Bangladesh – I have arrived

I’m here in Bangladesh. I’ll be here for the next two weeks. Then it will be on to India for about two more weeks. We arrived on Wednesday afternoon. After about 25 hours or so of total travel time with layovers and all we finally got here and I was exhausted. We went to the Bible school for a brief visit and lunch. That was it for me, I was done. We got to the apartment that we are staying in and I slept until dinner time.

Thursday we drove out to the Primary School that is run by Dr. Vijay Balla. It was a ‘sports day’ for the children. We set outside in the hot sun for about three hours watching the kids run and throw a ball and jump rope and other activities. To be honest I was a bit bored just sitting there. I wore a Punjabi today; it is the traditional dress of the Bangladesh women. I felt like I was wearing my pajamas. We had lunch at the school—curry and rice and boiled vegetables. I’m getting use to the curry—good thing since they eat it with every meal.

This evening we went to a small restaurant with Vijay and Aparanjani. We rode there on a rickshaw (a three-wheeled bicycle with a seat on the back). I rode on one when I was in China, but there are more here and less people have their own bicycles. We drove in the car on the way to the school. I have never seen traffic patterns like here before. If you can even call them traffic patterns, people pretty much do whatever they want driving, walking, or on bicycles. I think the only rule is don’t get killed and don’t kill someone else. We saw a bus that was knocked off the side of the road and almost laying on its side going down a steep embankment.

Oh, back to the rickshaw, on the way back Jackie and I were in a rickshaw and Vijay and Aparanjani were in one in front of us. Our driver lost them and went the wrong way. We didn’t have any idea where he was going, and he didn’t speak English, so we couldn’t really communicate with him. Thankfully, I had put my IPhone in my purse and although I can’t use it here, I had the address of our apartment and was able to look it up. The streets are numbered which is another blessing because we were able to just find our street number and get to where we needed to go. A bit of excitement for one night, it was difficult too because it is so dark out there I wasn’t sure where I was.

That is the latest from Bangladesh. We are going to an International Church tomorrow evening. The day of worship here is on Friday’s. Saturday we are going shopping! I’m reading a good book by Henri Nouwen With Open Hands. I’m almost finished it, that is my recommended book for the week.