Monday 5/29: Jared had clinic this morning. He only had 15 instead of the usual 30. Sumita came to clean. I spent most of the day on the couch or in bed with a stomach issue. In the afternoon the children and I slept for 2 hours! Layton has started taking naps with me again. Seems like he feels more secure that way. Jared went to Farmgate for some clinic things. While he was there he endeavored to find the tailor that Elwood used for his shirts. Need to get him some shirts made. It’s amazing how quick they wear out here. The armpits get all crusty like… Took it easy the rest of the day while my guts felt like they had been turned inside out and backwards. Layton was the sweetest, he made me water with a lime wedge in it and told me “take 5 sips every so often. It’ll help speed things up!”😂 He’s been going down every evening to play with 3 older children in the courtyard. They do all sorts of crazy stunts. Give each other rides on their bikes, chase the apartment complex cat, play bike tag, etc. I’m so thankful he has the three children to play with. Today one of the kids was handing out Canadian Smarties! The other day he came upstairs all in a huff and said “these kids talk so fast I can’t understand a word they say!” They all talk some form of English. I just stand on the veranda and watch him play down there.
Tuesday 5/30: Woke up feeling like a new woman. Which is good because “the show must go on.” Jared had clinic. 20 patients today… At 5 we went to the clinic for singing. Sang for almost an hour. Went to Parktown for supper. No rain stopped us this time! Air conditioning and good food… what more can a person want?! Layton wanted to take a CNG home so we did. I’m slowly getting used to them but still feel like a dog in a cage while riding in those things sometimes. They don’t have shocks so when one is lurching over speed bumps and dodging potholes in a narrow alley one feels like one is in a boat rocking on a tumultuous sea. One day while we were out and about we saw a pink CNG… it was cuter than a bug’s ear!
Wednesday 5/31: Jared and Jon went to the visa office this morning to pay for Trevor’s work permit. Jared has to take their passports back in a week or two to get the appropriate stamps put in them. Then they will officially be here legally… 1 1/2 years later! Hopefully Jared will get his security clearance soon so his work permit can be issued. Went to the clinic for lunch. Josna made the usual… chicken curry. When we go out, the short guard tells me that I need to cover Shania’s head to protect her from the heat and then the tall guard tells me that I should uncover her so that she gets Vitamin C! Layton informed me this morning that it made him feel loved when I made him good food. So endeavoring to be a good mom, I whipped him and Jared up a chocolate cake while Shania napped. The rest of the day was unremarkable. Jared did end of month bookwork… we are having another heatwave so afternoons and evenings are spent inside under the fan! Layton has gotten all enthused about his Magna Tiles and Legos again and spends hours building with them. Or we’ve play Sorry. These heatwaves seem to last for about 2 weeks then it rains and cools off for about a week and then the cycle starts over. They have been shutting off the electricity for an hour 2-3 times a day to conserve energy. Bangladesh has the capacity to have power all the time but due to the fuel shortage they are unable to do so. We don’t mind the short outages. Now that the battery backup is fixed we still have three fans that can run and a light or two.
Thursday 6/1: June! Layton clothespinned a sheet onto a pedestal fan and turned the fan on as high as it would go. This resulted in a big bubble. He spent quite a bit of time in his “tent.” Put a light in there and everything! Made granola this morning. It’s interesting to cook when it’s so warm. Frozen meat thaws quickly, butter can go from frozen to squishy soft in a very short amount of time… Layton left a cup of milk out one afternoon. It stayed out overnight and it turned to yogurt consistency by morning. Who needs an Instant Pot to make yogurt? 😂Jon and Paninna invited us for lunch today! Haven’t seen her much since we quit our language classes. Their daughter is in medical school and has the week off so they wanted us to come over so they could see the baby. As always she cooked so much food. Fried chicken, fried fish, beef curry, shrimp curry, egg curry and pilau rice. For dessert she had strawberry and vanilla ice cream and then after dessert she cut up mangos yet. We were so full!! I royally embarrassed myself on the way there. We got there and rang their apartment bell. When Paninna’s brother George came to let us in at the ground level, we had to go up 5 flights of stairs. On the 4th flight I tripped and fell while I was holding Shania. You can imagine the scene that caused. Shania wasn’t hurt at all because I managed to keep ahold of her the whole time. I quick jumped up and said “bhalo bhalo!” (Good good) But when we got to their apartment George told Panina that I tripped and she was in a tizzy! Again I said we were all fine. Jon was annoyed that their electricity had went off during the night. He said it was so hot that he went to market first thing and bought a battery backup system like we have. I was glad to hear that he thought it was hot too, made me feel like I’m not such a pansy! We really enjoyed visiting with their family. Jon has traveled all over the world so he has a-lot of interesting things to say and viewpoints. We didn’t stay long after lunch because Shania was getting fussy. Came home and took it easy. Smoothies for supper because who feels like eating when you have a belly full of rice? We needed something light “to fill in the cracks” like Layton says!
