After getting back from the village we had all these emails that said things like "hope you had a good vacation/break, etc." After rereading the email that Faithy wrote before we went, including lines like "lounging in teashops," I knew where these emails were coming from. Indeed it was a bit of a break from Dhaka--it was so quiet in the guest house where we stayed that you could hear the cows chewing grass outside; I'm serious--but the main point of our journey was to work on language everyday. This we did.

Although I still don't know all the ways that one can ask "where are you from/ when did you come/ how long are you staying?" I think I have about 20 of them down. Usually whenever you meet people in Bangladesh they ask "what is your country?" followed by "how long have you been here?" They then respond with complements about how good our Bangla is for only having been here such a short time, but the real truth doesn't take long to come out regarding our linguistic limitations. After Bangladeshis have met you they almost invariably ask "How are you?" followed immediately by "How's the baby? How's the wife?"

We hope to head back to the village one of these weeks for another shot at language practice. It's a bit challenging with Yazzie's age right now, especially for Faith, to move around the village in the hot sun and practice. We'll probably go for a longer stay when the weather cools a bit. While we were there it averaged 88-90F and super humid every night. When the power goes out (which it does for a few hours every night), we just laid there and sweat. This of course, makes a person tired after a few days, and reduces the energy for foreign language conversation during the day.

1 Comments

by Keith Hogan @ 2008 Sep 30 09:37 pm

The village sounded like an awsome place. You guys need to take me there some day.