Fri Oct 30 Worship Day

 It was fishing day again at the pukar (pond) that’s just before our church house. So, many locals had paid to spend the day fishing at that location and lined the banks.

At Choygoria here, we decided to try attendance charts. There was no S.S. in Chakrakhali so it worked great to have extra time for getting the 30+ students’ names onto these charts.

After S.S., there is this lady that we’ve helped with medicine and her dad has been friends with Shanto’s. This lady’s husband died 4 years ago and her aging father has had a stroke… still up and about but not able to work like before… she has health issues and is not able to help bring in income.. she’s got a 14 yr old daughter that did not pass class 8 exams, they want to get her married well but Bangladesh has a backward? dowry system so they don’t have much hope of being able to marry her well.. this lady has an 8-10 yr old son as well. So, a household of 5 without an income to speak of. Losing their home is a real fear

We agreed to go with her to her home as we didn’t have the 2nd S.S. to attend

We wound our way along the canal on a narrow foot path, behind the men that were spending the day fishing.

Arriving at her home I was very pleasantly surprised.. very cleanly swept dirt yard and home. It was also more spacious than a lot of village homes that we’ve been in..

  typical mud floor home built up about 2 ft

But this one was very open with a walkway all along the front. Neighboring S.S. children hung around with us there…coming in for a drink…by this time it had started lightly raining which it kept up the rest of the morning… one of the girls led us to the wash room behind the house.. it was very clean and tidy also~a built up mud foundation outhouse with squat pot with an A-frame roof and a burlap cloth to let down when in use…On the far end of the house in the cooking area, the wrinkled little old grandma was squatting in front of a wok over the fire, just finishing cooking up a mess of greens. The lady said her daughter was there on the bed in the bedroom but in the dimness of the bedroom I could not see her under the mosquito netting. She called her 14 yr old daughter out then so we could meet her. She, like many other young people, was using a using a smart phone. These villagers often do not have much but it is not strange to see them with a smart phone. 

The children were all playing a game outside and my girls were game to play with them but the language barrier.. Maddie says,”I am not getting what the rules are”😏 in hindsight I would’ve had Kobid help them out with translating as he was with us since we had come straight from S.S.

When we took our leave, the lady and her 2 children came with us, taking us by a few more homes of her family where we were invited in, told to sit. The next house was nice in that it was concrete but not the level of cleanliness that we’d just experienced.. here they brought us palm fruit that had a nice texture and mildly sweet flavor..

Back past all the men spending the day fishing

By time we got home, we were all quite damp from the fine rain and the dirt paths that we’d been walking on had been turning to slippery mud…

Lunch

Littles down for naps

I tried my hand at making dudh cha(milk tea)… in my efforts I ended up with a couple pots of hot tea while trying to get it right..I did get a satisfactory product but still not sure if it was authentic

3:00 Lewis’s came for doctrine class 

I told them about trying to learn how to make dudh cha and wondered if Purnima would come into the kitchen and give me a demo. She made it a spiced dudh cha with cardamom seeds and cinnamon. One of the things that I’d been wondering for sure on was how to do the milk. So she helped me perfect it. I’d figured out that I needed to scald the milk 1st before adding it to the tea to get that desired texture with the gloopies from the scalded milk 😜 also learning that there are as many ways to make dudh cha “as there are cooks”. Purnima asked for Horlicks which is a powder of some sort that I didn’t have and Lewis says it’s best with a little instant coffee yet, too!! So I guess I have a few more versions of dudh cha to try. I thought I didn’t like dudh cha for our 1st whole year here cause probably within our 1st week in the country we were served dudh cha made with powdered milk and who knows, maybe if I’d try it like that again by now, it might set a little better than that 1st experience.?.

4:00 service…Shanto and Espondant were there in addition to Lewis’s, Liton, and Kobid. But Shotti was at home sick still. They’ve been having fevers, etc. it sounds like Shotti has been quite out of commission.. her parents left for a week? But plan to be back..

I put a load of laundry in and we started preparations for going in to Dhaka tomorrow

Thurs Oct 29

 Lonnie and I decided to go into Khulna City this morning and see if parts for the oven are available locally or if it’s an item for our upcoming Dhaka trip.

