What can I get for tk 150?

Friday, August 20th 

Large puddles to avoid!

When I woke up today I had no idea what was in store for me.  We headed to a Nepalese Jewelry Sale on Rd. 11 in Baridhara.  We thought, oh Rd. 11 we will walk the 10 blocks! But, walking 10 blocks is no easy chore after a few big time rainstorms passed through the previous night.  So we meandered around puddles, climbed up onto small walls, hugged trees as cars drove past and flung sewage water every direction with their wheels in the puddles, and made it to Rd. 11 mostly dry of sewage water, but quite wet with sweat.  As we walked down the road we marveled at the mansions that were on either side.

Jewelry sale house

There were beautiful 3 story houses with verandas and gardens of beautiful smelling flowers.  It is quite a nice contrast from the typical gagging that occurs for me when I take a deep breath.  As we stared in awe at one large house, we realized it was our destination! The staff was all in matching blue uniforms and before we walked in I could tell how nice it was going to be.  The entire doorframe (which extended about 3 feet to the right, left and top of the door) was intricately carved woodwork.  We left our shoes at the door and entered into a parlor decorated with silk pillows and chairs and tables of gorgeous jewelry.  After having Savanna push my jaw closed at the price at one of the necklaces (tk 35,000), we decided this was going to be a window shopping adventure to work as a preview for when we travel to Nepal in (count 'em) 21 days! It was all incredibly beautiful, but a little out of my price range at this time.  I decided to keep my takas safe in my purse until our later planned adventure.  We walked home from the school, were followed by a handful of rickshaw drivers and made it home in time to grab our shopping bags and hop in our car to head to the H&M sample sale.

Man with his hands full

It was our first time driving through the Gulshan 2 traffic circle, and it was pretty scary! The traffic was especially bad because one of the streets connecting to the main road was completely blocked off with only pedestrian traffic getting through.  They had lined the street with blue tarp (from sidewalk to sidewalk) and men were stretched out praying.  I haven't seen anything like that since I have been here, so it really took my by surprise.  Because the puddles were so bad, it was like an obstacle course to make it the rest of the way down these barely-there roads and to the H&M headquarters.  Upon arrival, we strategically parked our car near a gated complex and hoped the guard would keep an eye on our rims and what not (PS- we are temporarily sans VanGogh! They needed to switch it out so they could use it for staff transport during Ramadan because the traffic is so awful, so now we have a sassy silver sedan that is harder to drive than our beast!).  We met the rest of the lady teachers who were braving the sample sale with us at the gate to the building.  There were signs everywhere that said the sale would begin at 3, but we luckily had a print out that showed it was supposed to start at 2.  Wendy, one of the new teachers, pitched a fit and made the guards believe we would all riot if they didn't let us in right then, so they opened the gates a little after 2.

H&M organized chaos 

It was SO hot.  Probably the hottest I have been since I got here.  There were people everywhere leaving us with no room to move.  The set up was like so: HUGE green tent, 2 dozen long folding tables with heaps and heaps of clothes on top.  There was zero method to the madness.  Hundreds of ex-pats starving for cheap western clothes.  At first, it reminded me of those scenes in Mean Girls where Lohan pretends that all of her fellow students are acting like African lions.  However, once the initial push/stampede into the gated area was over and everyone dove into the massive piles of clothing on the tables, it was quite civilized!  There was a lot of, "pardon me, may I get by" and "oh, I'm sorry- were you looking at that?" or "do you think this would look good on me? *woman holds up a very pretty pink cardigan with only 1 sleeve*" :)

A special find.

Some of the stuff was great! I found a pencil skirt for school, a pair of longish shorts to wear to the ARA, and a number of good light sweaters and long tanks.  But, there were some pretty hilarious things, too! I was really on a quest for some more light cargo pants... I have one pair that I wear all the time, but the only cargo pants I kept finding were maternity style! They had so many maternity pants: jeans, cargos, jean shorts, sweats... one lady said to me, "This is the first time I wished I was pregnant!" In addition to the maternity wear, there were lots of children's clothes.  I didn't even know H&M made some of this stuff: there was a large quantity of Hello Kitty paraphernalia, training bras, and even (yes I held it up to see if it would fit me) a StarWars Yoda onesie.  I wanted it SO BAD! There were pants with only 1 pantleg, or a thank top with perfect circles cut out of the bottom, or some cryptic message written with magic marker written all over the inside. After filling up our shopping bags with about 50 garments each, we retreated to a more open section of the tent and designated it AIS-D teacher fitting room.  We had come prepared in our dresses so that we could slip clothes on underneath and on top to make sure we were only buying things that fit!

Man is excited about jeans

The problem was, nothing was slipping on due to the massive puddles of sweat all over us! It made shopping for nice cardigans NOT an easy task.  In the end, we all made out with some pretty sweet stuff!! Who knows how many washes it will last us, or if it even looked good (no mirrors anywhere), but for tk 150 per piece of clothing- you can't go wrong (thats around $2)! When we made it back to our car all we wanted was a big ice cream.

