FIRE!!!

Twas six days before Christmas and all through the campus all the children were napping, yes, even the teachers. 

There bellies were full with the rice and the curry, and they lay there head down to rest from the scurry. 

When up from the haystack there rose such a clatter, the word that was spread was, “Get up! There’s a FIRE!” 

All came from their rooms and looked up, to see all the smoke filling up the now darkening sky. 

I jumped to my window to see what’s the matter, and saw from my perch the flames start to scatter. 

I threw on my shoes and ran down to see, if I could help carry buckets of sand or of water. 

The caregivers, guards, cookers, and teachers, they all came to help with this now leaping fire. 

I helped calm the flames with the buckets of water, the smoke burned my lungs just like many others. 

After buckets of sand and of water besides, the fireman came with their hose of great size. 

We all worked together to to pull the hay out, yes, out of the pile looking like a smoke spout. 

Lots of throwing, and spraying, and soot in the face went into this afternoon of such disgrace. 

When all smoke was gone, and the hay strewn about, we were covered in ash but put out a great shout. 

Thank you God for protecting our campus so small and letting it burn only the hay for the stall.

you can see the banana trees behind were singed as well

This was once a neat hay stack, now it's all over

soaked with soot and water, my pants were once white. =)

Independence Day

Brightly colored flags lined the fence and the kids excited voices could be heard all around. December 16 is Bangladesh’s Independence Day. The teachers had planned a special day for the kids. They call it “Sports day”. I could see excited smiles on every face, from the young ones to the caregivers and even the guards. They flew their Bangladesh flag on a very tall bamboo stick and in the grassy area they had chalk circles and lines for the various games. To start out the day of games, they separated the kids in 4 different groups depending on their age. (They would compete within these groups.) All the groups lined up in single fill lines looking like an army ready to march.

 After singing their national anthem, the races began. The first, was just a simple running race. It took awhile to get through all the groups because they did a caregiver group, teacher group, and guard/other men group besides the four kid groups. The first, second and third place winners got to stand on podiums that were created from bricks. It reminded me a lot of the Olympics. 

After the running races they had frog hopping races, musical chairs, and a hilarious game where they had tied candies to a string. Then they tied the kids hands behind their backs and had them run over to the string and they’d have to jump up and try and catch a candy in their mouth and pull it off the string to win. The kids had a lot of fun with this one and it was so cute to watch all the kids jump with their mouths open wide toward the sky.

 A few weren’t used to loosing in games like musical chairs where they had to be pulled out, and they started to cry. I took the ones who were crying to sit down, but I think it didn’t help to have them all together cause they would start to stop crying and then hear the other crying and start all over. But for the most part everyone had such a blast. After the games were done, they did a reenactment of the “Freedom Fighters” fighting for independence against the Pakistani's. They painted mustaches on a few boys to play as the Pakistani fighters and they had the freedom fighters in bright orange. Everyone enjoyed watching.  

In the afternoon they had an awards ceremony. For the program, we were asked to dance again. Two other dances, some poems and a song made up this program. Then awards were handed out for the different groups. Prizes varied from candy, to hair clips, to handkerchiefs, to toy airplanes. Everyone had such a good time and you could see it in their eyes. It was a new and fun way to celebrate. 

Volleyball, Weddings, and Caterpillars

It’s been a while since I last blogged. I do confess that too many things happened on my last trip so I put off the story telling and now it’s been so long. So I’ll just share some of the highlights of the trip. First, the purpose of the trip was to go to a wedding and to hand out “pocket money” as they call it to the students sponsored by BanglaHope. We ended up at the Adventist College near Dhaka. And we traveled down south to one of the schools down there. Anyways, here are some snippets of the trip. 

• I got to play volleyball with a group of the guy teachers at the college. (I guess here in Bangladesh, girls don’t play volleyball.) Then I got to play a second time down in the South with another group of students and teachers. This time it was a lot more intense. They had speakers set up with an announcer and music playing in the background. It was so fun. 
• At the college, we were hanging out with some of Banni’s friends and I saw a guy, tall for Bangali’s, having his friend take a picture of him next to me while my back was turned. I turned around while the picture was being taken and they started laughing. I knew what they were doing and I laughed too. But one of the friends interpreted that he had placed a bet with his friends saying that he was taller. He had bet 100 taka! So I told him he could come stand side by side just so he could see. I was about an inch or two taller and everyone let out a burst of laughter. It was quite entertaining. I’m pretty sure he was shocked to see a girl that was taller than him. 
• Our bus tire exploded as we went over a bump. 
• Drank fresh coconut milk for the first time. And got to see them pick them as well. 
• Ate more delicious curry.

• Had a spider the size of my opened hand in our bathroom.
• Saw a frog smaller than a penny
• Rode on a Launch and a Ferry. Both were packed as full as they could get. 
• Helped to cut some vegetables with they’re knife.

• Went to a wedding where the marriage was arranged. But even more crazy was that he is from Korea and she was from Bangladesh. They don’t know each other’s language and both speak a very tiny tiny bit of English. They met 4 days before their wedding! They are brave! The wedding ceremony was a lot like American SDA weddings because they were SDA. Not much was different.

• Went to a Bangladesh amusement park and water park. So fun to see their reaction to the “roller coasters” and water slides. They had one room called “Ice Land”. It was so fun to see their faces as they walked on the floor that was all covered in ice. They had never seen it before. =) The rides would have been little kid rides in America but we were having such a blast! The Water park was different. We went in our clothes since they don’t wear bathing suits over here. It was so crowded and I didn’t really wanna think about how dirty the water was. Luckily we didn’t get any strange sickness or disease from that. The park was quite an experience to say the least. 

Those were the man things that went down during the trip. Now, These are the things I’ve been up to since then. 

• Teaching English, Math, Art, and PE
• Playing with the kids. Today I got on the Seesaw along with 12 other laughing kids! It was a good leg work out!
• Had a poisonous caterpillar crawl into bed with me and decide to sleep on my arm. (at least that’s what their guess was.)
• Made pumpkin bread.
• Learned how to make chapattis
• And lit my Christmas Tree Candle numerous times. =)

So that’s what I’ve been up to the last month. Sorry I had to write in bullets, but that’s what happens when I haven’t been keeping up with blogging. 


Time is going by so fast here. Today is the mark of 3 months here. I only have 3 left and I have a feeling they’ll be even faster then the past months. I’ll let ya know what happens next and hopefully I’ll be better about posting it. Happy Holidays to all! =)