitting in our flat reflecting on the week we've just had whilst waiting for the AC guy to come and install the AC (only 1 hour late, so that's pretty good going).

I thought I'd give you a detailed insight into what we're experiencing at this very moment. So, we're sat in our lounge, which is quite small and at the moment we've got in it 2 chairs, a sofa, coffee table and lamp - all made of cane. I'm looking out on to our balcony, which is also quite small but useful for hanging washing out on. There are a few items of washing on the line over our balcony, blowing gently in the breeze and which I haven't bothered to move into the ironing pile yet.

Beyond the balcony about 6 ft away there is the roof of another building with an enormous satellite dish on it. There's a few palm trees that we can see the tops of and then more apartment buildings in every direction. Although there are buildings everywhere we are actually quite lucky to have a bit of a view.

It's quite peaceful here, apart from the constant whirring of the fan. There is the occasional sound of a drill (someone's having some work done to an apartment near by) and I can hear a man shouting in the distance, which I assume is something to do with the nearby Mosque.

There is a lovely aroma of someone cooking nearby. It's not quite the same as the smell of Indian cooking you experience in the UK, which sometimes can be a bit overbearing, this is very pleasant; not too spciy but very definately authentic Bangla cooking. You can quite often smell food being cooked at all times of the day. Food preparation and cooking takes a lot longer than in the UK - no such thing as quick convenience food and savoury meals can be eaten at any meal time.

The sun is shining and the sky is a beautiful hazy blue. I'm not sure what the temperature is but it's definately warm - especially on the 5th floor of the building! The fans and gently breeze are keeping us relatively cool but it does require a lot of effort to do anything in this heat (hence a much slower pace of life and why it takes ages to get anything done).

We've got a massive pan of water boiling in the kitchen, which we've got to transfer to the filter once it has cooled, so it's a bit like a sauna in there.

Anyway, the plan for today is to hop into a CNG and head to church this afternoon (if the AC people every arrive), which is over the other side of town. The main service is in the afternoon at 2.30pm. There are quite a number of different churches in Dhaka to accommodate the missionaries and expats and the times of the services all tend to vary.

On refelction this seems like a bit of a waffley email and I don't seem to have told you very much. Oh well, I'll put it on another post.

Hope life in the UK's ticking along alright. Please feel free to email us and let us know your news.

x

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