Monday 2/26: No clinic today! It’s some sort of Muslim holiday. Forgiveness day? Jared and I worked on getting his office organized. So many papers. Layton and I sorted out a bunch of money into 80 taka bundles for the toll booths for all our comings and goings on the expressway. The children and I spent a lot of time outside today. Played and played at the sand court. Took walks up and down the streets here. There’s a main road and then 8 streets. 1a 1b 2a 2b and so on. We live on road 7A. A streets are the right hand side and B streets are the left hand side. The traffic is limited and so it’s quite a relaxing jaunt. The median is full of bushes and shrubs and hibiscus. Sunflowers are planted scattered along the road. Every house has a little garden in front. Some people have their gardens full of marigolds and other flowering plants and some are just bare dirt and some are grass! Layton always has to stop and roll on the grass patches.😂 The yardsmen sweep the streets every morning so there’s no dog poop to avoid stepping on or trash piled up. It feels good to be in a place where things aren’t so trashy. Layton can finally dig holes to his hearts content at the sand court without anyone telling him to quit or freaking out that the foreigner boy is getting dirty. While he was playing this evening a little girl dressed in a white princess dress and a burka head piece came and joined him. I felt sorry for her trying to play all dolled up like that. Shania loves the sand too and spent quite abit of time sampling various handfuls of sand and rocks. Probably why I had to give her dewormer the other week for her raging diarrhea. The neighbor boy and Layton are slowly becoming pals. That boy is quite a brat. His mom overheard me reprimanding Layton and she said “babies don’t need rules only adults.” 🫢 Later afternoon Jared walked down to the market that’s down the road from pink city and bought an extension cord for his laptop and printer. Got it set up and plugged into the voltage stabilizer.pI tried to get ahold of the vaccine clinic for Shania’s next round of vaccines but they were closed. We spent the rest of the day at home. At supper we realized Layton has his first loose tooth! He thinks it’s going to fall out any day now but we told him it would take several weeks. We’ve been talking about loosing teeth for several months now so that when this happens it’s not a scary thing to him. He is like his mother and likes to know things ahead of time. This evening I talked to the lady next door. I’m trying to make some friends here. She says we need to send Layton to one of the international schools here in Bashundara. I told her we would homeschool him. I asked her what the constant talking over a loudspeaker is that we hear every evening. It’s aways away so not horrible loud. She says it’s Islamic teachings “isn’t it annoying?” Clearly she is not Muslim. There’s a lady from France and a lady from Russia that live here in pink city. I hope to get acquainted with them soon.
Tuesday 2/27: Jared had clinic. 40 patients he said! Now that our lease at Siza Court is up he is parking at the guesthouse for now. We have not moved the guesthouse yet to pink city. Santo and his crew are coming back to Dhaka in a week or two to finish up the remodel project so for now the guesthouse in Monipuripara remains. Not sure where we will park during the week once that lease is up in June. My dad says Jared can fit our van down streets in Dhaka that any Kansas person would think undriveable.😂 There is some parking by the clinic but during the week it’s full. We are able to park there on Fridays. It’s going to feel funny to be able to park wherever we want anywhere we go when we get home! The children and I spent the morning at the sand court again. I’m so thankful the weather is so nice now. There’s been a bit of a breeze the past few days. The evenings and nights are still quite cool which we are so enjoying. I’m even more thankful that my children can play outside more now and get Vitamin D from the sun. I’m hoping this helps Layton with some of his nervous energy. I just never knew how important playing outside and sun are to children until we came to Bangladesh! The last two days have been the first days in a long while that life feels normal. Feels like we are getting into a good routine with bedtime and laundry and meals and all that again. After we were done playing outside I rearranged my pantry again. I think I’m finally onto something this go around. In the afternoon the children and I were outside again. Layton rode bike with his friend Abdullah. I am having to set some ground rules with the neighbor children. Since we are new plus foreigners we are quite the spectacle for them to stand and watch. Some of the neighbor children will sneak into our yard to try and play with Layton’s things. One day after naps I heard a noise so I went outside and here a dad had brought his child over and was swinging on Layton’s swing. We made a rule that no one other than us or the yard man should be inside our gate. If the children want to play with Layton they can play on the road or go to the sand court or badminton court. The roads aren’t that busy so it’s perfectly safe for the children to play out there. Other parents here in this community have the same rule for their yards so I felt better about enforcing it. One little girl is determined to sneak in. I told her to leave and Layton went out and played with her on the street. They had so much fun together. She snuck back in our yard and I told her again she needed to stay out. I had to go inside and so I glanced out the window and here she was again trying to play with Layton’s stuff. She saw me through the window and took off running. I feel bad being this way but otherwise we will have tons of children in our yard all the time. One boy came up to the gate and asked Layton to get a drink of water. I told him “no you have to get water from your own house!” Trevor’s have had problems with people coming to their gate asking for water too. Today the yard man asked me if we had a washroom. It feels like we have to almost go overboard with saying no otherwise we will have people traipsing in and out all day long. So I figure in the future we can let up a bit if we need to, but right now until we know the community and people better we won’t let the kids in the yard. The furniture store delivered our storage cabinet for upstairs and the new office chair for the clinic. Layton spent quite awhile this evening riding bike sounds the neighborhood with the other boys. Around 5 in the evening probably 20 boys come out of the woodwork! Looks like ages 5-16. They play tag on the street or jump over the bushes in the median or zip up and down the street! Layton is starting to cautiously join them as long as Abdullah is with him. Some times they all go to the soccer area and play there.
