Our stay in the village was really helpful for Bangla. "If only" we had a few more months to do it. Perhaps we'll wait until this December-February (cool season) to get a couple more months in at the end of our official language learning period.

The village was also a great cultural experience. I'll elaborate a bit more on this piece from our recent prayer and newsletter:

We find that outside of Bangladesh most people refer to this country as “that really poor place where it floods a lot.” It is true, and we often hear about the flooding in Bangladesh that destroys crops, etc. What we realized in the village area is that the annual flooding is actually necessary for the majority of the year’s rice crops. During the rainy season the rains keep the paddies watered. Massive rivers fill up and overflow watering the land as the rain water from the north comes south. Fish begin roaming across the paddies where people can catch them for food. The fish also take up residence in the thousands of small private ponds where they become a source of food for several months. Praise God for sustaining Bangladesh with His rains!

The flooding is necessary when it happens gradually and in the right proportion. What we hear about in the news is when the floods come at the wrong time or too heavily. One of the sights in many village areas is a riverbed that has been flattened on the bottom during the dry season. (The massive rivers also slow to a trickle so that the large flat areas near the a river's edge can be used for a rice crop). The semi-dry riverbed provides a (almost) perfect place to grow another crop of rice during the dry season. It's both an ingenous use of limited space and a great risk to the farmer. It's perfect because it's a free place for another crop but it's obviously going to also be a periodic hazard when too much rain periodically comes during the dry season before that crop has been harvested.

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