What I've learned so far from apartment hunting...

So I've learned some interesting and random things these past few weeks as I've been apartment hunting. First, kitchens are TINY here. Usually "the staff" works in them, which is a whole other topic, so they are poorly ventilated, never have A/Cs, are always adjacent to the staff room and have very little counter space. I've also learned that typically in Bangladesh the floor (a clean one!) is used for preparing and cutting vegetables, so there is no real need for the counter top. Also, related to the kitchen, ovens are very rare. Most people just have two burners and that's the extent of their cooking equipment. I guess not much baking or broiling is needed in Bangladeshi cuisine.

The second thing I've learned is that everything is negotiable. Whether it's the service fee, the amenities or even the rent, it can all be negotiated. So you never want to assume that anything is fixed or off the table.
The third thing I've learned is that you have to go to the area of town where you want to live if you want to be in a particular place. There are no online sites really or listings that you can consult. So it's all either word of mouth or street by street searching, which can be exhausting, let me tell you!
Finally, randomly, I've learned that apartment units are letter and number based instead of just sequential in number. So instead of 101, 201, 301, etc. as you'd see in Europe or North America, it's B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, etc. which can be very confusing.
So those are my random factoids!

First trip to the field

Well I had my first trip to the field as chief of party, which was very exciting. It was nice to be part of the visit not as a visitor but as the host. We had some VIPs from Washington, DC visiting and we were showing them around our sites in Southern Bangladesh.
We flew from Dhaka to Jessore (pronounced joh-shore), which is about a 30 minutes flight from Dhaka. Bangladesh has about 4 airlines that fly domestically and apparently we flew on the most punctual of them, so I was pleasantly surprised with the efficiency and punctuality of our trip.

Jessore is a relatively small town in the division of Khulna with about 30,000 people. The division's main city, Khulna, is about a two hour drive south of Jessore and is where our main office is. We stayed, however, in and around Jessore for this trip. Like most parts of rural Bangladesh, it is predominately agrarian so the countryside consists mostly of rice fields and villages with farms.

 For our VIP guests, we took them to see some of the work we're doing in a few of these villages. Our first stop (pictures below) was a group of women who participate in what we call a 'farmer field school'. This is a new group we are working with near Jessore. We work with these women to teach best practices in kitchen gardens, proper nutrition during pregnancy and poultry rearing. Here we're showing a more efficient way to encourage hens to lay more eggs and our field rep (the guy at the front) is demonstrating how this is done.

The rest of the afternoon went well, though it was very hot! In addition to this farmer field school, we also showed them some home gardens, hand washing stations and a nutrition counseling session that our health extension worker was providing to new mothers in a nearby village. The visitors seemed very happy with how the visit had gone, which of course made us happy too! No problems or delays coming back to Dhaka. So it was a good first trip to one of our divisions!

Exploring Banani

Well - it's official: I survived my first official week on the job! Hooray! I don't think I messed anything up too badly, either!
Friday was my first day off so I slept in a little bit, had a late breakfast and decided to go explore the neighborhood where my hotel is, Banani. Banani, you might be surprised to know, does not have a lot of bananas, I was sad to discover. :-)
One of my colleagues from the office lives in Banani and offered to walk me around the neighborhood a bit and show me what's there. Banani is one of the neighborhoods where we're looking to move, so I was also curious to get to know it better for that reason.
We started at one of the few places I did already know in Dhaka, a great place called Jatra. Jatra has beautiful handmade fixtures and artwork for the home. Last time I was here I visited it with my boss and was completely blown away by all the incredible things they had. So, it was a nice place to start. I ended up buying myself a local outfit, since their clothes are so nice (and affordable) and it seemed like a good thing to do.

From there we walked to the Banani market, a smellier but very lively version of Pike Place Market. Let's just say you wouldn't want any of your lovely new produce to fall on the floors there, though. Doesn't do much for the appetite. In addition to beautiful fresh veggies and fruits, there was a bloody array of chickens (the cackling and post-cackling type), goats and even cow heads. Yum! From there we walked over to the Banani Supermarket, a sort of multilevel mall with lots of great shops. Here you can buy any fabric you want and have a tailor turn it into whatever you want. Most nice things you see people wearing here were probably tailored. People take their clothing very seriously. I also visited Dhaka's latest department store, Uni-Mart, a Thai owned Fred Meyer or Walmart style grocery store with appliances and other electronics. It seems we can buy nearly everything there, so that should make getting set up a whole lot easier.

From there we found a few more fun shops and restaurants, such as the Australian and American stores as well as KFC and Pizza Hut. Apparently they have Domino's here too.
Then we walked down to Road 11 which is the fancier part of Banani. It's a stretch of great cafes, bakeries and restaurants. I saw Korean, Turkish, Indian and Italian places, as well as a Thai place called "Western Ireland" (??). Yeah. There was even a Mexican place called "Quesadilla" where we had lunch - and I have to say it was a damn good quesadilla! We stopped in some amazing bakeries and even found a great gelato place. Needless to say, I'm sure Road 11 is in our future!
 

Almost done with my first week

Well, I'm over halfway through my first week on the job. It has been, not surprisingly, very busy. I've pretty much been running from one meeting to the next. Some meetings have been internal, others have been with partners and folks that I'll be working with from outside my project over the next couple of years.
Today and tomorrow are nationwide hartal (হরতাল), or general strikes, in Bangladesh. These are in protest to recent court rulings about individuals who participated in the war of independence in the 1960s and 1960s. They generally don't affect those living near the office too much, but people who have to travel across town or across the country can be significantly affected by them. The restriction of movement is one of the biggest challenges, though in some parts it can result in demonstrations and, at times, riots.
General elections will be coming up in the next few months (sometime between the end of October and mid-January) and it is likely that there will be more of these between now and then.
With a bit of luck, though, I'll be traveling down to the division of Khulna in the southern part of the country after this strike has been called off.

