Arrival!! Sat. Feb 15

 Plane landed a little early 8:30 A.M. 

As we descended I was impressed with all the green as we just came from winter and trees with bare branches.

  We followed signs to Baggage Claim and we're met by a man holding a white paper that said Lonnie Koehn in large letters. What a welcome sight! This charming Bengali with a big smile was dressed like what you might see at an American wedding, dressed up in a gray suit coat and pants! His skin was a few shades darker than Lonnie’s but black hair in a slight comb over not outstanding, black beard, slightly smaller in build and height than Lonnie.

This man spoke English fluently, said his name was Jason! What a surprise! Didn’t look like a Jason 😅

He took our passports to start filling out some forms while we got in the line. We slowly inched forward. While Lonnie led the way with Annslie on his shoulders I stood at the back of my family giving them some space and keeping the press of people off of them. I confess, it fully irritated me how close the 3 men behind us pressed😖, they were not dark skinned, but were not speaking English..

And finally! After the man at the desk had entered all the info he needed and we all got our pictures taken, our friendly, smiling guide led us on to baggage claim. Definitely getting the 3rd world feel by now. A native looking lady beckoned me to sit beside her with all our backpacks and the girls, while Lonnie went with Jason to pull our totes and suitcases. 3 carts + 3 more men and our parade headed towards the doors that would take us out to the curb. As we walked down those tile floors I noticed a smell that made me think of the sale barn back home. That place has good memories for me so the smell was not overly obnoxious. 

  As we stepped outdoors we were pleasantly surprised by the balmy feel to the air! Not hot or cold😌. The next impression was the WALL of dark skinned people being held back by a rope. We continued walking and soon needed to enter that wall of people and start weaving our way thru til we stopped at the curb to wait for our ride. While we waited an ornately clad native lady asked Maddie if she could have her picture with her! We’d heard how they love to take selfies with Americans. Maddie declined. Traffic was congested so it was taking Jared, the Dhaka missionary, awhile to make his way to the curb. Eventually the gray mini van with a white man and boy in the front seats pulled up to the curb and our guide and his helper started loading the totes and suitcases. For those that saw the amount we took with us,…🫣 they will find it amazing to note that ALL of the totes, suitcases, + backpacks minus my diaper bag went into the minivan! An Uber was hired for our family. 

And we started working/nosing our way thru the beeping mass with our Jason guide walking just ahead, working to help part a way for us. Once we got out of the airport vicinity onto a wide highway it cleared out a lot but Maddie took note that the wide highway (think 5?lanes) had no lines! Vehicles just kind of wove between and around each other. Eventually the Highway did have lines but couldn’t tell that they were used so much.. 

  Maddie also commented on all the palm trees. Lonnie said it made him think southern CA. There’s even blooming oleanders in the median☺️ along with other bushes and trees that I don’t know the name of. 

Another aspect to all this vegetation is it is all quite dusty! As they have not had rain since November!

It was not a long drive to our new home for the next 2 months. And we were soon turning off the Highway onto a dusty, bumpy rode lined with dokans and just like that we recognized the entrance to Pink City Residential Area that we had looked up on Google maps back home. It definitely was a different feel to drive in on Uber versus scrolling on the phone screen!

Jared’s wife Brianna was just walking over when we arrived! We finally got to meet after WhatsApping since October🤗

We took all the luggage in and were given a tour with instructions and explanations in each room. Maybe I’ll tell about this guest house sometime. 

Then we went over to Jared’s for lunch,where we met teacher Shana Brubaker and Jared’s toddler Shania. Good food. Jared helped Lonnie with his phone and other matters of initiation while us ladies cleaned up lunch then migrated to the living room. Our girls and Jared’s Layton 7 and Shania almost 2 were busy playing outside. A few of the neighbor children showed up also. After a bit Jared and Lonnie joined us ladies. Lonnie was “out” bout as soon as he sat in the comfy chair and the conversation was swirling around him. When he stirred after a bit, I told him we may as well go to the house. So we rounded the children up and walked home.

Crashed for a couple hours. Then Lonnie and I worked on getting the totes out of the living room, all the school books into the classroom, hung up dresses and shirts. But there are no dressers yet so can’t really get too organized, but it could be better organized and maybe we’ll get to that here in the next couple days. They’re talking of shopping for dressers Friday..