Wild goose chase

I went to banani after teaching to get some lunch at a place called Dhaba and go to coffee world before heading to the us embassy to get my absentee ballot figured out. I could print a thing out and send it in, but i don't have a printer and i kind of wanted to see what the embassy was like. I got to banani at 11 and the embassy didn't open until 1. unfortunately i couldn't get naan and kebabs at dhaba because they were closed, so i had to settle for some pizza at coffee world. It was ok.
After killing a bunch of time at coffee world i headed off to the embassy. It was in the neighboring part of dhaka. when i got there they told me to turn off my phone before going in and told me that laptops weren't allowed. I didn't have anywhere i could leave my laptop while i went in. I got really frustrated, told them that was a stupid rule, and tried to get a cng back to uttara to drop off my laptop and return to the embassy. Like 10 cng drivers crowded around me all yelling at me in bangla. I didn't know what they were saying and some guys that spoke a little english helped me out and got a cng for me to uttara. Then i had to driver wait while i dropped off my stuff and headed back to the embassy. I thought there would be other americans in the embassy, but i only saw bangladeshis waiting for visas. There were like 100-150 of them all waiting. I got the american citizen section and figured out that because of ramadan the hours are 1-3pm instead of 1-4. It was 3:15. I left, frustrated again, feeling extremely dissapointed in my country's operating hours and regulations.
I had the same situation for getting a cng when i got out. Luckily the guys that helped me earlier kept calling me towards them. They asked me why i was back and i told them my story of how i couldn't take my computer in and how they are closed because of ramadan. Popco, the guy who spoke the most english, helped me get another cng. I offered to buy him an RC cola for helping me out (twice) but he said he was fasting so he couldn't drink anything.

When i got back to the center there were classes going on and i didn't want to disturb anyone so i hung out with the kids. We watched some BBC World News and hung out on the roof. Ridoi tried on my raybans.

more tiktikis

today i didn't really do much. I got up at my usual 7 am for breakfast, went back to sleep until 11, and went to church (Bengladeshi) at 5. Usually i have dinner with pastor Ayub on sunday evenings, but he's traveling so i had dinner with his son. In malaysia and here in bangladesh i've taken an interest in what the life of a teenager is like. His son goes to school everyday but friday. It starts at 8 am and sometimes doesn't end until 6 pm. That sounds rough. I remember how great 3 day weekends were in high school. I can't even imagine what it would be like to go to school 6 days a week.

More tiktikis...

biryani saturdays

today i taught to my class of PCB staff members. As i wrote earlier, i had it all planned out and it went just as well as i was expecting. It was a pretty good feeling when the first person figured out what i was trying to get across to them, then explained it to the rest of the class. Then there was this "oooooooooooooohhhhhh" moment from the entire class where it all clicked and my roll as a teacher got much easier. Needless to say, this boosted my confidence as a teacher and makes me feel like i might actually (maybe) know what i'm doing. One example that i used that i liked was that my dad probably wasn't building the new shed/guest cottage in the backyard at this very moment (it was like 12 am back home), but he is building it over the next few weekends. I used that to explain that the present continuous can be and ongoing action that hasn't yet been completed yet. it's weird to have to explain the english language to people that don't find it logical. it might make complete sense to you and me, but it hard to step outside of your own understanding and break it down for someone who has no prior knowledge of the concept. i have a lot more respect for my spanish teachers in middle school and high school now.
After teaching i we all had biryani. I really like biryani. Its a slow cooked rice dish with lots of spices and usually meat. It's not originally from bangladeshi, but i think its my favorite food that bangladeshi's eat. The stuff we always get comes in a mini cardboard box and has some sort of cow joint on it. there isn't much meat to be had, but the meed that is contained on the joint is very flavorfull. before eating i got in a discussion with one student about the food in america. He was amazed to hear that we didn't eat rice everyday and that i had really never had daal before coming to bangladesh. I explained that we don't have silverfish (the national fish of bangladesh) in america and you can't import any bangladeshi fish into america. It was hard to explain to him that sometimes i have italian food, or mexican, etc. I did show him a burrito on google images and explained how i usually have at least one burrito per week. In the picture of the burrito he pointed out the rice inside. bangladeshi food seems to be more utilitarian. When he would talk about a food he would talk about how much protein it had compared to other and he seemed to treat it more like fuel. good lentils have more protein per kg than chicken or beef, for example. more on bangladeshi food

