Today we gave honor to the "Curry" portion of our blog title. Our Mouths Are On Fire. Still. In every dish today at lunch there floated not one, but more like 15 full green chilli's. OMG. We hope to build a tolerance and are now well on or way.
Today we also had tea at one of the many "tea shacks. This may not seems something to write home about. Accept that women do not usually sit and have tea. They work. While the men sit and drink tea.
But, having a male university teacher at our side, we gained some bravery and sat. The other men just stared the whole time, we're sure shocked by our presence. Whatever. The tea was good. Massive scoop of sugar. Small cup + condensed milk. Mmmmm. Cost 5 Taka... That' not even 10 cents.
We've officially taken up Badminton as our new activity. We both love our "activities" and so are delighted by this. Badminton + walking. We're pleased. There is a court behind the University which we visited yesterday. Again, many stared as we played MIXED doubles with two Bangladeshi boys
(men and women are very much segregated in this culture). We're both very competitive and so you can just imagine us jumping and lunging for the shuttle cock in our long dresses, baggy pants and scarves. We were afterwards very sweaty. Fun.
While out on a mission today we noticed these strange little huts on stilts sponsored by various soda companies. They were out over the water (actually not much water as it's the winter season) and we learned that they were "dating" huts. Bangladeshi (Muslim) men and women go there to get a little "privacy"... not much privacy if you ask us. There's clusters of 50 of them together. In this culture of arranged marriages it's one of the few ways they can have their say in who they like... sorta. Still haven't totally figure this one out.
We also have another "C" to add to our title. Cockroaches. The size of small mice. Early this morning at around 3 Ricki spotted the first one... crawling into our suitcases. We ignored it went back to sleep. Then today when we went to boil some water for a shower, we spotted another HUGE one. One of our housemates sprayed it. And it died. Feel sorta bad- but we're over it.
Spitting is a veritable hobby around here. It's more like horking. And loud. We hear the call to prayer at around 5:30 and just as we fall back asleep we hear 30 men horking and spitting as they walk to the mosque. Gross. Imagine floods of chest fluid in the streets. But we've decided it serves more than one purpose. They clear their sinuses and throats as well as water the small plants on the side of the road. Watch where you step.
Ricki has also left her laundry out to "dry" on the roof for 48+ hours. If it's not collected by 5pm, it's soaked with dew and must be left for another 24 hours. Wish her luck.
We would also like to begin a running tally of Ricki's mosquito bits. She has 10 active bites that are more like hives. And very itchy. 2 dormant bites. She's almost out of Benadryl already. Help.
And we'll close with an update on the flood- aka our showering technique. We have now added a small stool to our regime. Not much improvement noted. We found with the stool, our bums just ended up colder. We've determined this is a trial and error system. Most of Asia showers like this. There's gotta be a way we can master it. We'll keep you posted.
The internet isn't so good right now so we'll have to wait until tomorrow for photos.
Love you all!
Ricki & Heidi
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