Site announcement coming up!
Teaching at model school has been going very well. I’ve only taught by myself twice so far, but each time has been pretty good. A few days ago when I finished my lesson, I told the students the lesson was finished and that we would see them again tomorrow. They all looked up with these looks of horror on their faces and were like, “But madam, the lesson cannot be done! You must teach us more!” I walked out of there on Cloud 9. I’ve never liked public speaking – I actually used to feel sick before having to make speeches. But I have not been nervous here at all! The girls I am teaching are so wonderful. It’s like this oasis as soon as I walk into the school. I love it.
During our three months of training, Peace Corps allows everyone one day (literally 24 hours) to travel by themselves. This past Thursday, I took advantage of that and went to Dhaka with two other trainees, Mike and Adrienne. Wow, I didn’t realize how much I really needed a break until I got there! We went to the rich part of Dhaka first – where the PC office and all the foreign embassies are. PC has a hotel that they always put us up in when we are in Dhaka which is in that area of the city. Our hotel had air conditioning and hot water!! I actually needed a blanket at night – heavenly. Thursday evening we went out to eat at “Dominous Pizza” – yes, spelled with a u. It wasn’t the best pizza by American standards, but SO good! The three of us just sat in shock eating it. Then we went and found a small grocery store. How strange it was to walk down the rows of the grocery store and see all these foods I’ve been craving, and so many choices! It was all extremely overwhelming though. We just bought some orange juice and left. (Although later I got some peanut butter, pasta, tomato sauce, and oats at another grocery store.) It’s really difficult to describe what a strange feeling it was to have all these little amenities. I hadn’t realized how much I had gotten used to living in a more rural, smaller, “Third World” city until we went back to Dhaka. We were walking down the streets and suddenly it occurred to us, “where are all the goats, cows, and chickens on the streets?”
The next morning, we ventured away from the rich part of town and into Old Dhaka. My favorite part there was Hindu St. It was a tiny narrow street with very tall buildings, and just packed with shops and people. Mike commented that it felt like New York City. It definitely had a cool vibe to it. There were shops were people were carving gravestones, making musical instruments, making conch shell bracelets, and selling Hindu art.
After Hindu St, we found another cute little street where all they were selling was fabric for clothes. All the women’s clothing was in tiny shops on the right side, and all the men’s on the left side. I think everyone there was surprised to see a group of three wide eyed Americans. After that, we tried to find Bicycle St. where supposedly they make and sell rickshaw art. I think we found the right street, but either all the rickshaw art places were closed, or they are somewhere else, because we couldn’t find any art. Ah well, next time!
Just so you all know, I will be finding out what city I will be living in for the next two years this Friday!! I am not entirely sure what I want, but cross your fingers for me anyway that it’s nice!!
1st day of teaching
It’s been a while since I’ve posted – sorry about that! I did get to the internet café last week on Friday and was able to read my email, but was not able to answer any emails or to even sign in to my blog site. Frustrating! I found out the reason the connection is so slow and bad is that it is a dial-up connection split between 4-6 computers. No wonder!
Anyway, I’ve had a busy week, as usual. On Thursday I co-taught my first class! Gina and I taught a class of about 60-70 girls at an all girls’ college. When I say college, remember it is not actually a university. It’s basically a high school, so the students are still pretty young. For our first lesson, we just did an informal lesson going over introductions and questions to ease into things. The girls were so shy at first. It was very sweet. By the end they were beginning to open up more and had lots of questions for us. At the end of the class a bunch of the girls came up to get our autographs! As I was walking home afterwards, a few of them had waited and gave me some flowers they had just picked. I really like the all girl setting – At the next PC interview, I am definitely going to request being placed in a girls’ college. This one that we are doing our teaching at is actually really nice. It is big, airy, bright, has fans, and the huge classroom we taught in actually had a microphone to use. That’s not the case for everyone. Two of the guys in our training group taught at another college here in town. They had a group of about 200 students, and no microphone. They had to have one person standing at the front of the class and one in the middle, and they basically relayed information back and forth. How can you get anything done like that? Today Gina and I will co-teach one more lesson, then for the next two weeks we will be alternating days. She’ll teach one day while I observe, then we’ll switch. I’m looking forward to it. It is so strange actually being in front of a classroom with so many people. They are all used to being taught in a very different way than what I am used to. It’s going to take some trial and errors to see what will work. That’s what model school is for though!
Yesterday was I think the best day that I’ve had in Bangladesh so far. John’s birthday is on Sunday, so he arranged a boat ride for everyone to celebrate. Best $1.50 I ever spent! We left on the boat around 12:30 and didn’t get home until 8:30pm. I think there were about 30-40 of us on the boat. It was a long black boat with a thatched roof. Most of us sat on the roof, carefully balanced so that our weight was distributed evenly so we wouldn’t tip! A couple of times we had to rearrange because the front end got too heavy and we were brushing the plants in the bottom of the river. The first few hours we floated along, had some nice snacks, and just chatted. At the halfway point, we got off at some little rural school and played soccer, stretched, etc. When we got back on, we had birthday cake! By that time the sun was starting to go down. I have never seen a more spectacular sunset in my life! The whole sky was filled with beautifully colored clouds. There were some patches in the sky that were absolutely iridescent. I’ve never seen those colors in the sky before! It seriously looked like mother of pearl. I was so focused on watching the sun set that for the longest time I didn’t even turn around. When I finally did though, there was the moon, full and huge in the sky. I hardly knew where to look. Everyone on the boat was just delirious; it was so nice. I think I took about 50 photos!
