PC Wanderlust

Site announcement

I have finally found out where I am going to be living in Bangladesh for the next two years. I don’t want to put the city’s name on here for my privacy and safety, but if you are a friend or family member and haven’t gotten an email from me telling you what the actual site is, email me and I’ll tell you. You should be emailing me anyway!! If you don’t have my email address, just get in touch with my parents, and they’ll let you know. I’ll just tell you that I am REALLY happy with my placement. I will have two sitemates – one boy who has been living there for a year and will remain for one more, and another boy who is in my same training group. He is a Youth and Community Development worker, whereas I am Teaching English as a Foreign Language. He is incredibly enthusiastic, and I’m really glad to have been placed with him. He’ll be a good person to have around when I need a boost of confidence or inspiration. I’m looking forward to getting a lot done! There are about 5 other people in a 2-3 hour radius of my site too, so it will be nice to be able to visit other sites for fun or for collaborating on secondary projects.
This past week we had a Non-Governmental Organization fair, and the director of US-AID in Bangladesh came to speak to our group. Both these events have gotten me really excited about all the opportunities it sounds like we will have in Bangladesh. There are SO many NGOs that I am looking forward to working with.
Now for the anecdote of the week. So the other day I was laying in bed under my mosquito net trying to fall asleep when I thought I felt something brush my foot. I turned on my head lamp and looked around, thinking maybe a cockroach or beetle had gotten inside the net, but I couldn’t see anything. I figured I must have imagined it in my sleepy state, so I turned off the light and tried to fall asleep again. About two minutes later, I felt something run across the top of my head by my hair, and it definitely felt bigger than a cockroach. I scrambled around for my headlamp, and when I turned it on found that it was a mouse in my bed!! It was absolutely frantic running all around my bed trying to get out of the net. I jumped up, and it started climbing up the side of the net! I flung the net out, and the mouse dropped down, disappearing to who knows where. I stood there for a little while trying to figure out how in the heck it had gotten in my net, if there was a hole in it or what. Then I realized that on the side of the bed that is against the wall, the mattress was pushed up against the wall and looked like the net was still tucked in, but when I pulled the mattress back, the net had at some point come untucked and fallen to the floor. The mouse must have climbed up the net and squeezed its way through the wall and mattress. I was so shaken (I HATE mice) that I couldn’t sleep for two hours after that. When I told this story to one of the other trainees, he told me that he had found a scorpion in his room (and I have heard about other people finding them too). So the moral of the story is to always check to make sure your mosquito net is tucked in all the way, because it’s not just mosquitoes you are keeping out!!
I know I have not been very good with keeping in touch with everybody since I’ve been here, but please remember that they are keeping us VERY busy with training, and it is very difficult to get to an internet café or the post office. All this doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hear from you though! I miss you guys!! All of you! PLEASE write to me! I can’t tell you how good an old-fashioned snail mail letter feels to receive. Write me!!! Once I get out to site in the beginning of November, I will be out of training and not have so much work, so I will try to respond more then. Thanks guys!

posted by Kathryn @ 10/10/2005 02:02:00 AM