Arriving in Bangladesh

June 6

It was a long trip, and I was awake for most of the 35 hours. I had a lot of connecting flights, and the first flight was two hours late, and so after a flurry of reshuffling to make sure I made my next flight, I switched airline companies for the first two legs. There was somewhat of a mix up about my baggage, but it came in this evening.

It was different, flying by myself internationally. It actually got a little scary after I landed in Dhaka, going through immigration with the slightly wrong address and finding and filling out a missing baggage request which was in the far corner of the baggage claim room. Nancy was patient, which was fortunate because it took me quite a while to get everything done at the Dhaka airport.
There are trees everywhere despite Dhaka being a city. The traffic is insane, and I’m very grateful CRWRC has a driver. Cars, buses, rickshaws and even the occasional person weave in and out of the road, each vehicle taking every inch they can get. There aren’t traffic lights, so the road is a free for all unless a traffic control personal is directing. With traffic so crazy, I expected lots of yelling, but the vehicles I saw did lots of beeping, but no yelling. Nancy and Kohima’s house is wonderful, and I’m told it has lots of people coming and going through it. I’ve got my own room with a little porch, and there is little porch with a view of the street and lot of trees. They have a very friendly cook who made me noodles and fresh bread for lunch and is making dinner.

I start tomorrow at 8:00 with lessons in Bengali and getting shown around headquarters. I keep widening my eyes, trying to stay awake until after dinner so I can sleep some tonight. The power just went off, but should be back on in an hour. It looks like we might be heading back to the airport to get my bag tonight, and then sleep!