Sati has left pieces of herself all over the place.

Because we can't allow ourselves a moment's rest, after last week's busy schedule of meetings and orientations, a group of us decided on Friday to hike up a nearby mountain to a sacred Hindu temple at the top. My knowledge of the Hindu religion is limited to popular movie references and an intro to world religions class taken my sophomore year so I was certainly not going for the spirituality of the spot. I jumped at the opportunity to hike, take some pictures, and get out of the dirty and congested city.

The bus ride as always was crowded and uncomfortable. Nothing against the hired driver, but there's no possible way to comfortably shove thirteen people in a van and then drive them two hours from their home while weaving through traffic and dodging potholes large enough to bathe in. As someone who suffers from motion sickness, this time is spent (mercifully) in the front row of the van, eyes pressed closed and forehead against the window praying with each moment that you will not be involved in a head-on collision and that you're just about to your destination.

It's with much gratitude that we finally spill out of the van in what can only be described as a clown-car effect. This is especially entertaining for the locals since there's so few foreigners in the area, so they must think that we really do all travel squished together in packs. If you see one of us, the rest are usually shortly behind.

Now it's a major sigh of relief to see that the trail for this hike is significantly easier than the one we did two weekends ago. Namely because there is an actual trail, that is a steady incline and includes areas where stairs of brick and stone have been shoved into the crumbling mud. Last time, if you remember, we essentially forged our own way by scaling waterfalls and hoisting ourselves up tree vines.

After a very short hike, we end up at the first in the series of three temples. This is larger, with a covered courtyard in the center surrounded by smaller individual rooms where statues and fountains and other religious icons were. Entering these temples meant the removal of shoes - a solid rule for most Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist places of worship in the region.

Little boy at the entrance of one of the temple rooms. A small plate with food are left out as offerings. 

Priest went from room to room dusting incense smoke (like a thurible in many Christian practices). Woman stands by waiting for him to finish. Immediately after the priest leaves she came forward and kissed the base where the statue stood and gave her prayers.

Temples like these are not quite places of worship like Christian churches often are. They're loud and vibrant, with drums and ululations (youtube it) and dogs barking. It's much more festive on a daily basis and the noise and smell of incense really encompasses the senses. 

Entrance to the temple complex. If you're interested in learning how this temple is a sacred spot where a Hindu goddess dropped her right elbow, check the wiki page about it.

From there we continued onwards and upwards to the next temple in the series. The hike was easy but the view was astonishing. From each section you could see more clearly how the hills gave way to flat land before reaching the Bay of Bengal in the distance. 

The rolling hills themselves were lush and vibrant green, and while we hiked our way up tendrils of fog rolled their way in from the ocean and began blanketing the hills. The first temple higher up the mountain was actually quite small. We didn't linger beyond looking around. At that point the weather looked like it was starting to turn so we hurried onwards to the next temple area. 

The second temple complex was on top of a neighboring mountain/hill (really, what's the cut-off for that?). 

Here's the above temple from close to the next hill we climbed. By then the fog was pretty thick. 

The hills was insanely green and rolling, like if you were just a smidgen larger you could use the tops as stepping stones and walk north until hitting Nepal. At that point we relaxed for a bit, Holly got bitten by a leech (so now we're two for two on weekend hiking trips and leech bites), and finally headed back down. And of course as soon as we headed down the fog cleared and the sky became a beautiful clear blue. Oh well, what can you do? 

Not sure what this was.

That's all for now!

The tamest wedding crashers ever.

Following our intrepid hiking party, the next week was fairly tame. Following along with more general orientation kept us fairly busy, so that our days began to resemble something like a schedule.

7:00 Wake up and hope we're not on generator power so I can actually have a hot shower (if on generator power, then just pin hair back, put on extra deodorant, and complain for most of the morning).

9:00 Load into the van that takes us from our apartment to the campus. If you're late they WILL leave you.

