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!
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment