A little bit about Bangladesh

After reading through a few posts, I realize now that I really haven't told you THAT much about the country or culture of Bangladesh!  Bangladesh is really dirty, really crowded, really noisy.  But it is also really friendly and beautiful in its own way!  One thing to get used to is when you walk down the streets here, people stare.  They stare at everyone no matter the race or gender.  They are just very curious people.  I've had random people come up to me and say, "Excuse, where are you from?"  So I tell them.  Then they smile and walk away.  When I walk to work, I always find a lot of people smiling and saying "good morning!"  Everyone we meet is so kind and welcoming.  We've met two of our neighbors from our apartment building, a Malaysian man and an Indian family, and they've either invited us to dinner or asked to throw us a party!

Obligatory shot of me on a rickshaw

Bangladesh is a majority Muslim country, but there are Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians here.  All religious holidays, Muslim, Christian, or otherwise, are government holidays which I think is very progressive for such a third world country.  Right now we are in the month of Ramadan, the holiest Muslim month.  Muslims fast while the sun is up, and break their fast at sundown with a meal called Iftar.  Kajori's family invited us to have Iftar with them a few weeks ago and it was really nice!  We had spicy chickpeas and lentils, dalpuri (which is quickly becoming my favorite Bangladeshi treat), sweet coconut rice, fried eggplant, fried onion fritters, and a really good spicy soup with meats and lentils among other things!  

In the month of Ramadan, Muslims are often more charitable than usual, so this attracts more beggars to the city from smaller villages in Bangladesh.  This is one of the toughest things about living here.  There are SO many people asking you for food or money.  Some are very disfigured, deformed, disturbing.  Some have small children with them (which sometimes are not their own).  But most are pretty persistant.  We had three children follow us home from the grocery store last weekend for almost 10 minutes.  "Madam! Baak Sheesh! I'm hungry!"  It's tough.  When you're in a car, they knock on your windows and peer into your car asking for help.  To go shopping at the markets here, we kind of have to prepare ourselves mentally and the trips are usually exhausting.

Speaking of trips to the market... Most foreign families living in Dhaka have hired help.  Our little intern family is no different!  We have what you call a bearer, named Misti, who works 5 days a week cleaning our house, making beds, washing clothes and sheets, going to the grocery store for us, and cooking dinner!  This is very inexpensive.  Many families have 4 or more people working for them, a bearer (the cleaner), a cook, an aya (nanny), and a driver.  A very interesting culture to get used to (Although I'm loving it!  I'm already SO spoiled! yikes!)

Another interesting thing about Bangladesh is that they are seriously lacking in infrastructure!  Traffic is always just insane.  Completely insane.  There are so many people, and there is no such thing as obeying traffic rules/signs.  There are a few lights, but they are kind of suggestions.  We have a car, but I haven't gotten up the nerve to drive, even on weekends when traffic is better, although my roommates have.  I'm usually the person that helps watch out for people crossing the street, dogs, rickshaws, other cars, etc...  Also, the power goes out all the time.  Sometimes 6 or 7 times a day at our house, sometimes less.  Most places have a generator, but we don't yet, so when the power's out, we have no lights, fans, a/c, etc.  My roommate Konrad actually got stuck in our elevator a week or two ago when the power went out.  No worries though, he had his cell phone, and the guards helped us rescue him!

In other news, we are fostering a new baby Bangla kitten my roommate Kajori and fellow teacher, Kristen, found in the street!  We named her Tiapaki, or Tia for short.  Tiapaki is the Bangla word for parrot!  She climbs up and sits on your shoulder and often falls asleep there.  She also squawks non-stop!  We're hoping that goes away soon!  She's super cute though! And tiny!

She likes to climb really near your face and falls asleep in the strangest places.

"Look what I found!  Can we keep her?!"

She's so tiny!  But SO loud!

First week of school!

I'm starting to get settled in at work a bit.   The school's great so far, not perfect, but what school is?  It turns out, I'll get to spend time with three different grades over the course of this year, which I'm really excited about!  Kindergarten, Second, and Fifth!  There's a second grade teacher that is due late this fall, and a fifth grade teacher due in the spring, so it works out well!  Crossing my fingers I'll get to step in full-time!  We'll see!

So, Kindergarten.  Wow is it exhausting!  I haven't done a lot of teaching yet, but the teachers have been amazing to watch and are very open to me being an active participant in their classrooms, teaching lessons, helping with reading groups, etc.   I really enjoyed watching how the teacher taught a lot of procedures and behaviors during these first few days especially!  I have a lot to learn about teaching this age group.  Classroom management is so different at this level!  Also, I forget how many social and life skills you have to teach at this age.... ie. it is not ok to touch your friends' face without their permission, how to effectively put the lids on markers, how to stand in a line, etc. etc. etc....  So different!  And there's SO much singing, and crying, usually not at the same time, but sometimes!  Haha!  Everyday I come home with another "great" song stuck in my head.  My roommates love it when I sing "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee," and "Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and you swim so free," etc.