So, that is all for now. I just wanted to add too that you are more than welcome to email me! And you don’t have to worry about keeping your emails short. The longer the better! I actually save them on my flash drive and take them home to read, so it doesn’t take much time at the café. Thanks everyone!
Interviews
In the past few weeks since I have been here, Peace Corps has had two “interviews” with all the trainees to ask us about our preferences in where we want to be placed and in what type of school we want to work. The first interview was after just one week of being here, so I really had no idea what sort of preferences I wanted. Everywhere you turn there are just tons of people, so my concept of big and small cities does me no good. Even a “small” city might have 50,000 or more people. I did tell them there were certain types of things that I would like to have though, and it was pretty much up to them to decide what size of city that means sending me to. I told them I would like fairly regular internet access (as in I don’t want to have to travel 2 hours to the next biggest city any time I want to check my email), but I would like for the city to be small enough that I can actually get to know my neighbors. This is one of the things that they have been teaching us in our safety and security training sessions – that you really need to get out and put in face time in order to ensure your safety. Get to know your banker, post office people, internet café guy, fruit salesman, next door neighbors, etc. That way if they see anyone messing with you, or even trying to charge you too much in the market, they will look out for you.
The second interview we had wasn’t so much about what sort of city we want to be placed in as what sort of school we want to teach in. They asked us if we would prefer a secondary school (think middle school-ish age) or a college (think high school age), and if we wanted to teach more theory and complex ideas or basic straightforward lessons. I told them I would prefer college because I want to do more complex lessons, such as holding debates and discussions, as opposed to just teaching grammar. Peace Corps told us they would be sending 10 of the trainees to colleges, and they announced the very next day who it would be. I’m in!! This is a brand new program that they are trying, so the 10 of us will be the first ones to ever try teaching in colleges in Bangladesh. They are trying the program based on reports on the overall better satisfaction level of previous volunteers who have worked with older students (in their secondary projects that is). So, it sounds like we are going to be the guinea pigs a little, but I am pretty excited. I am really looking forward to incorporating lots of debates and discussions to get the students really motivated and thinking about new concepts and ideas that they just don’t seem to get from the standard lecture style of teaching. I’m so happy!! There have been rumors flying about where the ten of us will be placed (the northeast part of the country has been mentioned), but we won’t find out until later this month. Everyone will find out what city they will be going to on September 30. I can’t wait!!
"I'm the king of the world!"
Hello everybody! I hope everyone is doing fine. I’ve been having a busy few days lately. This past weekend all of the trainees in my group traveled all over Bangladesh to visit current volunteers to see how they are living, what their work is like, etc. I went WAY down to the south west with one other boy to visit a female Youth and Community Development worker. The trip took 10 hours! We took a pretty decent bus (no AC, but fans that were turned on whenever we were stopped and open windows otherwise). There are a lot of rivers in the South, and we had to cross five of them! Our bus just drove onto the ferry and slllloooowwwwlllly we would float across. Let me tell you though, traveling in Bangladesh is just not the same. We didn’t stop for food or restroom breaks, and even if we had, there aren’t really public restrooms anywhere. So, we basically fasted for the whole ten hours and made it successfully. Didn’t even get puked on in the bus or anything! (Yes, the ride can be that bad. Passengers get sick pretty often.)
The visit was pretty nice. It was so good to see how current volunteers live. It sounds like most of them have pretty decent, comfortable apartments and are integrated into the community well. I think all of us trainees have been worrying way too much about living on our own, not speaking Bangla very well, etc. Apparently we are receiving way better language training than any of the previous volunteer groups, and already know more after just 3 weeks than some people had in the full 3 months of training. It will all be ok!
Coming back to our training site was really fun. We decided not to take the bus again, and instead took a night ferry all the way back to Dhaka! We got on the ferry in Portacally (no idea how that is spelled). There were four trainees that got on there, and when we left the volunteers we had been visiting, we asked how we would know which ferry to get on. They gave us knowing looks and said we would be able to tell. As soon as we walked through the gate, we saw the ferries. There were tons of people hanging off the sides and on the pier, laughing, clapping, jumping around and chanting the names of the boats. It was like a competition for them to get as many passengers on to their ferry, even though everyone had already booked tickets already! It was such a festive atmosphere. After we all got on and put our bags away, we went up to the top deck and just watched all the other passengers being ushered onto the boats. It was great. After we took off, the four of us just stayed on the top deck for hours and hours. Not very many Bengalis were on top like that, so we were almost by ourselves and could just talk. The landscape was beautiful, with neon green rice paddies, banana and coconut trees, cute little huts, and apparently watching a ferry go by is a huge daily event for a lot of the village children because they would all run out and wave to the ferry. Seeing four whities must have been an added bonus!! We stayed up and watched the sunset, and the stars come out. It was awesome. When it finally got too dark, we went to one of our cabins and watched a Hindi film that we couldn’t understand at all. We also saw an ad for the very same ferry that we were on, and the background music on the commercial was from the movie “Titanic!” Bengalis seem to LOVE this movie. Hilarious. Anyway, we got to Dhaka early in the morning and basically spent the day walking around the more western part of the city where all the embassies are. Saw a couple good book stores, enjoyed some air conditioning, and ate at the Pizza Hut! Mmmmmm, cheese! It’s nice to have a break every once and a while.
Anyway, that’s all my excitement for now. Thanks again for your thoughts, emails, and letters (I’ve received one from Grandma B anyway!) Until next time, ~Kathryn