10:00 Begin orientation, which usually consists of sitting for a bit hoping that the computer will work and the internet will feel like connecting. In the meantime get reminded that "this is just how life is here" several times to fill the empty space. Spend some time reconsidering life choices that led me here.

10:30 Tea break! Best time of the day, when a canister of milk tea is brought up with disappointingly small teacups and sugar for a quick caffeine kick. Delicious but probably not the healthiest thing.

12:00 Break for lunch. Head down to student cafeteria and hope to god they aren't serving that one weird vegetable with the seeds that crunch all gross. Eat a meal starting with fresh cucumbers and carrots. Then grab a piece of flatbread (like naan) and some rice, upon which you dump a couple spoonfuls of either two veggie dishes or one meat and one veggie dish. They're all considered curries because curry here just generally means sauce, and not a particular spice blend. That being said, they all have some level of spice because we're in South Asia. Usually there's a dish with potato or egg that's delicious, but they love including the aforementioned gross vegetable in dishes where it hides until I bite into it and feel the awful crunch sensation.

1:30 Have individual meetings or more orientation. For me that means go off and find who I'm working with and receive an absolutely ridiculous amount of work I don't quite feel qualified for.

4:30 Go home and lay down in the blissful A/C of my bedroom. Unless the generator power is still running, so that the A/C doesn't work. In which case, stomp around for a bit complaining about the lack of hot showers and A/C that day.

This schedule will continue for the rest of this week as the final groups of faculty are arriving and getting settled. Classes begin next Sunday (since that's the start of the work week here rather than Monday) and there's already so much to get done before then! In the meantime we had the chance to view where the permanent campus will one day be and we finally got invited to a wedding!

Our whole batch of fellows 

Wall separating some land from what will be the new campus.

These kids were working clearing weeds on what will be the campus.

Another view of the new campus.

I had gone out and bought a fancy new shari (what they call saris here) because we were warned that we would receive invitations to functions like weddings and dinners very often as foreigners in a very un-international city like Chittagong. Much like anyone interested in visiting cultural events while dressed to the nines, I headed out with one of the local fellows, Rimu, who offered to take me shari shopping.

On our way I experienced what remains my biggest regret so far in Bangladesh. Rather than carry my heavy camera throughout the stores we would be shopping at, I opted to leave it in the apartment. We had just hit the main road when a man on an honest-to-god elephant merged into traffic. Just a giant, Asian elephant that was clearly not there for entertainment of any kind. And he was walking through traffic dodging rickshaws and buses like the rest of us. And there I was without a camera. But I've learned since to never leave home without it!

We picked out a gorgeous shari and I picked up the necessary petticoat and blouse to go under it. Come the day of the wedding my Sri Lankan flat-mate wrapped me up and a whole group of us headed to the wedding of some maintenance person from the school that none of us had ever met.

We arrived way too early at around 8:00 PM. We were scheduled to leave at 10:00 PM, wedding or no wedding, so we wanted to fit in as much activity as possible. Imagine our disappointment when we arrived and were the only ones there. It was us, the bride looking bored to tears dressed in an elaborate shari with jewelry and makeup sitting upon a platform, and some kids running around blowing up balloons.

They served dinner early for us, which featured delicious and rich dishes like chicken, fish, and lamp in different savory curry sauces along with rice and whole eggs (probably a fertility thing, but who knows?). Then we sat around for a bit, thanked the bride, and headed home at 10:00. Apparently the groom's family wasn't even set to arrive until 11:30 so we completely missed out on the timing there. The nature of Hindu weddings is that they take place during an auspicious time decided based on the horoscopes of both the bride and the groom. This means that a couple can have their lucky time at 4:00 in the morning, and the whole wedding party and all attendees have to be dressed and ready for then. Certainly a different culture than showing up at noon to the church and heading home by six!

My shari

Until next time!

"I'll trade a week's worth of anti-diarrheals for some yeast infection meds"

Sorry for the long delay folks, spotty power here has left me without a charged computer and no battery = no blog updates. I'll try to cover the last week and a half in two installments today and tomorrow.

