Mon. Feb 23 🏥 & CSI mtg

School for the girls again.

We didn’t get to the immunization clinic at 9:00 so they told us to come back at 2:00. We took Annslie and Gentry to see the pediatrician. Gentry is 4 mo. A very happy baby, starting to grasp his toys and play. My colleagues(like our fellow missionaries are referred to the natives as)are saying he is looking like Annslie now, 14 3/4 lbs, 24.8” long. He also has almost no soft spot like it was with Annslie, but his head is still growing nicely so not to worry yet.. he has just a nice amount of medium brown hair that looks like he’s got a nice haircut although we have not touched his hair with a scissors yet.

We picked up sandwiches from the North End on ground floor to take home for lunch with the girls and Miss Christina. Got Annslie down for her nap and took Gentry for his 2:00 appt.

Doyle’s from Gopalgonj arrived in the City also and moved in with us at the guest house. Their teacher joined Miss Christina and field secretary Chris’s at Brian’s. 

Pizza was ordered in, veggies and dip, and Kaylee made a burnt grape salad (YUM😋😋) for supper at the guest house with everybody. 9 children playing, adults visiting and singing

Sun Feb 22 🦷 & 👓

 Christina walked over from Brian’s (where she’s staying while we’re in the City)and had school with the girls while Lonnie, the littles, and I went to the dentist where I got some cavities taken care of. This place is higher tech than home with their method of X ray! While sitting right in the dentist chair they use an X-ray system that is just a slim wand with a small screen on the end and buttons on the handle for the Dr. to make it do whatever he needs and then the pictures show up on a screen right in front of the patient! We could choose between Japanese or American compound for the filling and after the work was done he took more X-rays and could show me the finished product, Pretty Cool 😎 

After Annslie’s afternoon nap we all went back to Jamuna Park for the eve. Primarily to pick up Jaira’s glasses at 8:00 that we’d ordered yesterday. We had a few hours to shop before the appointed time and started with finding some supper. Which turned into quite a bigger ordeal than we had expected! In the, is it South tower🤔, on 5th floor is a vast array of places to eat. We, just like criminals😅, followed our path of habit. But! Lo, and behold! Our favorite burger joint was under going remodel or was no more to be! Hopefully the former! 🤞🏼🤞🏼 So, we took off in search of something else.. Oh, and I have not mentioned that the Muslim month of Ramadan fasting began earlier this week. They break their daily fast at sundown, So this food floor was a very popular place at this hour😱 They had plates of food ready and waiting on the table for the moment when they could break their fast. After passing up Many places that were doing their best to entice us to their place of business we ended up at… Dominos where we knew what to expect🙃 The family behind our booth shared their dates with us. Dates are customary for breaking the fast of the day with. Our supper time got cut a little shorter when Gentry started fussing and I found out that the bottle and formula hadn’t got along with us! We were in a good place to get what we needed, but it would be a Lot of steps and I could foresee that being done with a hungry yelling baby🤦🏼‍♀️ I was able to quiet him by carrying him instead of pushing him in the stroller.. we did get a lot of extra steps in Fast, walking across the complex to a different tower and getting to the proper floor and then back across the complex to Wholesale Club where I’d been wanting to try some formula from a brand that I was familiar with versus the Biomil that our CSI program gives to the natives… We got our other favorite Jamuna Park shopping in.. Mr D.I.Y., Kid’s Paradise, and Wholesale Club. And then to pick up Jaira’s glasses… that was fun 🤓 she quickly started pointing out specific things on signs, giggling as she exclaims that she can see the white in daddy’s hair now! And when we walked out to the parking garage, “I have to be careful not to trip, everything’s so sharp now!”

I don’t remember the timeline of everything, but Lonnie ended up ordering a pair of auto-darkening glasses since he hasn’t been able to wear his contact lenses and therefore his sunglasses around home. And Christina ordered her a new pair of glasses also. So we should be set up now😅

Sat Feb 21 Dhaka 🚙 💨

 Got to Dhaka in time for lunch at Second Cup in the Centrepoint high rise(by the airport). Hit the UniMart there and had a LOVELY surprise!! Tortilla chips available again!!👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 It’s been a year since we’ve had luxury in that form🙃 and Big American sized bags of Lay’s potato chips in Cheddar & Sour cream and Salt &Vinegar flavors🤩🤩🤩. And they also had a diffuser in stock again🤗🤗 I’ve been wishing for one to diffuse essential oils at night when the stuffy noses syndrome makes it rounds

We went ahead and hit one of things that was on the priority list for this trip into Dhaka… glasses for Jaira!🤓 Which we found at Jamuna Park in the shop just past Slash Coffee on the way to Wholesale Club. 

On to the the guest house in Pink City 🏡 where we unloaded the van and made nachos😋😋😋 

Brian and Lars showed up to say “Hi” and chat a bit.

We made beds, got the classroom set up, and settled in for the week.

Round 11:00 or so, Lonnie went with Brian to get the CSI field secretaries from the airport. dea. Chris and Sondra Koehn NewPlymouth,ID.