Bangladeshi ice-cream truck

So, we drove to Movenpick- a swiss ice-creamery only a few streets from where we were. I have been looking forward to this place for 3 weeks! We managed to find a parking spot a half a block from the place, and the cutest little boy (probably about 6 years old) helped me parallel park my car.  Can you imagine parallel parking a car, on the left hand side of the road, and you are in the drivers seat on the right hand side of the car? It required a lot of thought that my mind (foggy with the fumes of massive piles of clothing) could not handle.  I wanted to give him a few taka, but then there was a pretty large crowd of little ones that had gathered and a very sick (mentally and physically) man who was also begging.  It is the closest I have come to the poverty thus far, and it did not make me feel good.  The man ended up following us all the way to Movenpick and would not stop begging.  It wasn't threatening to me in anyway to make me feel unsafe, but I just felt really awful about his situation.  When we arrived at the ice cream store, it was closed! They have special hours during Ramadan and don't open until 6:50 (a few minutes after the breaking of the fast). We were super bummed, feeling quite groady, and wanted to head home to wash up before our big evening we had planned.

View from Meheti's balcony

We were invited to an Iftar by our travel agent, Meheti.  Iftar is the breaking of the fast each day of Ramadan.  They don't eat or drink anything (not even water) from sun up to sun down and then around 6:45 they get to eat! The food at Iftar is traditionally very sweet and fried, so it was quite delicious! Meheti is the nicest man! He lives in a beautiful apartment in Gulshan on one of the lakes.  From the balcony of his apartment on the 6th floor, the green of the water looked natural and there weren't any visible signs of garbage floating nearby.  We dropped our shoes at the door and walked around saying hello to fellow teachers and other Westerners that Meheti had invited.  It was a great experience, and a nice way to catch up with some of the teachers I haven't seen as much of since they aren't in the HS.

Appetizers 

The dinning room table was set up buffet style with veggies, 3 different kinds of fried eggplants, dates! (not bacon-wrapped, sadly), an Australian chickpea salad, and some other dish with hot beans.  There was a chili sauce that looked like ketchup, but was much spicier and perfect with the fried eggplants.  It was delicious! We were all satisfied and thinking the evening was over when Meheti announced that dinner was on the table. Umm, sir?! A larger course was laid out and smelling tempting.  We ditched our small app plates and moved on to the larger ones.  There was biryani rice (a traditional Bangladeshi course that came from the royalty of the Mughal Empire) which is a sweet rice and can have a whole range of additional food added in.  For this one, there was meat (which I soon found out was goat and didn't eat), and large potatoes! We also had spicy beef patties, papaya salad and... a mango pickle.  Apparently this south asian "treat" helps you to not feel full and continue to gorge yourself. I avoided this and decided my own desire to feast on the food was ample enough.

Main course

We were all satisfied and again ready to leave when Meheti's wife announced it was time for dessert.  Now, this course was all I needed.  She made two traditional sweet dishes which are typically reserved for the Eid festival.  But, since we were special guests and they were going to be out of town during the Eid and unable to host us, they prepared it for this gathering.  One was a milky dish that had: sugar, water, milk and thin noodles topped with slivered almonds.  That in addition to a thicker even more sweet dish were the perfect ending for the feast.

Delicious desserts

Meheti had story time for about 30 minutes at the end of dinner and told us many tales of all his travels and the dynamics of Bangladeshi life.  He said that in 2005, his family moved to America but didn't stay long.  He enjoys the easy life in Dhaka where he has a cook, bearer, and driver to take care of his needs. He said that in Bangladesh, everyone is your brother, sister, auntie, etc. And then, your family has an even stronger bond because of that.  Whenever Bangladeshis have gatherings, you are guaranteed a minimum of 40 people.  He has 2 daughters who are both married.  Therefore, his family gatherings start with his daughters, their families, his son-in-law's families (sisters, sisters' husbands, parents, parents' siblings...) and then it goes on and on.  Any wedding, you are guaranteed 1000 people minimum.  The groups are so large, you have to eat in shifts.  They have to hire a staff of at least 100 and start preparing for the wedding very early.  They use huge copper pots that weigh 200 lbs and cook everything in mass quantities.  It was so nice, cuddled up in a chair with silky pillows around, feeling insanely full and listening to him explain the culture he loves so much.

After leaving Meheti's we set off for the ARA for a couple of drinks.  It ended up being Sav and me and all the young Australians in Dhaka. Haha! We closed down the bar around 1 am, came home and sat on the kitchen floor with Bree (and her friend Lucy who is visiting this weekend) and ate some late night snacks (Bangladeshi versions of pitas).  All in all, a great Friday :)