The title of this post is an honest to god comment in a conversation I was having on our day trip to Bangladesh's largest waterfalls, a series of nine gorgeous falls in the middle of honest-to-god jungle about an hour and a half north of Chittagong (my current city). For those that haven't spent a ton of time living overseas, especially for those who haven't traveled to developing countries that generally host a whole slew of crazy diseases and ailments, packing a serious amount of meds is standard practice. Any embarrassment about bodily functions goes out the window when everyone is stuck in the same boat of living in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and accidentally drinking water in the shower can land you in some serious hurt for a few days. So it was a pretty entertaining conversation among the fellows as we compared what meds we brought excess of.

We arrived at the waterfalls around 11:00 AM charged and ready to go. We were told that you could swim in gorgeous pools under each waterfall and in anticipation, my flat-mates and I all wore bathing suits under our hiking clothes. We knew that the conservative nature of the country meant that we wouldn't get to bare our bikinis but it's still more comfortable to be in a wet swimsuit than wet underwear.

The van we hired for the day dropped us at a bridge at the mouth of a small village. We were surrounded by rice patties, goats, chickens, cows, and other crops in small, segmented plots of land. Here and there small houses popped up out of the surrounding, often with walls and ceilings of that wavy steel often used on construction projects in developing countries with frequent and heavy rains. Other houses had more traditional thatch roofs and mud walls. The parade of 12 or so mostly white women fellows made for an interesting parade as we wound our way through small village paths towards the base of big hills/small mountains (where is the cut-off for that anyways?).

The intrepid band.

Here is one of the smaller village homes.

The stupid "bridge" (photo courtesy of Britt). 

Now anyone who knows me well knows I'm a cautious individual. That's why the bridge seen in the picture above was such a horror to come across for me. That's about five pieces of bamboo tied together with hemp rope and tossed across a rather large stream gully between two sides of the village. No, there was no other way around. The whole contraption bounced dangerously as you walked across it, enough to make me reconsider all my late night snacking and the many benefits of losing just a couple more pounds. We should have taken the bridge as an indication of what was to come. 

As we started hiking the trail got steadily steeper and muddier, narrowing down to barely passable strips of mud bordering rocky stream beds on one side and solid greenery on the other. There was pretty much nowhere  else to go. After what seemed like a fairly exhausting hike (which was in reality maybe 40 minutes) we arrived at the base of the first waterfall. 

This is the last picture I took on the hike, because at this point the rest of my time was spent swimming in waterfall pools and clambering barefoot up vertical mudbanks wrestling vines for leverage. No, I'm not being dramatic, that's exactly what happened. We took a half-hour break swimming around in this waterfall pool and relaxing under the waterfall itself before it was time to continue up to the top of the falls. This waterfall was just the first, after all, in a series of nine. I wish I could have taken photos of the "path" itself but I put my camera away inside a ziplock bag in the carrying case, because we slipped and slid and clambered our way up the rest of the hike. 

You can ask anyone in my immediate family and they would tell you that I've done my fair share of hard hikes. I've spent a week carrying everything I needed in the Olympics, spent regular weekends bumming around the Appalachian trail as a kid, and I even climbed one of the volcanoes in Rwanda's famous Virunga National Park in fashion boots (because while I can climb, I can't plan). But this hike was especially fun because at no point did we hike or walk anywhere. It was straight up vertical climbing, at certain points scaling the waterfalls themselves because they were easier to climb up than trying to forge a trail around the slippery sodden banks. 

Several of us ditched our shoes on the way up, figuring it was easier to climb barefoot where at least we could sense the footholds and slippery bits. It helped, but certainly not a lot. There were moments where I was physically hoisted over high banks because I wasn't tall enough to get a decent foothold and my grip was starting to slip. 

