Some differences

Bangladesh is a Muslim country, so the day of worship is Friday. Most Christian churches also meet on Friday. The weekend is Friday and Saturday. I have actually found this to be quite disorienting. i'm always confused about what day it is, and generally i "translate" the day of the week here into its equivalent in the US. i think of Friday as Sunday...I always call Sunday Monday, on on Tuesday when my brain is fried from studying i have to remind myself that really it's "Wednesday." i'll probably just start to get the hang of it when its time to go.

A few weeks ago there was a murder and then riots on a college campus. I don't understand the politics of it, but it had something to do with different political parties, or something. Then, tragically on the way to respond to the riot on the campus, a police bus crashed and some police officers were killed. The night it happened i was watching the news (in Bengali) with Delowar, but i couldn't understand anything of what was being said. I just kept seeing the images (which were far more graphic than would be on the news in the US). Then in the morning paper there was a horribly graphic picture and article in the newspaper. I asked the teachers about it, and they said that its normal here. I explained that in the US in the news we don't show images like that (which is why i was so shocked).

At first i thought that Dhaka was more expensive than other cities i've lived in over here. I think part of it is that the school is in a rather nice part of town. but it seems like my groceries are always really expensive. i think a bigger part of it though is that the exchange rate is so different here (almost double what it is in India), but i still think in terms of rupees. i haven't figured it out for sure though!