Grammar books and cheeseburgers

today is friday, which means i go to church and speak english. Besides the going to church and speaking english part i was also excited to get some grammar books from a teacher that i met at that going away party that i went to last friday. I got books, as you can see above. They have all sorts of exercises and stuff like that. But to be honest, i don't think i'll get much use out of them. one problem that i'd been having is that i would not be able to explain the concept in a simple manner. I've been wanting to teach the present continuous (...ing words) to my PCB staff class. It's tomorrow and i was hoping these books would help, they don't really. But i did manage to find some really, really good websites that explained how to teach stuff and also had tons of exercies. its funny how 3 months ago the things that got me excited on the internet were new light bike parts and old russian cameras, now its the present continuous and different grammar websites. I have a whole lesson planned out for tomorrow. lately i've been just winging it, but i'm ready for tomorrow.
And the cheeseburger part... after church the youth pastor and his wife invited me to the canadian club with some other people. I had a big "canadian club" burger with bacon and cheese. It was amazing. It also came with french fries and pickle. i never realized how much i missed pickles. They only had huntz ketchup. I haven't had heinz ketchup at all in asia. To be honest, its far superior to anything else. all the other stuff just doens't taste the same. but besides the ketchup, the whole meal was a very nice departure from rice, daal, and all things curry.
Now, i'm loungin' in my lungi making my grammar lesson.

cultural differences

not much is new here. at the end of my class on wednesday i asked my class if they understood what i had been teaching. it's hard to tell if they are actually understanding what's going on. Many times i'll ask if they understand when i tell them to do something and they will just stare at me and not do what i told them to do. I've heard that for them to say "I don't understand" is viewed as an insult to the person giving instructions, so they say they understand as a form of being polite, even thought it doesn't get me anywhere.
anyways, i asked if they understood, they said yes, then i gave them a thumbs up as to say "ok, good". I immediately realized that the thumbs up meant something different here and apologized. the entire class started laughing and gave me the thumbs up back. true story.

foot details

so i went to the doctor today (twice) to get an x-ray then to get the cast removed. the doctor didn't have the cutter, so he had to borrow it from the US embassy. When i arrived at 7pm to get it removed, the power was out (typical here) so i had to wait an hour before the power came go back on. The tool was like a glorified dremel that looked like it was from the 50's. regardless of its age, it did the job. my foot was really gross when it saw the light of day for the first time since august 9th. I was half expecting bugs and a gross rash to be on my foot when the cast was removed, but luckily there was nothing but a bunch of gross dead skin. I thought stuff was crawling around in my cast and it didn't seem to far fetched since there are lots of bugs here.
After the doctor i had to find a way home. I was about 25 minutes from uttara. It took about 10 minutes to walk to the main road, then it took like 20 minutes to get a cng to take me back. Walking feels pretty weird. my left leg has atrophied pretty badly. my calf and quad are visibly smaller than the right side. i just tried jumping up and down on my left leg to see how it would feel, but i can't. My leg is too weak. the spot where i broke my foot is slightly swollen and it still kind of hurts, so i'll be taking it easy for a while before i get back to my normal 10k run every morning.

Before


After


in the second picture, I'm wearing a lungi. It's the traditional dress for men here. I told my students that i liked lungis and they went out and bought me two. They are super comfortable.

No more cast

new videos!!!

i got a chance to upload some videos. the first is a video i took while we were driving from the woman's conference back to dhaka. From gazipur to uttara to be exact. The song is from the Darjeeling limited and i think its in Bengali, but i'm not totally sure. I'm terrible at editing in iMovie HD, so please excuse the poor quality.

and here we have a video from my trip to sarawak. i was too lazy to take the terrible wind noise out.

coffe world excursion

after teaching today, i decided to make my way to Banani (a part of Dhaka south of where i'm staying) and go to coffee world. I've mentioned my love for coffee world before, and it hasn't failed me this time. I took a cng here. CNG stands for compressed natural gas. It's what the baby taxis run off of and for some reason that's what they are called. in other countries they are called auto rickshaws. As usual the ride was quite hair raising.