Wednesday 2/28: Today was a lesson that God has went before and made a way. Natun met us at Siza Court. We turned in the keys and the men talked with Mr Faroque. He wants us to pay for the old apartment to be completely repainted or rewallpapered. CSI has rented that place for 16 years. The amount he wanted us to pay was quite heavy. Natun talked to him and eventually the men thought an offer of paying half would be ok. We will see what Carl says.@“ Jared told him to keep the security deposit. Natun thought Jared should have been more aggressive with his dealings but we don’t want to leave a bad impression or cause trouble since they have been so good to us. Shameem (the Siza court caretaker) offered that we could continue to rent a parking space there! What an answer to prayer. 2,000 taka a month only. Jared has been checking into getting a driver since there’s no where for us to park when we go to the clinic during the week. It would be 25,000 taka! Uber is very expensive too. Natun said this was a steal of a deal. Plus we know the guards there and know it’s a safe place to park. Their only request is that when we park there that we leave the van in neutral so they can shove it out of the way if they need to. We jumped on that offer! Went to the clinic for lunch. Sumita’s niece cooked this time. What a feast. Chicken curry, fried eggplant, tomato tok, dal, rice… Whenever they know Natun is coming they always cook extra dishes. He has them wrapped around his fingers! After lunch the children and I went to the guesthouse to hang out. Natun and Jared went to Maa Medicine at Farmgate. In the past Jared has gotten some meds there for the clinic but the majority of them come from Square Pharmaceuticals. Square delivered them to Siza Court for us. We never knew when they would be delivered they would just call when they were in the courtyard. Natun called them and asked if they could deliver to pink city but they said no. We thought maybe they could deliver them to the clinic but Jared would have to be there with the money when they arrived. He can’t exactly jump in the van and drive thirty minutes every time there is a med delivery. The med bill is usually quite a hefty sum so we weren’t comfortable just leaving that amount of cash at the clinic for Sumita to give the deliverman. Naton and Jared went to Maa Medicine and they said that Jared could WhatsApp his weekly med order to them and they would deliver it to the clinic the next day. Natun is going to help Jared set up a BiKash account then he can just BiKash them the money. (Bangladesh’s version of PayPal). Jared was so relieved. Last week he just went and gave Maa his order and waited an hour while they prepared it. He doesn’t want to have to wait all the time because sometime his order is quite large. Plus the workers have to stop for prayer time every so often which is at least 10-15 minutes. The whole store stops until prayers are completed. Jared was so thankful that Natun could go with him and arrange all these things. Here in Dhaka quite a few business people know some English, so between our Bangla and their English we get along quite well. When it comes to business dealings and arranging things Jared feels better if Natun is along because then both parties are clear on what is expected of them! Feels like we owe Natun a lot with everything he has helped us with. Jared slips him a little extra sometimes when he pays him for interpreting for us at church. We came home and all slept for two hours.🤭 After that we went and walked along the little river canal beside pinkcity. It was a really enjoyable walk. We were able to walk without drawing a crowd or having to dodge a lot of people. Days like today make us feel even more sure that this move was the Lords doing. All these things we have worried about are all slowly falling into place. Oh and Jared hired Sumita’s niece Anchela to work at the clinic! She is a sweetheart. She loves the children especially Shania.
