First Impressions...

Noise. Lots and lots of noise. This is a city that is teeming with people, the roads are full of cars, rickshaws, livestock, carts heaped high with all sorts of goods and pulled by people, buses, trucks and people walking everywhere. Sitting in front of the van that picked us up from the airport, I could see all the seemingly near misses with trucks and rickshaws as we wove our way through the mayhem and was glad that I was so tired after the 31 hour journey that the near death calls didn’t faze me. It amazes me that it looks like such a crazy mess, yet there is some kind of order and the drivers seem to know exactly where every other car on the road is, their reflexes are super fast also! It is a sensory overload just going down the road, sounds, smells, and sights, colours- it’s very difficult to describe.

I had kinda expected all this as it is very similar to India but this country is also very different in many ways that I am beginning to discover. At the moment I feel quite helpless as my Bangla is terrible, so it is very difficult to go anywhere without someone who knows the language. Thankfully there are lots of people willing to help, take us shopping etc, which is great. I’ll be starting language classes soon hopefully and have already learnt a few useful phrases.

I start work on Sunday (the weeks here go from Sunday to Thursday, as Friday is the muslim day of worship) and will be working with some of the younger students, which will be a new experience for me! My job is more to work with the teachers instead of actual teaching so it should be interesting…I went into the school on Thursday just to meet everyone and the kids are beautiful and seen very eager to learn-education is a gift here, not a chore! I look forward to starting work and beginning to feel more like I know what I’m doing, at the moment its all very new and slightly terrifying (and exciting) just walking out the door.

I shall write more soon, these photos are of the view out my window where we are currently staying, a ten-minute rickshaw ride away from school.