One of my favorite things about this school is the diversity.  The Kindergarten classes all have between 16-18 students and they all have at least 10-12 different nationalities represented!  SO cool!  There are a few students that speak NO English, only Danish, Dutch, and Korean.  It's really cool watching these students learn new words and phrases already, after only 8 days of school!  Lots of kids speak multiple languages which is also helpful and so interesting.

I'm really enjoying my work so far (Although, I'm really excited about fifth grade for some reason!)!  I think I'm about to get much busier!  I have a book club meeting this weekend.  I signed up for a Pilates class and a "Boot Camp" class, which is apparently very hard work and helps manage weight and food intake and all that jazz.    So if nothing else, maybe I'll come back with ripped abs! (Here's hoping!)  I think I'm going to become a tutor as well to make some extra money.  AND I need to start planning trips for breaks!

Here are a few pictures of the school!  I'll try and take more of the classrooms I'm in this week!

Computers in the library

Downstairs is the middle and high school library, upstairs is the elementary library.  Love that they're connected! 

Front entryway with the buses and flags from every country represented at the school!

Pretty rickshaw artwork on the pillars and windows!

Home Sweet Home

 I live with the two other interns, Kajori, the HS Health, Sciences, and Physical education intern, and Konrad, the MS Humanities intern.  Kajori's dad is Bengali.  Her parents met here in Dhaka when here mom was a teacher at AISD.  She lived her until she was 10 and she lived here last year.  She has been great to guide us places and introduce us to people!  Konrad is an anthropology major from CA!  People around here make a lot of "3's Company" references and jokes about us, haha!  So far, we're all getting along really well!   I really like them both!  We're all pretty laid back people!  We have similar food interests and design taste.  Because we have Misti, there's no arguing about who cooks, or does dishes, or who's too messy!  We've agreed on a color scheme for our living/dining room area day too!  So far the apartment is super white and terrible, but it's gonna look really good, I know it!  Consider these the BEFORE pictures:

Construction right outside my window all the time is a little downfall of the place.... And the cockroaches (only seen 2 so far and killed 50% of them)... The geckos in my room are pretty cool!

My apartment building!

My room, as I found it. The walls will be a coffee color, with red curtains so imagine it prettier.

Still my room.  Huge closets!  My own bathroom!

Our kitchen... basically it's Misti's kitchen.  She rocks!

Dinning room!  Imagine yellow walls and red curtains!

Living room!  Imagine a bright green wall, red curtains, and those ugly couches covered in navy!

Oh!  And we're cat sitting!  Meet Jovi.  We love her :)

The first 48 hours!

Sorry for the delay in posting, but I've made it!  It's actually really odd to think that I've been here for 18 days already!  A lot has happened!  So let me start from the beginning.....

The weeks leading up to my flight out were SO BUSY!  During the entire month of July, I was working in UVA's remedial reading clinic as my final project/class for my Reading Education Masters!  Mostly days consisted of work on grounds 8am-3pm, plus planning lessons for my group of readers, reading research articles, writing papers, studying for my final comprehensive exam... not to mention, packing, moving, and trying to visit lots of people before leaving the country!  I was doing all this until I got in the car to go to the airport that day!  WHEW!  The moment I sat down at my gate in Charlottesville was the first time in a long time that I remember not having at least 10 things to do at once!  What a weird feeling that was...

My flight to DC was quick and uneventful as usual.  When I landed in DC, I found a pub right across from my gate, bought some overpriced food and beer, and texted my future roommates!  Kajori hadn't arrived, but Konrad had, so he found me.  We met there and talked for awhile until Kajori's flight finally landed.  It was nice to sit and talk to them!  It's always nice to have traveling buddies!  Getting in line for the flight, we met at least two families that were going to AISD too!  I picked out a few more on the plane too!

The flight to Doha, Qatar was about 12.5-13 hours.  It was pretty uneventful too.  Watched bad movies, ate food (pretty yummy QatarAirways food!) and slept on and off.  Arriving in Doha was a little nostalgic :)  The three of us went to the bathroom to change clothes and refresh ourselves a bit (it was almost 10pm there).  Oh, and we all bought some duty free booze!  There are only a few places to get it in Dhaka, so we stocked up!  We met a few other families/couples at the gate and on the next flight we went!  This one was about 6 hours.  Watched Water for Elephants which was decent and slept some.