There was a pretty bad bus on bus accident on the main road going back to uttara. So i'll be here a while to wait until the buses get moved. i have reasonably fast internet and an americano to keep me occupied.

tom the tiktiki

house lizards are common throughout much of the tropical world. I saw them where i was staying in malaysia and i have one in my room here in dhaka. They have a different name in every language, but each name is an interpretation of the noise that it makes. in malaysia it's called a chichuk and here its called a tiktiki. I've named my tiktiki Tom. He comes out at night, hangs out on my ceiling, eats bugs, and makes small chirping noises.

rooftop photobooth session

today i i taught to my class of PCB staff members. they are all church planters throughout bangladesh or staff that work in the main office in Dhaka. Some people travelled over 400 km to get there for my class. that's a long way in any country, but in bangladesh, it takes as long, long time go to 400 km. I hope it was worth it. The class was much more talkative than my beginner class and was a slightly higher level. I'm also slowly getting better at explaining things without making it too complicated or using words in English that they don't know. I taught from 8-12 with one 20 minute break. It was pretty tiring. I slept for like 3 hours when i got back to my room.
On another note, here's a pictures of some kids that live here at the training center. Their parents are students. it's fun to play with these kids and try to teach them basic English phrases. They called me Uncle Mykell. I took the picture on the roof with my webcam.

exploring the dhaka expat social scene

So, today was a bit of an unexpected one. I made my way to international church this afternoon. I was trying to get a 3:30 taxi, but for some reason it translated into getting a 3 o'clock taxi for a 4:30 church service. I was kind of frustrated because i didn't want to be there an hour early. The taxi driver didn't know where he was going. He kept asking people but for some reason he decided it wasn't worth the effort to actually find the church and decided to drop me off at a hospital. maybe he looked at my leg and decided that's what i really wanted. I pointed to the hospital and said, "international church?" he said yes. I decided to get out anyways. I looked up the number of the church on my computer (luckily i brought it with me) and i got in contact with the pastor. He said he was on his way and he'd pick me up. The church service was good. It was in english. I was so happy to be having conversations in english. it was a different group of people from any other church i'd been to. Its pretty much completely expats. So you have people from tons of countries. i'm sure every continent but Antarctica was present. And the expat women in Bangladesh wear the same clothes that the Bangladeshi women wear. So its kind of weird to see a bunch of Caucasian women wearing salwar kameez and saris.
After church i asked the pastor if he could figure out a ride home for me. he said he'd take me to a taxi stand. Then later on the told me that he had to have coffee then he could take me. i told him i wouldn't mind speaking more english and tagged along with him and his wife. Then after coffee he told me that he was going to a going away party for someone and if it was ok with me, he'd drop me off after that. I was so happy to be spending time with more english speakers. the party was for a british teacher that was going back to england. There was an assortmant of western foods and lots of teachers that could help me out. I talked to one that is copying books for me so i can have some curriculum when i'm teaching. And i was introduced to a guy that is works of a removable cast company. He is in charge of all of their manufacturing and told me that if i wanted to get a boot, he could hook me up. He showed me the catalog and showed me which one he'd get me. They make hundreds a day and it wouldn't be a problem to procure one for me. So if my foot isn't healed, i can get this smelly cast off and use the removable boot. besides the boot, the teaching materials, and the food, it was also really nice to just talk to people about the frustrations of being in dhaka. I'm going through what everyone else is/was going through also.
All in all it was a really nice night. I'm teaching tomorrow morning. wish me luck.

things you probably didn't know about bangladesh, part II:
1) giving the thumbs up sign means "up yours!"
2) traffic accidents are solved by seeing who can yell louder and longer at the other person.

Reading material

I've been reading this book a lot lately. i started it on the plane from SFO to tapei, but didn't finish it. I finished it today and it had a lot of interesting stuff in it. It addressed most of the stuff that i'm going through over here. And there are lots of good quotes in it. My favorite was Dheli Belly. That term sums up the first week or so of being over in this part of the world.

adjusting

sorry for the lack of posts and pictures. my cellphone doesn't have fast enough internet to upload pictures from my computer and i was waiting to get a chance to put pictures in a post. My first class on Monday went a little better than expected. I still felt like i didn't really know what i was doing though. Yesterday (tuesday) i went out with 2 students to get a book to help teach. The book doesn't really help. I figured they'd have a normal (or my american perception of normal) bookstore with a bunch of books. instead it was 2 guys sitting behind a counter in a 4x8 foot shop with books stacked up all around them. All of the english books were targeted towards Bengalis that are trying to learn english. so the explanations were in bengali and the only english parts were example sentences and stuff like that. Not too helpful. I got pretty frustrated and then the guys started to try to sell me books on how to write essays. I came back to the CRS and went on amazon to buy a book. The shipping here was just as much as book, but i really didn't care. I can't wait for it to arrive in about a week.

To add to my teaching frustrations the english teaching books here are often incorrect. I was trying to teach something today and started getting confused. Some students had already been studying a book that they have here. The book has lots of examples and words that aren't used at all in english, and some gramatical things that are just wrong. so i'm having to unteach some things that students are picking up from this book.