Finally, exhausted, we made it to the top. We couldn't have made it without the help of a group of three Bangladeshi guys who decided to tail along and give us a boost. They were out from the city to hike the waterfalls for the day too, and had planned on giving up after the first couple waterfalls when they saw us continuing on and realized they couldn't let a load of white girls show them up in their home country. That was helpful until we finally hit the top pool where they decided to float around and make creepy comments to us, all while apparently jabbering in Bangla about lewd topics. Still, we probably wouldn't have made it without them so we put up with some of weird behavior. 

The view from the top was absolutely worth the trouble though. We were nestled in the middle of the jungle in the middle of nowhere. The way the waterfalls cascaded gave the effect of nature's own infinity pools so that once in the water it was impossible to see the edge. The pools didn't go right up to the edge, so there was no danger of swimming off, but it was still absolutely amazing. If you laid back and looked out you could imagine that you were the only person left in the world. 

Around this relaxing moment, my flatmate Minoli made an alarming discovery. Somehow during the hike, a leech had decided to attach itself to the middle of her back where it was having a delicious feast of fresh Sri Lanken. We took the very medical practice of poking it with a stick until it fell off and then using a dirty hiking knife to scrape the residual teeth left inside the perfectly round nickel-sized wound. This leech bite continued to bleed and ooze for the next 48 hours, with yours truly serving as regular bandage service until the nurse at AUW deemed the bite fine and nagged us about not poking at leeches because it makes them spew a kind of poison that keeps wounds open and leads to infection. Fun stuff, right? We still joke about how Minoli, a born and bred Sri Lanken, has never been bitten by a leech until she came to Bangladesh, and then one week later... they must love the taste of South Asians!

I have to wrap this up and get to work but we mostly slid down the waterfalls to head back to the van much later. When I say slid, I mean I was on my ass using my feet to brace me as I slid down nearly-verticle mud banks on my way back down to level ground. I survived no problem but those pants have a very cute little hole right in the left cheek now. 

We trudged back through the village where we made an even greater spectacle of ourselves before piling into the van and heading back to Chittagong for some well-deserved rest. 

Village home

My exhausted and un-made up face with a local girl who did the ENTIRE hike with us in a dress and flip flops, and never needed a lick of help from anyone, making us all feel terribly incompetent.

Gathering to watch the foreigners trying to cross the bamboo bridge again. Immediately after this photo was taken, Sam (our only male fellow) was charged by an angry cow.

Walking along the railroad tracks back to the van. 

A final view of the scenery. 

Walking by my man

I have a boyfriend already. I know, it's fast, I've been here for four days and I'm already romantically involved? Dad, if you're still reading this, stop having a heart attack. This is my man:

The billboard for LA Scissors features this handsome fellow who kindly shows me the way home every night. The direction he is pointing with his bedroom eyes is the street that I love down, imagine that! As to how he came to be my boyfriend? Well, anyone who knows me would tell you I tend to have an eye for landmarks like stores and signs, and this was one sign I couldn't help pointing out every time we passed it. Margaret, the head of our fellows program, began insisting that he was my Bangladeshi boyfriend and the rest, as you would say, is history!

Over the last couple days I've been exploring more of the neighborhood and starting orientation proper with the group. I'm the blondest blonde and whitest white girl in the group, so I get a fair amount of attention that I got used to living in other Asian countries. For the first time though, I'm getting upstaged and it's wonderful. My roommate Shelana is 6'2" and definitely steals the show when it comes to getting local attention. The average Bangladeshi man is about 5'5" (my height!) and woman is about 4'11" so being above six foot would be standout for any man in the group, but as a woman she really makes people's day. I've got to say that it's really nice to not be the center of attention for once.

Yesterday afternoon we did a special meeting talking about cultural sensitivity and specific cultural issues here that we need to be aware of. Some of the fun ones include not handing anyone anything with your left hand (right one is the clean hand, while back in the day the left hand was the wiping hand), no inter-gender touching unless you're very good friends with someone, and the importance of food as showing affection and care for guests. Overall nothing is terribly different than usual, other than men avoiding shaking hands with women unless they're in the upper caste and are more educated/westernized and therefore used to the western custom. We also got a couple of easy Bengali phrases specifically for getting us to and from the school via rickshaws over the next few days until we start our Bangla lessons on Sunday.