Fri. Feb. 20 👦🏾 🐦‍⬛

 After the 2nd S.S. at Chakrakhali was our visiting appt. at the home of our S.S. boy that has spent time in the hosp. recently and has ongoing health issues. Kobid, (translator), older cousin? fellow S.S. boy, and Nee-tie(the rickshaw van driver) all found ourselves just our side of the Chakrakhali rickshaw van station. The mom met us at the road and guided us down the dirt path that sloped down from the road past huts stacked one after another there. We stopped at the doorway of one and stepped in and were instructed to sit on the bed, as is so common here. And quite frankly, there is usually really no other place to sit. Often a plastic chair or 2 can fit yet in the small area that is left, as was the case today. We were served hot tea and rice pudding. As we exited the house into the shared yard and we visited a bit with the neighbors.. one man was there in his wheelchair and we were told the story of how during missionary Travis’s time this man fell from a tree, paralyzing him from the waist? down and Travis had helped him acquire the wheelchair. As we were visiting there a bird landed on our sick S.S. boy’s shoulder. And we were told the story of how this bird has claimed this boy. He just showed up awhile back and has stuck around, he does not like anybody else and will let no one else care for him, hold him, etc. He is a Shalik or Mynah bird in the starling family with that incredible ability to “talk” making him seem like a very smart bird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myna. And we got to hear him talk while we were there🤗 He clearly said(in Bangla) to the boy’s mom,  “Auntie, who are these people?”😅 To us it seems like another touch from God who numbers every hair on our heads, sees the sparrow fall, and reaches down to this only child..that is full of sickness.. from a low income village home.. in the southern part of overpopulated Bangladesh🤍

Thurs. Feb 19 🏦

 After lunch Miss Christina and the big girls went with Lonnie to the bank. Miss Christina’s visitor’s visa is up and also the month of grace is just around the corner. In Dhaka, Brian has been working with the legal documents for these teachers but not getting very far… they told him now, “If these girls have a bank account,….” So, thus the trip into town this afternoon.

Wed Feb 18 a Shundorban day trip

 Shundorban translates to beautiful forest.. it is the largest mangrove forest, just an hour drive + hour boat ride away. https://maps.app.goo.gl/Jitrkvm8xZNwVU5QA?g_st=ic  

In Mongla, we met Doyle’s from Gopalgonj, at Hotel Pashur. They were able to show us the learned way of going on this excursion, as it was our 1st time. We ate our packed lunch on the boat ride down. Just a hint of cool on the breezy boat ride.. pretty much perfect weather for the day ☀️ 

When we arrived, our boat captain took anything we’d brought along, to a secure place, as the monkeys are quite the thieves. We armed ourselves with sticks to keep monkeys at bay but we actually didn’t see so many. A very nice elevated walk, since this area floods, through the jungle. A couple of towers to climb for a bird’s eye view. After a couple hours of walking and  getting quite warm, we were back at the dock. Just as we got settled onto our boat. A whole crowd of older school age children finished their Shundorban tour, and quickly gathered on the dock to get pictures of the boat load of white skinned people. It’s quite hard to keep a good attitude in those kind of situations but finally just try to pretend we are royalty instead of rare zoo animals🤦🏼‍♀️ We ended up taking an extra little excursion down a waterway into the depths of the forest after a guard in uniform with gun in hand plus another just good lookin Bangali😂took up residence on the front of the boat. The guard was on board because not just anybody is actually allowed down that waterway.. and the other Bangali? Ami jani na(I don’t know)

Anyways, this little extra excursion turned out to be about the most exciting part of the day! We saw several crocodiles in their natural habitat and came upon one especially Large one on the bank . The guess was that he was at least 12 feet long! A very ominous creature😳 And What do you know!???!!! They decide this huge croc needs to move and so the boat is headed to the bank! I am sitting on pins and needles feeling like this is a very unwise decision. The bank is bumped and I’m trying to figure out what my options are if the croc decides to come aboard or attacks🤯 The 🐊 slides into the water and swims away from the boat.. Huge sigh of relief!.. We have survived to tell the story! Come to find out the extra Bangali onboard is a nature reporter and has millions of followers! And he was now able to add more exciting video clips🙃

After dropping our extra passengers off at the Shundorban park dock we headed out for mainland. This Pashur River, that is just up from the Bay of Bengal, is quite large and we came past 1 especially massive ocean going vessel🚢 . 

Back at Hotel Pashur, we parted ways with our fellow missionaries, after bathroom break and delving into the leftover bars, fruit,… from lunch.

Sat. Feb. 14 Happy Valentines 💌

 A year ago, we just about missed this day. Traveling over the time zones we had an 8 hour Valentine’s Day spent in the Doha, Qatar airport with Lonnie sleeping as much of that as was possible🙃

Today, I had the breakfast table fixed up with my black orna(like a table runner) and candles 🕯️. Crepes with sausage, homemade marshmallow cream(since whipping cream powder is currently unavailable locally), strawberry pie filling, and syrups.

We went into Khulna and had a nice dinner at the Grand Placid Hotel