When we arrived in Dhaka, we were met by our Superintendent, Rich, and we just all hung out and talked while the airport people worked on all our visas (for an hour and a half!!).  Although we were all feeling pretty good despite the jet-lag and what not, that's when we all started to get pretty tired.

Between all of us, there was SO much luggage.  Maybe 25-30 new employees x 3 or 4 bags each!

We finally got our luggage and hopped on buses!  They took us straight to our new apartments and dropped us off to unpack/nap for a few hours.  Misti, our bearer (we pay her to cook, clean, and do our laundry), was already waiting for us!  She is so sweet and so far a great cook!!  She helped us unpack a little too. 

Then we decided to get out of the apartment for a while and took a rickshaw to get iced lattes at a new coffee shop!  WHOA traffic is INSANE here!  I can't even describe the amount of swerving, honking, and maneuvering that occurs here.  Drivers drive within 6 inches of each other.  I swear I could have reached into the bus next to us and put my arm around the guy in the window seat!  I don't have any pictures of this event because I was holding on for dear life!  Hahaha But it was SO much fun!  One of the first things they told us at school was "Don't ride rickshaws!"  We were like, "Um.... what if we already took one on the main road?...."   Their response was something like, "Oh geez, the interns would!"  Which seems to be a popular phrase.  Apparently, we're always the fun ones :)

Testing!

Well, here goes my second attempt to blog about my time abroad!  I'm going to try really hard to keep it up this time!  I can't promise anything, but I promise to try harder!

For anyone who doesn't know,  I'm going to be working as the elementary school intern at the American International School of Dhaka in Bangladesh.  For those of you who don't know where Bangladesh is, but don't want to ask, here's a map of Southeast Asia.  No worries, apparently I pick the most obscure countries to travel.   Bangladesh is the little yellow country just east of India:

Why Bangladesh?  This is the first thing everyone asks me and the question I feel like I've answered a bajillion times.  So, let me walk you briefly through my job search process and how I landed in Bangladesh.  I knew I wanted to teach abroad after working in Doha, Qatar for  six months, so I applied to Search Associates, an organization that helps place teachers with quality international schools.  Each year they have a few conferences around the world.  I attended the one in Boston this past February.  As a candidate, I interviewed for full-time teaching and intern positions, knowing that the job market would be rough for a young, inexperienced candidate like myself.  Most places require two full years of teaching experience, so I got a lot of "You look great, but talk to us in two years!"  I had about eight interviews with different schools.

I accepted the intern position at AISD over full time positions in other countries because it is everything I look for in a school.  It's in Asia, where I've never been and really want to be so I could travel and explore.  It is a highly diverse school, over 61 nationalities represented among the students.  It is a good size, about three small classrooms per grade.  They have a lot of professional development.  The school uses a PYP curriculum, the primary school version of International Baccalaureate.  It's very student driven, strongly encourages world citizenship, attempts to link subjects, and create lifelong learners.  I really like the administrators that interviewed me and they assured me (after I point blank said in the interview that I wouldn't accept an intern position if it meant I would just be making copies and putting up bulletin boards) that they would fully utilize my talents.  SO, as an intern, I will be working as a fourth teacher on a team of three.  They said I could co-teach, teach when a teacher was absent, work with small groups.  I will also be used a sub across grade levels.  **Cross your fingers someone gets knocked up!!** Haha!

I will be sharing an apartment with the two other interns, Kajori and Konrad.  I'm excited to meet them!  I'm also really excited to share a place this time around.  While pretty swanky, my Qatari apartment was quite sad and lonely at times.  Kajori lived in Dhaka part of last year, and went to elementary school at AISD for a bit, so she knows the city pretty well.  I'm excited to take advantage of her Dhaka wisdom!

I can't believe that in only five days, I'll be done with my Masters in Reading Education and on a plane to Dhaka!!  I'm so excited for new adventures, but am sad to leave Charlottesville (and a pretty amazing man might I add!)  just as I was really figuring everything out!  I think I'll be back here in Cville at some point :)

OH! Almost forgot!  Skype will probably be the best way to reach me!  Please add me:  elizabethdepoy

or e-mail: emd3fa@virginia.edu

or facebook me!

If you for some reason would want to send me presents, packages, and things (at your own risk!):

Elizbeth DePoy

American International School in Dhaka

PO Box 6106

Gulshan, Dhaka 1212

Bangladesh

And for letters and flat mail only:

Elizabeth DePoy

ECIS/AISD

401 East State St.

Suite 405

Ithaca, NY 14850