Grade 5 Boat Trip

I've been on a lot of boat trips since arriving in Dhaka, once during new staff orientation, once with the book club.  Yesterday, was my third!  This time, I went with the entire grade 5.  In the spring, the 5th graders begin working on something called Exhibition, where they get into small groups and research a global or local issue they are passionate about and prepare presentations.  It's a very intense project that takes quite a while to develop and make it a worthwhile experience for everyone.  I'll be starting this at the tail end of my stint in grade 5 this spring, so I'm already trying to be involved in their planning.

The boat trip was to get students out of their "Dhaka bubble."  It's easy for expats to simply go to school, go to the American club (or other nationality clubs), vacation in Thailand, etc, never really seeing what it's like to actually live in Bangladesh.  So, the boat trip was organized to be a sort of "in your face" exposure to the issues that Bangladeshis face.

We took 3 boats down the river, observing life on the water and the villages near the edge.  Each boat stopped at a different village to walk around, observe, and learn what life there is like and how it compares to ours.  Really interesting trip and really got the kids thinking!

So excited to see one of the other grade 5 boats!!

We drew quite the crowd.

One of the nicer houses.  This was a pretty wealthy village, quite a few cement structures and lots of cows!

This village's school.  The younger kids come to school in the mornings and the older kids come in the afternoons.

Inside the classroom.  Also, our kids found it entertaining that the teacher here just carried her baby around on her hip... They said Mrs. Kitto should do that... but then I disagreed because I'd be out of a job!

Welcome to Bangladesh!  Everyone is always so interested in you and what you're doing.

Kitchens are much different than ours!  The kids were fascinated to learn that the people here use their hands to dry out cow patties to later burn as fuel!

AIS/D, A Great Place to Be

Mama is always encouraging to share my life on here.... "Everything you do is exciting hunny!"  So, here goes...


I was going through my camera and found my videos of a recent elementary school assembly (we have one every other Thursday morning, led by a different class each time).  They are my favorite!  They also make me cry... every week!  (Thanks Mama... I'm totally turning into a huge sap... I blame your DNA)  Everyone is speaking in different languages.  The fifth grade class that performed most recently, spoke in at least 10 different languages!!  The audience is so appreciative, patient and respectful.  It's a beautiful thing!  We have an inherently transitive, although amazingly supportive and welcoming, school environment and we sing the hello song (where we say hello in as many languages as possible) to any new students:

Chorus:

Hello, Bonjour, Buenos Dias,

G'Day, Guten Tag, Konichiwa

Ciao, Shalom, A Salaam A Lai Kum

Hello to all the people of the world.

We come from different places,

from all around the world.

We speak in many different ways.

Though some things might be different

we're people just the same,

and we all like to sing and play.

Chorus

There are people in the desert,

and people in the town,

and people who live down by the sea.

If we could meet each other

to run and sing and play,

then what good friends we all could be.

Chorus

 We sing the goodbye song and have students give personal testimonies for each departing student who is moving to another country.  We sing our special Happy Birthday song to everyone who has had a birthday since the last assembly.  And of course, we have to sing the elementary school song!

The lyrics are too cute!  And when I watch all my little Kindergartners, just 5 years old, from all around the world singing together, it's just too much!!

"We come from many lands, some near some far away.

We gather here today, our voices loud and clear.

We are all one family at AISD.

AISD, a great place to be.

Respecting, caring, giving and sharing, 

growing, learning and knowing,

We are all one family at AISD.

AISD, a great place to be!"

It really is :)  (Too cheezy? Sorry, I'm totally leaving it.)  Also, as I'm editing this post at school, a few kindergartners are singing the school song as they write... SO cute!

Other Exciting News

And in other exciting news... I recently found out that I will be taking over for one of the fifth grade teachers when she goes on maternity leave this winter!  I'm so excited!  I've been loving my Kindergartners, but I'm so excited to work with upper grade levels, read novels, and work on cool projects!  It's a great team of teachers too!  I'm so excited to learn from them!

Also, I bought a plane ticket to Nepal!  I'm going for our fall break, September 30th -October 8th!  Excited to do some hiking in the Himalayas!  I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures and stories in a few weeks!

Things here are happening so quickly!  Other little notes about my life in Bangladesh... Our apartment is finally painted with LOTs of BRIGHT colors (I'll post pics once we finish the decorating)!!  I'm going to be tutoring two struggling readers starting next week after school (yay extra money)!!  Tia (our adopted street kitten) is litter box trained!!  So much excitement :) 

And I'll leave you with this cool video of Dhaka in fast forward!  Enjoy!  