Most of our work is done here in the south, so I'll probably be traveling down here quite a bit.
The two main ways of traveling in the country are by ferry (or 'launches', as they call them here) or plane. Because of all the water in the country, though, there are many places where a long enough stretch of land for a plane simply doesn't exist, so you have to take a boat, which can often be 12 hours or more. That, or you take an amphibian plane, which has you take off on land and land on water, but that of course costs a lot more. I've only done it twice but it's pretty fun!
This morning I'm supposed to go look at a few apartments, so hopefully I'll find a few good candidates. The hotel where I'm staying is great, but I'd also really like to be able to unpack and settle in. I think it will help me feel more like this is 'home' and help me adjust. I'm really hoping I can get something in place by October first, but we'll see. We're trying to find a place that would be walking distance to most places so we can avoid traffic as much as possible. Fingers crossed!

First two full days in Bangladesh

Well, I've now completed my first two full days in Bangladesh.
Saturday was my first full day and I spent a large chunk of it over at my colleague's house, Reja, in the neighborhood of Uttara in the northern part of Dhaka. It was wonderful to meet his family and they really went out of their way making me a feast of vegetarian dishes. I was so stuffed by the time I got back to the hotel! They did send me back with a lunch box, or tiffin, of leftovers just in case I got hungry, though!
His wife, Asma, made a custard cake with a jello layer on top that had the Bangladesh flag. What a 'sweet' welcome to the country! :-)

After much visiting and eating, Reja dropped me back at the hotel.
Yesterday, Sunday, was my first day in the office in my new job. I felt like a kid going to his first day of school. Appropriately, I had my tiffin of food from the night before, I got to meet lots of new people and see my new desk and my books for my Master's course had arrived at the office, so I even came home with new books for the school year! :-)
I have now officially been issued my ID badge, I have my work computer, I have my work cell and tomorrow I should have my new business cards. So it's getting pretty official! 
It was a very busy day, as I had expected it would be. There was lots to get caught up on and we even had a few deadlines to meet, so there was no lack of things to do.
At the Dhaka office, there are seven of us that work on the project - the country manager (me), the deputy country manager, a monitoring and evaluation specialist, a finance manager, a nutrition and social behavior change specialist, an operations specialist and a program support officer. Everyone else for the project sits in one of the two divisional offices in the southern part of the country.
Most of my first day was getting caught up with these seven Dhaka-based folks.
Of course, having worked with this program for the past 1.5 years, I didn't have as much learning or catching up to do as someone else might have had, which I was happy about.
This week will likely consist of more catch-up and orientation meetings, as well as a bit of apartment hunting. There hasn't been much progress in that area so far, so I'm hoping to see a few places on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Wednesday afternoon I'll fly down to Southern Bangladesh to the division of Khulna to work with the staff there and prepare for an official visit we are having there from our donor at the end of the week. I'll return here to Dhaka on Friday.That's how my week is shaping up - next time I'll post, I'll let you all know how it actually went!

Day 1 in Dhaka

Well the adventure has officially begun! I touched down yesterday afternoon here in Dhaka (on September 13th no less!) after a problem-free trip.

It was a long and exhausting journey of course, but all went well and neither I nor my bags went missing.
It's strange to be here and know that this is 'home'. I have 170+ pounds worth of my belongings with me, yet I'm in a hotel and of course can't properly unpack. So I definitely feel in limbo for the moment.

I made a stop through Dubai on the way which helped break things up a bit, but the flight to Dhaka left at 3:30 in the morning, which is really just a horrible time to have a flight leave.
I didn't do much in Dubai - was just there long enough to sleep for a bit, take a quick shower, grab some food, wrap up some work and then head back to the airport again.
I flew on FlyDubai here and had a beautiful view of the mountains in Pakistan and the Himalayas as we flew through. I saw the sun rise over Iran and the terrain slowly change from desert and mountains to green and wet lowlands as we moved into Bangladesh.
According to the plane's map, Bangladesh isn't that far from Poland, as the photo below shows (Warsaw in the upper left hand corner and Sylhet  in the lower right), something my wife and sister-in-law should be happy to know, though I think we might need to investigate this further. :-)

 Because it was still pretty early on Friday when I got here to Dhaka, the roads were pretty empty and it was quick and easy getting to the hotel. I treated myself to a masala dosa and sambar as a welcome to the subcontinent. The food at this hotel is what keeps me coming back - it's so good! Last night they had a Sri Lankan buffet, which is really what the restaurant is known for, since the hotel is Sri Lankan run and the head chef is from there. Anyway, enough about food - needless to say it was a nice culinary welcome to this part of the world!
Sleep-wise, I broke my cardinal rule of travel yesterday and took a nap, something I always avoid doing the first few days of a trip when trying to adjust to a new timezone. I was just so tired! I did manage to get a good seven hours in last night, though, and only woke up about 5:30 this morning. So I'm probably not too far off in getting adjusted timezone-wise.
We had a nice end-of-the-monsoon season morning storm today, which cooled things off a bit, but it is still supposed to be close to 100 today. I'll be glad when the drier, cooler season kicks in towards the beginning of October.
I've set up my MagicJack number and have tested it out. So between my Bangladesh cell number and 206 number I have set up on MagicJack, technologically speaking things seem to be off to a good start.
Today I've been invited over to my deputy's house for lunch. He and his family wanted to welcome me to Dhaka and Bangladesh. I'm looking forward to it!
Tomorrow will be my first day in the office. It sounds like it's going to be a very busy and eventful few weeks so I'm glad I had yesterday and today to catch my breath!