Moving day in DC

It has been a little while since I last posted a blog entry. I went back to DC for a crazy, action-packed week, which primarily consisted of us packing up, shipping out and cleaning up our apartment.
Though I'm excited to be in Dhaka, I'm going to miss being in Woodley Park - I loved our little apartment and it was the place we called home for 6 years.
Here are some fun shots of our moving adventure last week.

 There may have been more than one package labeled "bookcase" and "books". :-)

This is what our poor neighbors had to suffer through as the movers moved our things out of our place and towards the elevator.

The final push as we emptied out our place.

And this is all that remained - a few suitcases and a few pieces of broken furniture that went to the dump. Farewell #318!

Season of holidays in Dhaka

Shortly after I arrived in Bangladesh, a season of different holidays began. The first was Durga Puja, arguably one of the most important of the Hindu faith, which was shortly followed by Eid al-Adza (the Eid of Sacrifice), one of the most important Muslim holidays. A few days ago it was Diwali, the festival of lights, another Hindu holiday, and Friday this week it is the Muslim New Year, Muharram. And let's of course not forget Halloween!

The hardest one as a vegetarian was certainly Eid al-Adza, a solemn holiday, also known as Qurbani, or "slaughter", during which most families slaughter a goat or cow. Consequently all over the city on this day there were animals that had been slaughtered in a halal way and were left to bleed out. It has deep religious significance and is an important tenet of the Muslim faith, but I made a conscious decision not to go out on that day. I could see enough evidence of it from my bedroom window!

On a lighter note, Durga Puja was full of dance parties and celebrations and Halloween gave me an opportunity to meet more of the expat crowd here in Dhaka and help pass out candy. I gave out Angry Birds candies and saw some adorable kids.

This was one of the Durga Puja festival sites not far from our place.

Here are a few of the trick or treaters that I got for Halloween.

The kids with their moms and ayas leaving our place and heading to the next stop.

Call for photos

We were recently asked by our donor to provide some photos from the work that we do in the field, in particular through photos that show the crossroads of nutrition and agriculture. I put out a call to all staff members and these were the three photos that came back that we thought were most interesting and representative of the population we serve and of the work we do. I can't take credit for any of the photos but the subjects are all participants in our project and were taken during our work. It's always nice to be reminded of the faces of the people that we're serving!

New fruits and veggies

Over the past month or more, I've had a chance to try some exciting new fruits and veggies from this part of the world. Here are a few of them:


Amloki - incredibly high in vitamin C; very sour!

Amra/Hog Plum; similar to apples and also highly nutritious

Ash Plantain

Ash Gourd

Bitter Gourd; definitely very bitter!

Green Guava; crunchy and not at all as sweet as its pink cousin

Pomelo; very similar to grapefruit but is sweeter, stringier and drier; very tasty though