Cox's Bazar

Last week, we had a four day weekend for Eid, the celebration of the end of Ramadan.  A few other fun, young teachers and I took advantage of the break and went to Cox's Bazar, a town on the coast near the southernmost tip of Bangladesh, near Burma.  It's one of the longest beaches in the world.

It's a busy travel time for the country (think traveling at Christmas time), and everyone is trying to get to be with their families for the celebration.  Because of this, and the fact that we waited kind of late to make plans, all flights and trains were booked.... so we decided to be risk-takers and take a bus!  We had heard this was a typically a 12 hour bus ride from Dhaka to Cox's Bazar, although a few naysayers told us that due to holiday traffic we could be in for anywhere between 24 and 36 hours!!  We were so worried!

Our bus

Traffic in the city

Our bus left Dhaka Tuesday night at 11pm, set to drive all night.  We pleasantly surprised with the quality of the bus.  Although it was obviously made in the 80s, seats were big and reclined, we had air conditioning, and they gave us water and blankets.  The only weird thing was a camera crew that walked through and filmed everyone on the bus, then hopped off.  More on that later... But, we slept through the night and arrived in only about 10 hours.

To be honest, Cox's Bazar as a city is not so great.  Our hotel was almost a 30 minute CNG ride outside the city and we spent very little time there.  The place we stayed, The Mermaid Eco-Resort, was absolutely gorgeous!  We got coconut drinks with straws and flowers on arrival.  We sweet talked some of the employees and got two hammocks put up outside our two rooms.  Our rooms weren't fancy, no hot water or air-conditioning, just a bed on the floor, but it was just what we needed!  It was so quiet and green and lush, we forgot we were in Bangladesh.

The Mermaid

One of our cozy rooms

Our little bungalow "No Boat Yes"... still don't understand all of the room names... others included "Famous Cucumber," "Happy Ice Cream," and "Red Head Ear."

We wanted to go to the beach, so the employees at the resort put us in a small row boat and rowed us to a very secluded beach across the way.  There were just a few local kids hanging out and a fisherman or two.  Much quieter than the public beaches near the city.  Our little beach had some great mud at low tide which led to a pretty great mud fight!  SO much fun!

We ate all our meals at the hotel restaurant, which was delicious!  Homemade pasta and local seafood.  Bangla breakfast, like daal, sweet rice, but also delicious crepes!  At dinner, they had a Bangladeshi band playing music and fire spinners which was so nice!  The band was nice enough to let me try and play with them for a song or two!  I wanted to play the tiny hand cymbals so bad!  Turns out, they are much harder than they look, but still a lot of fun!  Kajori tried her hand at fire spinning too (against the Manager's wishes... good thing he looooved us:) )!!

"Sorry sir, I'm not even sure how I got this...."

Rocking out with the band

We had some pretty random adventures in the few days we were in Cox's Bazar.  One morning we started walking towards town with the hopes of landing a ride on top of one of those cool jeeps or buses like all the locals!  We were quickly detoured when we stopped to talk to some kids.  Following them through a dirt path off the road through their village, they picked a bajillion flowers/weeds for us.  We made it back to the main road just in time to hail a truck, a huge freight tractor trailer type truck, hop in the back and ride into town!  How exciting! 

We stopped at a market, had some tea, shopped for some fabric (I bought some and plan on getting a tailor to make it a hammock for me! yay!), walked on the beach a bit (a very public one where we got lots of typical stares from locals), and finished with fresh coconuts!  We had a bit of a photo shoot courtesy of a nice little boy who was quite good with a camera and liked taking our pictures.  On the way back (again walking, trying to flag down a jeep to ride on top of), we heard someone yelling at us and finally located a group of waving children on top of this super steep hill/cliff.  A few other kids appeared at our sides, and through a variety of gestures on both parts, we decided to climb up to meet everyone!  They were so nice!  They brought out two big dinning room chairs and made two of us sit while we tried to make small talk sharing none of the little of a similar language.  Very interesting!  Super friendly people though.  Overall a really nice, relaxing weekend!!

 

OH!  Almost forgot... The bus ride back...  This time, we were taking a different company, although it was a similar style bus, we got seats in the back.  They videoed everyone on the bus AGAIN!  No talking, just getting your face on camera.   Then we had the realization that they were probably just trying to document everyone on the bus so they could identify us in case the bus crashed, burned, etc...  Welp