Thursday 2/29: This morning was productive. Shania and Layton were both up before seven which did not amuse me. When Layton was a baby I would put him on the floor beside the couch with some toys and he would play while I dozed off for awhile. The princess feels quite hurt by such treatment. It’s not long and I feel her breathing on my face and a wet finger trying to poke my eyeballs or dig in my ear or pinch my nose.😂 My children have forced me to become a morning person. After breakfast Jared went to the BiKash Dokan to send money to the pharmacy for his med order. It worked great and the meds were delivered in the afternoon to the clinic! I cleaned my windows inside and out because they were still covered in dirt from the remodeling. The tile men dribbled cement all down a few of them and I need to figure out how to get it off. It’s not a lot but enough that it’s noticeable. We don’t plan to get a maid for now. I know Sumita would come and clean in a heartbeat if I asked her but I kinda like doing my own cleaning. It feels more like normal home life. Jared assembled my storage cabinet for the upstairs. After naps we went to the wholesale market at Jamuna Park. Got some things we were needing for the house. We bought a microwave and boy was I tickled!!! It will be nice in the summer to warm up leftovers in the microwave instead of heating up the kitchen just to warm up a little bit of food. Jared says now we can make our mug cakes that we loved to make at home. (Cake in a coffee cup that’s baked in the microwave)😄 We bought a new shower curtain for our bathroom. The shower curtains were all folded into tiny plastic packages and you couldn’t tell what they looked like. there wasn’t a picture or anything on the outside. We didn’t even think to open up the package to look at it because you sure wouldn’t do that at Walmart at home! Jared found one that was blue so we got that one. We got home and I went to hang it up and here it was a Frozen shower curtain with Elsa’s face as big as can be on it.😂 we hung it up anyway just to give us a laugh. Haha! Whenever I got up during the night to use the bathroom there was Elsa’s big ole creepy eyeballs staring at me.
Friday 3/1: Had church. Took some of the old curtains from our Siza Court apartment and gave them to Sumita. The curtains at the clinic are very old and thread bare. She’s going to take them to a tailor and have them shortened. Jared had the message on Nehemiah. I didn’t get much more than that since Shania decided to make lots of racket during church. Lucky came to church today! It was good to see her again. Hadn’t seen her since January. Her and Jared arranged that she would come and cook once in awhile for us still! Natun told her how to get to Pink City. After church We went and did our usual shopping and then came home to nap. Had a quiet evening at home. Took a walk along the canal again.
Saturday 3/2: This morning Jared and Layton went to a bike dokan and bought Layton a new bike. His old pink one kept breaking and Jared had to keep fixing it. Plus it was getting too small for him. Krystal said she thought it was still the one from when she was here 10 years ago. He was one happy boy! I did laundry and the usual. Cleaned our porch and zapped so many mosquitoes. They seem to swarm right outside our door. Jared wants to buy some mosquito coils and put them on the porch to see if that helps at all! After lunch the internet man came and set up our internet and WiFi. Had to get one for upstairs and downstairs. We spent a good share of the day out riding bike of course with the new bike.😃
Sunday 3/3: Jared had clinic. I packed him a lunch to take this time since he has business to tend to after clinic is over. He said he had so many patients that half way through the morning they had to start turning people away. Seems like there are more and more coming! Or maybe it’s because we were closed for a month while we moved. The children and I spent a lot of time outside. Layton was quite a busy beaver. Rode bike, swung, watered the lawn. We are just so thankful he can be outside so much now! The yard man that comes and sweeps our yard several times a week is doing his best to get money. He told us at first that we should tip him 2,000 taka a month. Several other people that Trevor’s talked to say don’t tip except at Eid. The neighbor lady said you’re supposed to tip 500 taka or so. Finally Jared offered him 750 a month. He wasn’t happy. The neighbor lady told me “he knows you are a foreigner so he will try to get money from you. These people think money grows on trees if you are a foreigner.” Her husband is from Sri Lanka. Women like to come ask me if they could be my maid or cook. I always say “not now.” Maybe eventually but not for now. Made tomato soup and homemade gluten free bread. My mom brought me a whole ton of flour so now I’ve been making all sorts with it. (And eating it too I might add.)
Anyways thanks for reading my chatter! I really missed writing every day during the move so feels good to get my thoughts out. Don’t worry I only write the sensible ones.😂
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