Sun. 30 Pink City supper with Josna, Sumita, Naton

 Language today had a HUGE homework assignment in preparation for the final test of this 1st book. 

6:30 supper at Jared’s with Sisters Josna and Sumita and interpreter Naton.

We found out later that Josna and Sumita had showed up at Jared’s at 4:30!

At 6:00 Naton was standing outside of the classroom here visiting thru the window with Miss Shana😅

He had 2 young girls with him that he referred to as his nieces, but said they are his cousin’s daughters. One is 21 the other 17. I told them to come in out of the heat, which they did. They had Layton and Shania with them too. Naton said he could see Jared’s and Josna and Sumita thru the living room window having serious conversation so he decided to come over to the guest house😅

 Before long Josna and Sumita walked up too!

So they were all sitting in the living room and I still needed to shower and finish getting my family ready for the evening😅 so Lonnie and the girls came down while I showered. 

6:30 we all walked over to Jared’s.

Brianna had made these natives their favorite American food- Stromboli, crunchy cabbage salad, watermelon, and choc cake with choc frosting and icecream. She’d had me bring sweet tea.

Naton is very jovial and kept the evening lively😊

By 8:30 Naton and his 2 “nieces” were climbing onto Naton’s motorcycle and Jared and Layton drove Josna and Sumita to the Pink City gates where they caught a CNG back to Farmgate.

We walked home thru the festive atmosphere of the night before Eid decor. Green and red “Christmas” lights strung in the main median, red and green flags strung in the intersections and at the end where we turn right to our road there is this outdoor concrete stage with concrete steps all the way around against the back block wall of Pink City. A place to have celebrations for varied occasions. 12? yr old Neighbor girl Alishbah was there with other girls her age playing with sparklers.

Back home I had my homework to finish. Lonnie studied and we both started on our exam for tomorrow. The firecrackers were popping. Lonnie went out to check out the goings on and a neighbor man haled him and gave a couple containers of Eid food. Lonnie tasted just a tiny since we weren’t sure if it was “safe” to eat (like ingredients washed and prepared in a clean enough environment to not make us sick). He said it was very sweet. Was yellow in color and looked like some kind of tapioca pudding.

Finally had to get Annslie to sleep but Lonnie stayed up and finished his test.

Sat. 29💕Annslie is 2🎂

 Lucky came to clean this morning. 

She came in exclaiming “Onek gOrom!” (Much Hot 🥵) we were able to converse just a bit😊

Laundry

Swept roof areas

A hot day. The girls all put on their swim clothes and played in the water on the roof top. The sun was so hot up there, reflecting off the white tile. But they thoroughly enjoyed the water, sliding around on their knees or one girl manning the house while the others ran thru ending in a slide 💦 

Leftover pizza and pineapple for lunch.

Made cupcakes, Cajun chicken pasta, and cut up fruit for salad for supper. Jared’s and Miss Shana came for Annslie’s birthday supper. (They are her latest favorite people💖) Miss Shana brought a big bowl of fresh cucumber salad 😋

Fri. 28 Day of Worship

 Church with the Sisters at the clinic. Biti(sp?..that lives in the City here) was there also. 

Lonnie shared today- “Do you ever ask God ‘Why?’? I do. I asked God, ‘Why did you send me to Bangladesh?’ I was impressed to read Psalms 83. I couldn’t figure out why this chapter, til I got to the last verse. ‘That men may know, that thou whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.’” Expounding further on things we go thru in this life being for the purpose of this verse.

At the end of the service is prayer request time. Biti asked for prayers for a sick relative then Jared announced their new replacements that plan to come middle of July. It’s not easy for these people to let those they’ve learned to love and have been a part of their life, go back to America, sometimes never to see them again this side of eternity! 

Enjoyed visiting.. it was enthusing to be able to understand a few words here and there of the Sisters and Brianna’s conversation

Did I ever describe our interpreter Naton? He is a fine young Bangali man. Somewhere around the 30 ish age range, I believe🤔 he is taller by Bangali standards. He is not scrawny but doesn’t have any extra😅 (slender or slim just doesn’t seem like the word I’d be looking for as in a complimentary adjective to describe a man🙃) He always dresses very smartly, today was an off white, long sleeved shirt (not tucked in) with a short stand-up collar (not folded over) with a tab of buttons that only went halfway down, black slacks, black ankle socks😅, his black shoes were left at the door as is customary. He is very friendly and loves to visit and give 7 yr old Layton a hard time😉

North End Coffee shop for lunch, UniMart shopping-stocking up for the week of Eid, which is comparative to Christmas in America, when much of Bangladesh is on holiday. And our family had some shopping to do in preparation for spending most of a week down in Khulna before next shopping day.

Made “M&M” Bars- by chunking up a choc bar, Granola, and pizza- for supper with crusts from UniMart

Note: some have questioned why we do our big shopping day on the Day of Worship.?. 