Besides frustrations in teaching, i'm also getting kind of frustrated with just daily life. I'm really tired of having a broken foot. Since i'm in a new city, i'd like to spend time exploring and going around the city by myself; learning about the different types of food, the different neighborhoods, and stuff like that. But with a broken foot, that isn't too easy. I've spent almost all of the past 3 days inside. And i guess i'm experienceing what many people refer to as culture shock. I find it hard to not get frustrated with traffic, honking, people yelling, potholes, trash, and lots of other stuff. I'm going to an international church on friday that's in english. It's mainly for expats and i'm really looking forward to having a conversation in english or better yet, american.

I forgot to talk about my room

So i forgot to explain that i moved from the guesthouse to the place where i'll be teaching. Its called the CRS or Center for Religious Studies. It's a small school/dorm that takes up 2 floors of a building here. The 4th ad 5th floors to be exact. My room is on the 5th. It's a lot of stairs for a broken foot. I'll be teaching to beginning english students here and more advanced english students at the main church office. Its about a 10 minute rickshaw ride away. I'll be taking my meals here also. I can always count on rice, curry vegetables, daal, roti, and fish at least once during the day. And of course, i'll have pictures of each meal to explain more. I have two single beds pushed together to sleep on. And you can see my new dresser, desk, mosquito net, and bedsheet. sorry for the quality of the picture. I didn't feel like getting my big camera out.
Tomorrow I teach my first class. I didn't know i was teaching tomorrow until about 7:15 this evening. I'm kind of freaked out because i really don't feel that qualified to teach english, besides the fact that its my native language. But I had some students come by my room to tell me how excited they are to start learning. So that's encouraging.

Picture From my room

I got a new phone today. I was planning on getting a usb cell phone modem to get internet here, but it didn't work with a mac. instead, i got a new phone, that can be used the same way with my computer. and i can take it back to the states in a few months and use it there. it was cheaper than the modem. i'm not quite sure why though. a nice feature that i wasn't expecting is that i can upload pictures to this blog directly from the phone. this pictures is the view outside my window where my desk is. i'll get more pictures of my room soon.

rickshaw ride through the city

Yesterday we rode rickshaws a couple of times to get around. Usually we have a driver, but for some reason or another we used rickshaws for some short trips. It was kind of tricky getting into the rickety seat with my foot. There were four of us so we used two rickshaws, but many times you will be 3-4 people in one. In the morning it's funny to see a mother with three kids all in school uniforms on their way to school.



Later in the evening we went out for dinner near the guesthouse. We went to this kebab place called Dhaba that was really good. Everyone else walked, but i took a rickshaw. I didn't really know where i was going and the rickshaw wallah was riding away from the group, but eventually i got to the right place. It's hard when everyone speaks to you in bangla even though you tell them (in bangla) that you don't speak bangla.
Now, i'm at Coffee World. My new favorite hangout. It's one of the few places in Dhaka that has WiFi and espresso. A winning combination in my mind.

pictures from the conference

I got a chance to get online again today, so i uploaded some new pictures from the past few days. this picture is a guy preparing the beef curry. he got a big cow head and chopped it up for the curry.

this picture is the skin and horns of the head when he was done with it.

and this is the meal as it looked on my plate. i'm adjusting to eating with my hands pretty well. i'm getting my technique down. the key is to make a tower of rice, daal, and other stuff then keep it in a ball in you hand and scoop it with your thumb up into your mouth. and lime is commonly squeezed over your food here. the lime is a really nice touch.

I went to the center for religious studies last night for dinner. Its the place where i'll be living most of the time over the coming months. Its on the 4th and 5th floor, which is quite hard to do with my broken foot. but i'll get by. I'm pretty sure i'll be the only english speaker living there. so hopefully i'll learn some bangla.
I've been uploading some videos to youtube over the past month. So far i only have two videos from sarawak. Its hard to find a good enough connection here to upload videos. I have some more to upload from bangladesh, but i haven't found a fast enough connection. my youtube channel is
http://www.youtube.com/user/mpap89

And now some interesting facts about bangladesh and its culture that i doubt anyone is aware of.
1) you can count to 20 on each hand here.
2) thank you and you welcome are rarely used here. the "over use" in the west is seen as insincere.
3) if you finish the food on your plate it means you haven't had enough food. this leads to over eating until you learn to leave some food.
4) men and women rarely are seen having physical contact in public, but many times you will see two men or two women holding hands as they walk.

hopefully interesting facts about bangladesh will be a recurring segment on this blog.

and one last thing...
i took a picture in a village in northern bangladesh that i think is pretty funny. i hope you enjoy.