One fun thing that WILL take getting used to is that the weekend here is Friday and Saturday, with the work week starting on Sunday. Islam dictates Friday as the holy day much like Sunday is for Christians, so the whole week centers around Friday as a day or rest and relaxation.

We also took a brief tour around the AUW campus yesterday afternoon and found the city's one and only Pizza Hut, found a couple of Baskin Robbins, and were led to some of the best fuchkas around. Fuchkas are a mixture of onions and potatoes and peppers wrapped in a crispy shell and deep fried, then covered in a sweet yogurt mixture. One plate of six fuchkas costs about a dollar! Definitely more than a snack. We also had a couple of plates of what is allegedly the best garlic naan in the world, and it certainly tops my list.

Afterwards my roommate Minoli and I decided to brave the streets and walk home alone. Our directions were based mostly on feelings and asking passerby "Khulshi?" and making varied pointing gestures. Somehow we made it home, which seems like a miracle, but nothing beat seeing my boyfriend up there pointing the way and letting us know we were just about home.

Rickshaw driver - rides from my apartment to the university, which are about 20 minutes or so with traffic, cost 40 taka (50 cents).

Homeless and poor adults and children are seen sleeping on most streets. Packs of begging children operate in certain areas organized by adults to try and solicit money from passerby. It's a morally difficult situation to deal with - money given to beggars can be used to buy food or other necessities, but if you give to people operating in a specific location, you will be harassed to give every time they see you. 

Fruit stands 

CNGs, as they're called here, rather than tuk-tuks.

Fuchkas!

There are no state-run ambulance services, and there's no emergency number to call (e.g. 911) in case of emergencies. 

Beautiful sunset from my building's roof. 

First days in Chittagong

It's currently 1:10PM Chittagong time and the call to prayer has been ringing for about ten minutes now. If you're not familiar with how it sounds, it's about like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCyj5X5zbNI but here it's quieter and I can only really hear one mosque at a time. It's actually kind of beautiful when you aren't trying to sleep at dawn.

So this is the blog I've made to keep somewhat regular updates as to my life in Bangladesh over the next year. It's so named because my apartment has a spectacular mountain/hill right outside my window. At least, the view is spectacular now, I've been warned that a building is going up outside that'll probably kill my view after a couple months but I'll certainly enjoy it while I can.

After a sixteen hours flight from Chicago to Hong Kong, and then another five hour flight from Hong Kong to Dhaka, I was exhausted when I was picked up from the Dhaka airport at around 2AM local time. I was taken to a guesthouse by an AUW staffer who is here doing a Fulbright where I was able to get mate two hours of sleep before having to get back up and hit a domestic flight from Dhaka to Chittagong.

In Chittagong I was picked up by Margaret, a faculty member at AUW who is serving as our guide in these first chaotic weeks. She dropped me right off onto the front door of my crazy large and beautiful apartment I share with two other senior fellows. Shelana was already moved in having arrived the day before, and as I write this our third roommate is on her way from Dhaka to join us. I spent the rest of yesterday trying not to fall asleep as we went out as a group to the ATM, a cell phone store (I have a local number and seven contacts right now, only two of which are customer service) and then the grocery store. We were fed amazing curry for lunch and dinner from a local hotel catering service.

Today I got my first look at the university and was able to meet with the professor I'll be doing research under during my time here. It's exactly what I have expected so far, and I'm loving every minute of it! I'll make sure to update this in the coming days as more interesting stuff is happening, but for now I'm just glad I'm finally here!

My Mountain View

My private balcony, the mountain is on the left

My room!

Another room picture

Bathroom!

Shared living room

Shared dining room

Shared kitchen