recent black and white photos - 20 days to go! inshallah

experiencing Bangladesh with the Sinhas

here we are!

getting ready
we got the wedding photographer to shine his light on us and take this one

family lines up to get a picture taken with the bride and groom
i think these are Mr. Sinha's many lovely sisters
the bride doesn't smile too much! but, contrary to this photograph, the groom was beaming all night long



I'm not sure I've written enough about the great big love of the Sinha family!

The Sinhas are family friends from when I was little; me and Andrew were best buds with their kids Tanya and Famid when we were in elementary and middle school. Our lives have tended to criss-cross... Mrs. Sinha even worked together with Tia Gisi for several years and they became good friends too. Since those days in Roanoke, Hasina and Jabil - Mr. and Mrs. Sinha - have moved back to a half-and-half lifestyle; they bought an apartment here and spend about half their time in Dhaka with their family.

This happen-chance thing, of having these friends in Dhaka with me, has been one of the very best parts of my time here. The Sinhas have been my family away from home, and have included me and welcomed me (and my housemates) on so many occasions. They are so generous, and we've grown really close. I have spent a lot of Saturday afternoons eating snacks and napping and watching cricket at the Sinha house - which is just about a mile away from my house in Dhaka. Isn't that wacky?

It's nice to have family here, which is how it feels when the Sinhas are in town. But they give me something else - the Sinhas are so full of life and so proud of their roots that they show me beautiful aspects of Bangladesh that I wouldn't have discovered alone... they have helped me be more intimate with culture and people. Mrs. Sinha shows me how one can interact with Bangladesh's seeming distress with grace and generosity - she shows me how it all works.

Also, Mrs. Sinha is a wicked good bargainer; she is the force behind the beautiful bridesmaid dresses and shawls that we'll have at our wedding in December, inshallah. They will all be made-in-Bangladesh by the tailor Mahsoud, from Bangladeshi silkworms - cool.

Last weekend we went to an engagement party for Mr. Sinha's niece. It was really, really fancy. The party took place at one of the country's finest hotels. We spent the whole afternoon getting ready to go - hanging out in a salon with all the aunts and cousins of the bride. Bangladeshi Steel Magnolias! I have never worn so much makeup in my life. The coal stayed on my eyes for 4 days after.

The green sari that I am wearing in these pictures was a gift from Mrs. Sinha to celebrate my engagement :) Isn't it amazing?

a brand new rickshaw

tune in for a bunch of photos:

for the next few weeks, until homecoming, i'd like to show you guys more of Dhaka - my home for this one year. hard to comprehend, this place that feels frantic, described by "survival", corruption, over-population, poverty, extreme heat.

human rights clip

some interesting news... one of our school's kindergarten teachers, an older lady, had a stroke last week. she's making a recovery, thank goodness, but can't return to teach this school year. there is a real shortage of qualified substitute teachers for a situation like this, and so school has asked me to help fill in this position...
so i'm going to work together with another support teacher to take over this kindergarten class for the last 4 weeks of school, starting Sunday. talk about a learning experience! looking forward to this - especially because the high school activity has begun to wind down; things haven't been so busy lately. the little ones will most likely keep me on my toes.

also -
one of my high school students, HyeRin, made this video clip for a history class project assessing the UN Declaration of Human Rights. it's really neat (and short), neat enough that when i saw it i wanted to share it. check it out!

viaje a tailandia

here is a little report from spring break week, which happened just over 3 weeks ago.
3 road warriors (Mom, Dad, and Aunt Leigh - her first time out of the country!) crossed the world and came to meet me in Bangkok for a northern Thailand adventure. we had such a nice time. i was so glad to see my family and grateful that they came so far.

i've posted a few pics below, but there are many more you can see by clicking here.
Dad also took many amazing pictures, including photos of Cambodia where they continued to Angkor Wat when i had to go back to Dhaka - definitely check out his photographs if you get a chance!

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here we are in Sukothai historic park, the first Buddhist capital of the Thai state. The yellow tree called Golden Shower was in full bloom during our Thai adventure.



Thailand is Buddhist, very Buddhist. We went to many temples and saw so many beautiful, smooth Buddha bodies. This pic was taken at a temple/Buddhist study center in Chiang Rai.

We came upon a local hot spot, a field, where people were gathered playing games. Mom volunteered herself to play one game, a super-sized Pin the Tail on the Donkey that took place in the field with a cardboard box and a baseball bat. she was a hit.

One fascinating day we maid it both to Laos and Burma/Myanmar - the day of the Golden Triangle. This photograph comes from the Burmese border town.

Do you see the people pouring water on a truck full of Buddha figures? The annual SongKran (New Year's) festival celebrates spring and new beginnings with LOTS and LOTS of water. Even the Buddhas get soaked. We just happened to be in Thailand for SongKran and we most definitely got soaked. Again and again and again, hysterically soaked - often with buckets of ice water thrown by giddy townspeople. There is a lot more to tell about this... for example, it happened that I developed a real obsession with this one water gun and had trouble NOT shooting every living being for 3 consecutive days.

These girls, SongKran festival revelers, are riding around in the back of a pickup with buckets of water - ready to soak anyone they can - extra points for foreigners

World's best pineapple eaten here, in the middle of this field.Bangkok market scene.
Bangkok has a sky train that slides through the city scrapers elegantly. Here is the sky train stop near the popular and modern MBK shopping center.

Another temple / "Wat" scene.

And a bike pic for D, who I missed.


A strange thing that I noticed on this trip, through the juxtaposition of my experience with that of mom dad and leigh, is that my eyes have become very used to Asia. Most Asian sights don't seem strange to me anymore... And I have to say that Dhaka sights are so much more intense and challenging than anything we saw in Thailand - though what we saw in Thailand was new and challenging for many of the people in our travel group.

track meet report

hello dear ones! well... the latest news is...

AIS/D took 2nd place in the track meet, out of 6 teams. woohoo!
kids ran great, had a GREAT time. it was so hot, but dry and different from Dhaka - it felt okay to us. runners were forced to drink, drink, drink and no major dehydration problems happened.

the Delhi school families hosted all the visiting kids and coaches, and this system turned out to be a lot of fun for everyone thanks to generosity and good behavior all around. the poor host mom who inherited our 3 6th grade boys for 3 nights, good Lord they were excited, hyper rascals. one ate so much Subway and McDonald's ice cream on his first night in Delhi that he spent the next afternoon throwing up behind our tent and missing all his events.

surprising news! we took home 4 of the 6 available gold medals in the shot put! oh yeah!! that means more medals in the shot put than any other field event. whew!! most likely this was due to the sheer mass of our kids, but it seems that the coaching didn't hurt their chances too much and for this i'm relieved and amused :)

yeah, i've really enjoyed this 7-week intro to coaching. back to a normal schedule now, and no more traveling til the trip home.

ps - Charlottesville High School, here we come! ¡Ya vengo!