first week in bangladesh

So i landed in Dhaka on sept. 2nd. Rev. Ayub picked met me there and dropped me off at the guesthouse where i'll be staying for the next week or so. The drive from the airport was amazing. It was a huge traffic jam of really colorfully decorated trucks haul all sorts of stuff. Then on the side of the road there were tons of men and women breakup up the road with chisels and sledge hammers then carrying the rubble out in baskets on top of their head.
The next morning i got up at 6:45 to meet the other americans that are here who work with the organization i'm working for. At 10 Rev. Ayub picked us up and we headed north for Bherungimari. Its a town in almost the northern most point in Bangladesh. Its about 400km away. the road just outside of dhaka has tons of small brick factories on the road and off in the distance. each chimney off in the distance is a brick factory.

We drove for 5 hour and stopped in Rangpur for the night. Driving here is crazy. There really aren't any driving rules. We were weaving in and out of traffic on a 2 lane highway all day. Somehow the driver skillfully navigated through goats, trucks, people, dogs, rickshaws, baby taxis, and cows. it was pretty nerve wracking at first, but after over 15 hours of watching it, it almost seems normal.
The next morning (9-2) we left early to make our way up to the village. We made it there at about 12. The reason for going to the village was because two of the people i was with donated money in memory of their daughter who had died a few years ago. The school is called the Elizabeth Primary School and is for grades 1-5. Here kids learn Bangla, English, math, and they have a general knowledge class. It was amazing to see how excited the local people were to have a school in their area and hear how more empowered it was making the community.

This guy below is the local leader. He was telling us how much of a positive impact the school was having. The pin on his shirt means that he was a bangladeshi freedom fighter in the '70s.

After getting a tour of the school a talent show was put on by the students. There were local dances, singing, and poetry. Then we planted some trees and headed back south.

We stopped along the way to get lunch at a local pastors house. Then we stopped for dinner in a town called Bogra. Right outside of Bogra things got interesting. There was a huge traffic jam. We tried driving in the wrong side of the road for a while to cut all the stopped trucks, but then we were told what was going on ahead. The local people were praying at a mosque when the power was shut off. They had not lights, no PA system, so they couldn't continue praying. They all got really mad, flooded into the road (the one were were on) and lit a baby taxi on fire. The police showed up in riot gear after a little while and finally broke up the riot. We were stopped for about an hour, but the entire thing took 3 hours. As they part of the mob was walking away they were making comments to us in Bangla about how the mob would have liked to burn our van since its a nice car and filled with americans. By this time it was about 11:30 and we still had like 4 hours to go to Dhaka.
I went to sleep once we got going but later on we had to stop get tea. Since i was awake i figured i'd go get some with the driver. Everything is really cheap here. The tea i got was 10 takka. its about 70 takka to the dollar. After tea we continued, got stuck in a traffic jam after about 10 minutes of driving, then finally got to the guesthouse in Dhaka at about 4:30 am. When we were stuck in traffic i got to admire some of the truck art that they have on the back of all of the trucks here.

After our trip up north we've been attending a conference just outside of dhaka. The first three days was a women's conference, then the next three is a conference on the history of the presbyterian church. A couple of the people from the team here have been teaching. I haven't had much to do, so i've been reading and working on my bangla. It's not going too well. I've learned how to recognize 1-10, but i can't say the bangla name for them yet. I'm trying to learn the alphabet, but its really hard. All the books i have are hard to read and its hard to tell the little differences between each character. I also read a small book for foriegners that is an intro to Bangladeshi culture. Its cool to read the book then observe the things i read about. Life here is very different. it seems like very little in terms of cultural norms and customs is the same.

dhaka

i landed in dhaka this morning at like 12:45. My flight was really nice. i slept almost the entire time and had a reasonably tasty indian dinner. I met up with the team that's here so far. Because the flooding up north has subsided we're going to be leaving in a little bit to drive about 8-10 hours to a new school that Rev. A. had built. 5 hours today, then 3-5 hours driving tomorrow. Its really crazy here. As we drove to the guesthouse from the airport there was a huge traffic jam of trucks. they were filled with cows, bamboo, bricks, chickens, and tons of other stuff. Then people would be sleeping ontop of the cargo as the trucks constantly honked at eachother. Its really intense. This country is pretty overwhelming. But so far i like it.

Off to Bangladesh

I'm leaving for Bangladesh in a couple of hours. I'll be spending the next 4 months there. I'm excited to see what it's like. I've heard so much about it, but i still have no clue what to expect. Hopefully i'll get some pictures up in the next few days.