of Catholic weddings and drive-by giveaways

Now that we are back to teaching, our schedules have been changed. All the activities of Friday have been moved to Sunday, hence Friday is a my new day off :) Papri is taking a class on Friday near Dhaka so she can slowly work towards getting her master's in education. Poor woman has to travel back and forth every week! That's going to get old fast! So this last Friday, I tidied up our room, did a load of laundry, and relaxed. It was "Sunday" after all :)

But the highlight of that day was talking to my friend Abby on the phone. It was so good to hear from her and to feel like I was home for even just a second. It's the first time we've talked since I've been gone and it was so good to touch base with one of my best friends.

Later that afternoon, we opened the gates for one last clinic stint. We were slowly running out of medications, bags, and bottles, but we were going to go until we had nothing left to give. Some people were coming back for seconds but I hope someone got some help that wouldn't have otherwise. For some reason, most of my patients were men with teeth problems. Here's a tip, brush your teeth! If I had a nickel for every cavity I saw on Friday I would be able to pay for my trip back home for a visit! (Well maybe that was a tad bit of an exaggeration but there were a ton of people with bad teeth!)

On Sabbath, we were presented with a unique opportunity. Abiram, the electrician on campus, was getting married at the Catholic church where Sunity (our little disabled girl) used to stay. He used to work at the Catholic mission but left to come work for us because we needed him so badly. Since then he has been studying Adventist beliefs but his new bride was Catholic so they had to be married in the church. We all piled into the back of the Hilux and set off early Saturday morning and were back in the early afternoon.

So that makes for two weddings in one week. I've been here for almost 4months and then bam! Everyone starts getting married lol.

I took a good long nap in the warm sun on the rooftop in the afternoon :) It was splendid! Later that evening, Dr. Becky handed out glo-sticks to all the kids. You should have seen it! They were all running around in their little onesie pajamas, waving their lights in the darkness, tossing them into the air, and laughing wildly. It was adorable! Elle and I joined into the fun until it was time to usher them off to bed. Elle and I got to watch an episode of House afterwards as we chomped down some delicious popcorn from Shati. Twas a good day.

This morning, I had to go to class. Weird for a Sunday, but nonetheless I spent part of the morning teaching the joys of the letter J--my favourite letter! When English class was over, I headed downstairs to the next task at hand. After spending countless hours and days organizing the storage room, we had weeded out old and tattered clothes. They had been set aside for this day. Now the villagers were waiting outside the gate like kids at an amusement park. Our castoffs were their prized possessions.

We took about four in at a time and handed out a dress or two with a sweater and a pair of socks. When most of the children had been tended to, we loaded the rest of the clothes into the Hilux. Most of the clothes left over were baby sleepers and onesies and little little girl dresses. We drove through the villages, calling for all little children (cho-toe bah-cha!!) to come to the road. We tossed mismatched socks to the excited parents and children, along with bibs and bonnets--probably foreign accessories over here. It sounds like an easy project but it actually took a couple hours to do. After all the baby onesies were gone that I had, Shabourna and I fell asleep in the backseat of the truck as it bumped along. But it was another good day, so exciting to see the looks of joy in people's eyes as they grabbed the clothing.

Tomorrow we are going to the grand opening of an English Medium Secondary School. I'm not sure what the Medium has to do with anything but all I know is that they really want English foreigners to be there. lol I'm so ready to go back to being invisible in the States--enough of this celebrity business!

I'll do my best to attach pictures to the last couple posts later... For now it's bedtime! :)
ami tomake bhalobashi