Got bbq meatloaf out of the freezer for the girls’ lunch

 We stopped at one stretch of appliance stores with no luck. Grabbed a few ruti(fry bread) from a streetside vendor. Went on to Day-7(grocery store), Artisan where we shopped clothes for Gentry and shirts and another pair of pants for Lonnie. There was another store Lonnie wanted to check for the oven part. At this one, 2 men said, if Lonnie would take them to Boro Bazaar they could check with somebody there.. no part there either. Then we stopped at a diner that has caught my attention for quite some time but I can’t pull anything up about it on Google Map. It’s the Compteur(or something like that🤔) aesthetically pleasing with floor to high ceilinged windows, trimmed in black. Plants for accents, A spacious dining area.. clean and modern. We ordered a frappé and a crème brûlée to try something from their menu. The crème brûlée was definitely the best we’ve had in this country so far. And we decided we’d like to come back for some special occasion sometime..

Wed Oct 28

 A nice little thunderstorm came thru in the night. Very possibly one of the last rains of the season, til next year..

Our kitchen oven’s chronic problem of not staying lit is steadily getting more severe even with the the TLC that has been administered by the head of the house.. this morning the oven was pulled out, the back cover removed and extensive investigation ensued.

After school, I was mixing up Autumn Pumpkin (choc chip) cookies (Meals To The Field cookbook), Lonnie and Annslie were down the road buying eggs and everybody else was outside.

Maddie comes in reporting that Gentry is gone! The neighboring repair shop man (who we know well) wanted to hold him and he takes off down the road on his bike, out of sight! They were found at the dhokan just past the church and Gentry was soon back home again.

 

Tues Oct 27

 Shunil(night guard) told Lonnie the power was s’pose to be out all afternoon. That was nice to have a heads up but it actually was off from 10 am- 5 pm! Battery backup lasted a nice amount of time before we had to turn on the noisy generator….There is a crew clearing around the power lines again. It wasn’t too bad although it was another really Hot day getting up to 93 so we were very happy to have AC to cool the house down in the eve. But then the power left again for awhile…

 Rice and beans and fried apples for lunch

 A couple books repaired 

Lonnie got the new basketball backboard mounted🤩

…took the Bud out for several hours this afternoon

And supplied one of the local pastors with more Gospel Tracts

We did Maddie’s Suggestion Box activity and played a round of Cover Your Assets.

Miss Christina made a yummy sloppy jo supper with fresh 30 minute rolls and veggies and ranch

The girls shot baskets for awhile

Mon Oct 26

 I got a hot spot tidied

And a couple loads of laundry thru

Lonnie got a bathroom door handle reattached 

New clothes line strung 

Taco stack and fresh pineapple for lunch

I got the inspiration to do a Suggestion Box and the girls jumped right on board and were enthused about it too!🤩 Maddie offered a Pringle can she had saved that I covered with brown paper and cut a slot in the lid. The suggestions… are to be any family activity from memorizing a song, to a card game, or a week of getting up at 6:00 to go for a walk before breakfast, or a dessert you’re hankering after, …

Made a different recipe of cinn rolls out of the Meals To The Field cookbook after school. They are called something like “Truck Driver’s Dream”😜 they Were Really good!.. I used honey in place of the sugar in the dough..

Tulshi left early to go to another Hindu Onostan

Sun Oct 25

 Lonnie and I needed to make a trip to Boro Bazaar 

I pulled Cajun chicken pasta out of the freezer for the girls to heat up for lunch and we headed into Khulna

We were parked and walking down the street before 10:00 so there weren’t very many shops open yet. We walked down to the river where the toddler took a bathroom break and we found a place frying “fry bread” and got a cup of cha

By that time a few more shops were opening and after a few tries we found just what I was looking for… (beautiful) cotton pants for my family, when they come, for a grand total of about $2 USD a pair☺️

Lonnie found the bolts he was looking for and we drove to New Market where I got another (much better/real milk) dudh cha. And Lonnie let me go shop Artisan for next size of clothes for Gentry. A half off sale running today and I found a sweater for myself also😊

Sat Oct 24

 Dipti came in this morning since she’d taken a day off this week

Lonnie gave the Bud his 1st haircut.. still mostly just a trim job all the way around.. but it was high time.. hanging over his eyebrows I kept it out of his eyes with a little of Lemongrass’s healing elements and “finger” comb job.. halfway over his ears… and one lock of a reddish blonde curl on the back🥹

Got Annslie down for her afternoon nap as soon as we could and were able to leave for town by 3:00 

Late lunch/early supper at Grand Plastic(aka Grand Placid but Annslie calls is Grand Plastic so we often do too 🙃) Annslie and Gentry played in the play area with Maddie and Jaira taking turns with them. We watched restaurant chefs prepare Middle East food on the big screen TV intermittently as the power came and went. It seemed like it took extra long for our food to be prepared but we much enjoyed it when it did arrive! Artistically plated, complete with roasted tomato roses and heart shaped cucumber and carrot slices☺️

Then it was Shwapno, ATM, Day-7, Safe N Save, and the vegetable and fruit market