Dhaka is one of the most densely populated areas in the world with 23,234 people per square kilometer or an estimated 8.5 million people. 

So with Friday traffic being a little less, it just takes less time to travel and the stores are not as full, which means getting back home at a decent hour and the whole shopping trip taking less hours!

Thurs 27

 Language this morning

Part of our homework assignment  these last 2 days has been to practice common conversations.

Maybe those of you who have been thru these classes can tell us how you did that exactly 🤔 studying vocabulary is one thing, but a whole page of conversation?!

In the afternoon made a batch of loaf bread.

Caught up with former Ann Arbor house parents Murray and Marguerite Baerg Swalwell, AB 

They know some of the current and future missionaries of this field. And it’s always good to hear from them😊

Wed 26 🚩 easy😮‍💨 language les.

 Paninna started language class by letting us know this is an easy lesson… if she tells us that in the future, I will be forewarned….

  While it is true we didn’t have a new tense to learn with all the rules and exceptions to the rules. And no 12 or so sentences to come up with for homework..

BUT! We have 50 new words to learn by tomorrow and practice/learn a common conversation to have with a child. Btw, This example conversation fills a whole page all by itself🧐 not exactly, “a walk in the park“…

9:30-12:30 we did vocabulary flashcards. Bangla to English then turned the stack over and had to come up with Bengali word or phrase.

To the clinic for lunch of Josna and Sumita’s delicious cooking. The meat dish was fish this time! A first for us here..I didn’t detect any strong fish flavor just yummy fish steaks and only a few bones to pull out! Battered and fried eggplant, curried (whole, boiled) eggs, along with the normal fare.

Tues. 25 singing eve🎶

 This morning while washing dishes, Maddie commented, “Mom, I can’t wait till we have singing at the clinic again!”😊 

“Well, you are in luck, it’s tonight!”

Maddie: “ I like that song that says, ‘Dhonno, dhonno, dhonno’.”

Made a stab at Cajun chicken pasta for lunch… no Cajun seasoning and no cream… but must’ve been some good enough substitutes. Jaira’s comment after lunch, “Mom, you should make that pasta stuff again sometime!”😌

4:30 at Jared’s to ride along to singing with Josna and Sumita. Biti was there to add some good volume and Sumita’s brother’s wife’s sister sat in the circle also. Those concrete walls with open windows rang with the singing.. just beyond those walls, the street vendors would walk by carrying their wares on their head singing?/hollering? out their offer of merchandise.

Miss Shana found the song Maddie was thinking of🤗

Pg. 147 in the Bengali hymnal “Ki Mohanondo Upostit” to the tune of The Great Physician.

Jaira thought “This Little Light Of Mine” would be fun to sing. No notes to keep us in line with the Bengali words but Sumita started us off (and kept us going when the syllables got tricky😉)

To Herfy’s for supper… crispy chicken wraps, nuggets, fries,.. Lonnie tried giving an employee extra taka for plenty of ketchup packets! I put in my 2 bits with “BiS!(20)” he came back with 8… maybe they had already put plenty on our food tray, cause when I counted, it was actually 20 altogether! And we did have enough, even if we used every single one!

Mon. 24 Baking and bats 🦇

 In the afternoon the girls worked on cleaning up the kitchen, I took Annslie to find Lonnie. He was one street up and over where a house is going thru an adding on process. The plan was to leave Annslie with him but soon saw that he was busy helping form up for a concrete wall and would not be to watch the toddler and work with the men. We watched a bit. Miss Shana stopped by on her way home from the dokan and shared one of her choc covered choc icecream bars with us. Took Annslie home with me and endeavored to mix up a batch of sweet roll dough with the toddler right there dropping a rubber band into the batter, grabbing the edge of the mixing bowl for a better look 👀. None too  soon Lonnie was back taking over the toddler and I was was able to finish mixing the dough. 

A couple hours later I was stationed on my low stool in front of the oven keeping close watch as it’s still a guess what the oven temperature is and close to the end I turned on the top coil/broiler? to see if I could brown them a bit. 

We tried the 1st ones.. SUCCESS🎉

Then made a trip over to Jared’s to return the borrowed cakes pans filled with cinn. rolls to share😊

The sun was down and it was a pleasant evening so we continued to walk. At one point a colony of bats was making quite a ruckus in a tree right next to the road. I don’t know how Bangladesh does it, but the bats 🦇 here are XXL😱 with wingspans like that of a crow or hawk. Story writers… they are perfectly paired with the abandoned concrete houses here in Pink City. I say abandoned, but a rickshaw van is seen parked amongst the trash in the carport, laundry has been seen hanging on an upstairs rooftop area, somebody on the front steps one day… rubbish everywhere, no windows or doors,…