i spy sarita

thank you for all your support homeplacedrive readers! this is the end... be sure to scroll down and see the second-to-last entry of the trip back to return photos.

i am safely home now, and readjusting. bangladesh is an experience i'm dealing with still. the year was challenging. i still feel unable to convey the experience in words or pictures. i'm glad i went, and i'm glad it's done. and i'm grateful for our healthy, lucky lives in our country.

now:

just a few photographs in which the photographer, surprisingly, showed up in the picture. can you find her?

2 days before homecoming: returning prints to the people i visited this year

please stay tuned!

hello! i'm sending this quick message from Zia airport, on my way home. i am simultaneously listening to my last Call to Prayer and trying not to feel to sad about leaving this place - what a weird place to say goodbye to.

i have 2 more special posts to make after i get home to Cville - i did something neat yesterday that i want to share: i went back to someplaces in town and gave out copies of the pictures i took. it was cool and i took some more pics of that event.

so this message just asks you to stay tuned for a little longer to homeplacedrive -

see you, wonderful family, dear friends, so SOON

ps - Dave and I survived!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

meet the kindergarteners!

one month of teaching Kg - we did great!
for example - we eat fewer boogers now than we did 4 weeks ago!
we love to hear stories, and we know our subtraction facts like 8-4=6! no no no! 8-4=4.
we know how to make sand castles and bake bread, and last week we took a field trip to the igloo ice cream factory and no one threw up on our bus. sometimes we call our teacher "Ms. P!" and yesterday we gave her lots of hugs when we said goodbye -

Ammar - Sudan
Chang Hoon - South Korea
Anil - Nepal
Leeyan - Bangladesh
Freya, Aditya, and Ammar

Ms. P didn't think she'd like kindergarten, but she did.

here in dhaka we have spent the week saying goodbyes. the community of AIS/D that has been a family of friends within a strange tough Dhaka prepares to break apart... as all the members go off to their own far corner of the Earth for the summer holiday. many, students and teachers, are leaving for good and starting something new somewhere else - their next step, their next posting. and this week, in every division of the school, there has been an assembly in which students thank their friends who are leaving and also say thank you to their teachers in the form of individualized speeches. how special this gesture was. finally we closed up today with a last faculty meeting in which more stories were told and thank yous made. i don't think i've ever seen a group of adults so choked with emotions. this week we've been tearful again and again with the bittersweet of ending.

but now it's through. school's out for the summer. and it's time to escape before someone realizes that perhaps i or he or she is not all that rosey and significant after, at least not all the time. let's get out of here!

in our own little household we are preparing to say goodbye to someone who has taken good care of us. Anna our housekeeper. i really love Anna. as we go we are trying to take some deliberate steps to make sure that we take care of her too...

tuesday i took some photographs of Anna with her children, 3 year-old Zaxina and 4-month old Tansik.