Friday 6/2: Shania is two months! Feels like a lot of water has went under the bridge since she was born. Sometimes I wonder why I’m so tired in the evenings and then I have to remind myself that she is only two months old. I told Jared it feels like she ought to be at least 6 months old. Anyways… church this morning! Jared and I had a good chuckle this morning as we were getting ready to leave. He has started carrying sweat rags with him to the clinic, because the electric will go off and it will be absolutely sweltering in there with all the people and not one speck of a breeze. So when we go to church now, into the diaper bag goes a sweat rag in the event of a power outage! Plus a big thermos of ice cold water. I wondered if anyone is doing that at Hesston for church?😂 Jared’s inspiration was on the story of Lazarus rising from the dead. Miriam and Sumita took turns reading the scriptures in Bangla. We pray that they receive some sort of small inspiration from our service since we don’t have an interpreter at this time. So thus why Jared has them read the Bangla scriptures out loud. There was a mom staying at the clinic with a little boy this morning. He came to have a palatal lesion fixed. He was absolutely the cutest little thing. About 2.5 years old. I wanted to take him home with me! I rubbed his bristly hair and he just stood there absolutely stock still. As long as I didn’t look at him he was ok.😄Jared gave them some milk, money and meds before they left. They looked like really clean people. She wanted to hold Shania so I let her hold her during church since they were sitting in on our service. Went to Lola’s for lunch then went to UniMart. It amazes Jared and I how incredibly rude some of the foreigners in the Gulsane area are to these Bengalis. We’ve seen it several times… a foreigner will be rude and insulting when asking one of the UniMart workers where something is or when we were at Lola’s last there was a foreigner in there being snotty with the waiters because his food took longer than 15 minutes to make. We try to be extra courteous and respectful so they don’t think all foreigners are like that! Came home and took naps. This heat saps our energy. After supper we played our usual round of Sorry. Layton went down to play with the kids but came up every 5 minutes or so to get a cold drink or sit and cool off. Shania wanted to be held and walked around so that’s how the rest of the evening went. Every evening in his bedtime prayers Layton thanks God for “sending us Shania.” My heart… 🥹❤️
Saturday 6/3: Been in Bangladesh 7 months!🇧🇩 For once I was mostly caught up with things around the house. Or maybe there’s something I’m forgetting! So spent time just holding Shania and talking with Layton. Did some alphabet practice with Layton to keep his mind off the heat. He’s been having a lot of little fears since we came here. One of them is the electricity going out. I was so proud of him this morning because the power went out for an hour and he just kept on playing in the living room even though I was nowhere around him! The living room was fairly dark even. He used to would have yelled and came running for me and not leave my side until it came back on. We are proud of progress being made! Him and I went to get fruit this morning. The water trucks were out watering the streets. Not sure if it was to keep the dust down or because of the heat? We stood and watched until we started becoming a stumbling block on the sidewalk. This afternoon I took Layton down to ride bike. We noticed in the parking garage there was a BMW. Rather unusual for Siza Court. The guard saw us looking at it and said “onek dam!” (Very expensive!) and then “onek taka!” (Much money). The driver was standing nearby and looked quite pleased with this observation.
Sunday 6/4: Jared had clinic today, he saw 30 patients. The children and I went to the tailor to pick up my 3 pc. It fit very well so I’ll take him the other 2 that I have sitting here waiting. I got some beef chunks for beef curry but Lucky didn’t come Saturday so I cut it up and trimmed it and put it in the crockpot with potatoes and carrots for supper. By the time I trimmed all the fat and gristle off and picked out the bones there wasn’t much meat left. When it had been in the crockpot for several hours the meat was actually pretty good. Not fall of the bone quite but good enough! I really miss Jared’s grass fed beef that we had at home! We can get good ground beef here but seems like anything else is tough and chewy.
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