of french fries and torrential downpours

I find it amazing how God knows exactly what you need to pull you out of the bad day you've been having. For me, today was apparently in desperate need of french fries and lots of rain :) It's not that we're having a bad time here--I think Elliot and I are hitting that point all SM's get to where we are done visiting and want to come home. I know we can get through it, today was just a missing-home day. Elliot and I were sitting on our beds thinking about hamburgers and french fries this afternoon and surprisingly our cook *more on that later :)* made homemade Bengali style french fries. Oh my goodness... they were so incredibly good! Something makes me think I won't be losing too much weight on this trip after all...

Then after dinner, we came back to our room to get some stuff planned for tomorrow and realized it was time to go down and say good night to all our new little friends. As we left our room, we realized it had started raining. When the weather has been in the high 80's and extremely humid the rain was an amazing change. We ran through the pitter patter to orphanage where the kids' rooms are. Within ten minutes, the pitter patter turned into a full out Amazon downpour! All the kids in their cute jammies huddled back into their rooms while Elliot, Mrs. Waid, and I ran onto the grassy courtyard and proceeded to dance in the rain. I have NEVER seen rain like that--it was even worse than the rain WallaWalla got at the end of last school year. Within minutes we were all soaked! Mrs.Waid went back undercover but then Tulie (one of the caregivers that is about 20yrs old) ran out to play tag with Elliot and I. I haven't had that much fun in.. oh man. It was so amazing. Elliot and I, while running circles in the muddy grass, said a prayer of thanks for the uplifting change of weather :) Then we came back up to our room, dried off, and I put on sweatpants that no one ever thought I could wear in Bangladesh. ahhh... it was so great!

Anyways, since my last update, we have kinda settled into our room and new schedule at the orphanage. The three of us girls are sharing a room in a two bedroom guest apartment. We have our own bathroom with a shower that only gives cold water. There is some apparatus that should give us warm water but we haven't figured out how to work it yet. Plus, after a hot hot night, the cold water actually feels pretty good in the mornings. We don't go into the other rooms in the apartment much (our clothes are in the living room but that doesn't count lol) because only our bedroom has a/c. Hallelujah--I don't think I could survive here without a/c. We have a tiny ant problem but have been spraying them periodically so hopefully that will help.

My naive mind thought we would be eating nothing but rice and curry every day. That really could not be further from the truth. The Waid's employ a cook named Shati (sp? but pronounced Shaw-tee) who cooks for the Waid's twice a day and the children and caregivers three times a day. She makes Bengali-American food for the Waid's, de-spiced food for the kids, and the spiciest food I've ever ever ever had in my life for the caregivers. Needless to say, Elliot and I have been eating with the Waid's at 9am and 4pm. Breakfast consists of homemade cinnamon toast, rice, dhal (oh man I'm going to miss Shati's dhal when I come home...), fresh fruit salad (usually of peeled grapes, bananas grown about 20feet from the kitchen, and pomegranate seeds). Lately we've also been having fresh papaya and pomello. While the papaya is a hundred times better than anything you can find in the States, I still don't like it. The pomello, which is basically like grapefruit is amazing and Elliot and I will almost always polish off a big bowl of peeled and deseeded pomello pieces. Dinner has been everything from roti burritos, alfredo pasta, cabbage salad, french fries, pizza with homemade crust, and spaghetti. Seriously this woman makes everything from scratch and is a wonderful cook! Elliot and I joke that we will never lose weight in this place--we'll probably gain it! But in all actuality, this food is so healthy. Even the white rice we eat every day has grains of wheat cooked into it (which is surprisingly tasty!).

This trip has also reinforced the idea that you should never tell God that you don't want to do something. I chose to come to this orphanage because I didn't want to teach English on some island and I wanted to do medical work. Well, the medical clinic is in the final stages of being built and should be opened next week or so but Jehanna is teaching grade one English and English math and Elliot is teaching the same to kindergarten kids. Oh dear... Math I can handle--numbers transcend language as long as you can count somehow on your hands. English... geesh. How many different ways can you teach someone how to say "this" or "here?" Also, how many people reading this know what a short vowel is? Or better yet, can add a letter in front of the vowel like "na" and be able to explain what sound it makes to 13children? Mrs.Waid has been helping me the past couple days because she's taught grade one for the last 20years or so but today she was preoccupied with taking pictures of the children to send to the sponsors so Jehanna was on her own. Oh dear! The two Bengali teachers were crying they were laughing so hard at me trying to teach these darn short vowels. I had the smart girl in the class correcting me--she's 7yrs old for crying out loud! I'm in college! I was telling Mrs.Waid about it and she laughed when I said I would be more comfortable teaching the polarity and reactivity of 1,2-dipropylcyclohexane. Sad eh?

Besides teaching English daily and English math every other day, Elliot and I have to teach conversational English every day to K and Gr.1. That means we sit the kids on our living room floor and teach them how to say "Hello. How are you? I'm fine, thank-you." Today we taught them that instead of saying fine, they could say happy or sad or tired or sick or hungry or.. you get the picture. The catch was we had to ask them questions in Bengali and they had to answer in English. This means my Bengali vocabulary is growing ever so slowly. It's kinda nice.. It provides some sort of goal and hobby here. Elliot and I are also doing an art class for K and Gr.1 and doing a choir once a week. These kids sing so loudly, so uninhibited. It's amazing. And they know SO many songs--they may not know what they are singing about but they know those words! Elliot and I taught them "I like bananas", the old kiddie camp song and in just a couple days they have the words and actions down pat!

The one downside I'm seeing to Bangladesh is bugs. When the sun goes down and the lights come on, these tiny little bugs flock in through the vents towards any light they can find. As I'm writing this, they are crawling all over my screen. Ick. Not cool. Two nights ago I got up to pee in the middle of the night and there was a two inch cockroach on the bathroom floor. Oh my soul.! I got out of there as fast as I could and curled up in bed. But I was still freaked out so I thought the leaves on my flowery pillowcase were the cockroach's friends coming to get me. ..Yeah, totally didn't sleep the rest of the night..

The redeeming factor is definitely these kids. Little Joseph, Mikey, Brent, Caleb, Andrew, Joshua, and Bartholamew. I think Caleb is my favourite--when I get pictures I'll definitely put them up. The girls are equally cute: Marissa, Connie, Melanie, Tanisha, Chloe, Bristy.. all so cute. Saying goodnight to each room is always an ordeal because kids come pouring out of beds wanting kisses and hugs all clothed in cute jammies. The always want stories and if you know anything about me, I can write factual term papers but my imagination isn't too great. They usually find a story book for me to read and then we have fun. By the way, the coolest thing I've taught the kids so far is how to High Five. They LOVE it! :)

Anyways, it's late here so I must away to bed. Sorry for the long post, I finally got my blog set up. When I first tried, the whole website was in Bangla, which of course does me no good. I was going to have someone at home set the blog up for me but today I found the English button :) Future posts will hopefully be shorter...
ami tomake bhalobashi <3