Small town America to big city Asia

I'm in Bangladesh! I arrived safe and sound yesterday at 10:15 am local time after a grueling 34 hours spent in transit. Lets just say Dhaka is significantly different than Akron.

Boy howdy! It's a car!

Mohammadpur market

I don't have a great picture of traffic here yet, but it sure makes your commute more interesting. Yesterday I was given a tour of the Mohammadpur district of Dhaka by Phil, an MCC service worker that lives in Bogra where I will be in a month. I was feeling very tired by about 5:00 and Phil was kind enough to make me some extra strong coffee. That was able to keep me conscious until I went out for supper with Phil and Joyce, an MCC Dhaka worker living at the guesthouse. I had some traditional Bengali food which was very good. I am looking forward to eating it more (we'll see where I stand on that in a few months). We also rode by rickshaw, a very common mode of transportation here. I use "very" in the strongest sense of the word because I have not seen a stretch of road in this city yet without at least one rickshaw driving along. I have my first Bangla lesson tomorrow and I move in with my host family in a couple days. I look forward to learning some Bangla because then I'll feel at bit less helpless in navigating the city. I have already started learning a few words and phrases. A common greeting is asalaam aleykum, which is actually Arabic and means peace be with you. Another greeting used mostly by Christians and Hindus is namaskar which is often accompanied by a small bow with clasped hands. Well I can't think of much more to write about. It looks like I'll have fairly regular internet access in Dhaka, so hopefully I'll be able to update this blog when there's something interesting to write about.

Ben