of play doh and saris

It's Sabbath afternoon here and everyone around the orphanage is taking it pretty easy. As I sit peacefully in my bed, I can't believe how much has happened in the last two days. I mean, you gotta end the week off on a high! Yesterday, I was not teaching short vowels (which I still despise..) or "greater than" and "less than." I was teaching imagination, which I am not always so good at. Every Friday is Art for K and Gr.1. This last Friday was Art with Play-Doh. In North America Play-Doh is a part of childhood, a necessity if you will. But here in Bangladesh, Play-Doh is a luxury. In J&Elle's classroom, each kid got their very own pot of Play-Doh that Elliot brought over from the States. How she knew to take over the exact number of pots, I don't know :) After laying down some ground rules (do not eat, put on the floor, or mix colours), the kids opened their very first Play-Doh pots. I don't think we could have gotten the same reaction if we would have given them a million dollars or taken them to a candy shop. At first all that was made was snakes and circles, but after some examples by Elle and me, ice cream cones and sunbursts, dinner plates with food and frogs, even snails and butterflies emerged onto the desks. Each kid shouted, "Teacher, teacher!" so we could come by and admire their little creations. What a cool experience...

Later in the day, Banni (a girl a little younger than us that helps out in the office here) knocked on our door to see if we wanted to make the trek out to Hili with her and Rosemary (the nurse here) to pick up some stuff. She said the five of us would take a van the 3km or so to the village. So I'm thinking minivan. Wrong. The van was nothing more than a glorified cart pulled by a bicycle. Kinda sketchy in other words... Nonetheless, we all loaded onto the back and started our adventure. We didn't get far before we had to split up into two vans--not saying I've put on weight, but there were 5 of us!

But after a day in Hili, I never ever ever want to be a celebrity. Ever. People stared, took pictures, pointed, yelled Bengali words Rosemary and Banni refused to translate for us... it was awful. I felt like I had 3 legs or a nose growing out of my forehead. Anyways, Banni's tailor wasn't open where she had to pick up her seloar kamees so we did a little bit of browsing in some of the shops. Ohmygoodness.... I found the MOST beautiful red sari with silver embroidery. At about $13USD, it was a steal of a deal. Elle got a beautiful fuchsia one and we wore them for church today. But again, there were at least 20men outside the shop... just staring at three white women. Awkward.

Elle and I each bought a pack of glass bangles: 45taka each ($1USD=70taka). We also bought two tubes of henna to decorate our hands and do henna tattoos with for only 25taka a tube. I love how cheap Bangladesh is. Also, for the poor guy to peddle us all the way from the orphanage to the market was 50taka. It's a tad bit ridiculous how cheap some things are here.

Today we wore our saris and took lots of pictures (some of which are up on Facebook so follow the link from the previous post...). It was a good day :)

Hope yours is good too! Happy Sabbath!
ami tomake bhalobashi :)