Good evening and good morning to my vigilant seven followers and to anyone who might be reading this from a link I will inevitably post to the Facebook. It is Saturday afternoon in Chittagong and the construction noises grow ever louder while I sit in my apartment, hiding away from the outside world. Truth be told, I have a lot of writing to do today (and I don’t feel like showering), so I’ll probably remain inside for the better part of the day. Then I will cook pasta ceci for some friends, after which I will read the teen fiction novel I am obsessing over (don’t hate), and rest my weary head. A luxurious weekend day, to say the least.

If you’re wondering what inspired me to write my fourth—count ‘em, FOURTH—blog post in the five and a half months that I’ve lived abroad, then I’d have to tell you that I was worried I wouldn’t get a fourth in before the apocalypse I’ve been hearing so much about. Happy new year, by the way. I’ve wrangled with it before, but now I can say with certainty that I tend to prefer verbosity over getting to the point, so I have never been inspired to write in this blog on the daily or even on the weekly, as I don’t have enough time to write the lengthy diatribes of which I am so fond. I do wish that I’d written at least once a month, but I have all of that nonsense tucked away in my private journal, so if you wanna know the details of my life—try stealing my journal. Which I keep locked up. In my bra.

In actuality, though, I decided to write another blog post because I realize that in the three blog posts I’ve written, I’ve never really gone into full detail about what my job is at the university and how the whole place is structured. The strange thing about living abroad for a year, no matter where you live, is that the location itself becomes so much of a player in your experience, that what you’re actual doing there can take a backseat. There is so much to learn on all fronts that your job becomes unintentionally secondary. I don’t think this is a problem because it’s not like I’m actually not showing up for work and listlessly wandering the streets of Chittagong instead, but it is easy to forget what you’re doing here. And recently, I was reminded exactly why it matters so much.

But first, a photo of me in a sari.

Never ever share this with another living soul. It is the first and last time that I don’t wear anything but my approved uniform, also known as my clothes. I don’t know, guys. I can’t get into wearing non-American clothing. I love and respect all that there is to offer in Bengali and Indian clothing (the sari pictured here was in Varanasi, India*—more on this in a moment), but I think I look rightfully foolish in it. It’s too gorgeous and gentle for what I’m used to wearing. I will happily let all South Asians do what they do best and strut around in these gorgeous garments. I, on the other hand, will stick to my ankle pants, moccasins, and cardigans. I’m a shameful dresser.

*Tomorrow, I will post a piece that I wrote about Varanasi for This Recording. You can read more about my trip then.

Recently, I volunteered to do a big thing (not in that pseudo-humble way like “I’m such a hero,” but in the way that I was thinking “I’m an idiot, who says I am capable of doing this?”) and have learned that sometimes, if you act a little braver than you think, you might learn that nothing is as impossible as it seems. Forgive me for sounding like the inside, outside, and underneath of a Hallmark card rolled in a high school graduation speech, but god dammit, it’s true. Long story short: I’m now teaching a writing class. A writing class on … FOOD.

Yeah, I’m sure that doesn’t spark much praise in your hearts for me. Writing and food. Those are the only two things I care about in the world, so it’s gotta be easy, right? NO. Teaching is hard, as I am learning. Prior to this, I was a writing tutor and a T.A. for a wonderful professor (as I think I’ve mentioned before), but now I have all this independence and these sets of eyes staring back at me expectantly and I’m supposed to actually know stuff and teach it to them. I’ve had a ball coming up with things to discuss with them, though, and hopefully it’ll continue to be as fun as it has been so far. For example, I’m having them write a personal essay about one of their favorite food memories and we’re reading The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher, which, I’m sure you know, is my favorite book. I can’t wait to teach them about what a sassy lady MFK was. We’re discussing the global food crisis now, then I’m having them read an excerpt from Swann’s Way (can you guess which one?). BUH. It’s so cool to teach about food. Next week, they’ll read selections from food blogs like Smitten Kitchen and Serious Eats to see how that style of writing is different from academic writing. TEACHING IS COOL, OKAY.

So that’s reason number one that I started to really remember what I was doing here, and not just where I was. I feel sort of reinvigorated by this challenge that I have ahead of me. Any suggestions for my class are always welcome. I know I’m not the only person on this great earth that loves food. Though I’m certain I love it the most of all. Someone prepare ninety-six burritos for my arrival home, which, by the way, is MAY 11TH. Yeesh. That’ll come up fast. Between then and now, though, I have this course and then my friend Zena and I are going to Sri Lanka for ten days. So you have some time for the burrito-making.

The second thing that got me feeling all warm and inspired about being here was the huge Lunar New Year party that our students threw last week. I am not lying when I tell you that these students are the coolest people I’ve ever met. They are too smart. And fun to be around. And genuine. We all love them to death.

So they threw this big party with lots of dancing, singing, drama, and fun. I got some of it (okay, a lot of it) on video and have posted one of the videos below. Our Cambodian students got down to some Nicki Minaj. Sisters ain’t playinnnnnn!

A Vietnamese fashion show!

My Sri Lankan ladies groovin’ it.

My friend Mandy (or, rather, Miss Mandy) was in a reinterpretation of Mulan with her Chinese class. She had to paint on a mustache and eyebrows. Too good.

There she is in the black, looking stern.

The Pakistani students did this hilarious traditional song but instead of traditional words, they talked about Facebook and dining hall food. Great hats, btw.

Then we had a tea party. I made scones and vanilla bean pudding—the vanilla bean was a real bean from the spice plantation I went to in India. Yum.

Oh, I went to India. And Thailand. I don’t really feel like writing anymore, so let this photo suffice as evidence!

Goodbye!

At 7:30 this morning*, before even getting dressed or putting my glasses on, I decided to slaughter a fruit called a jambura. I was already running late and am decently blind without my glasses, so attempting to slaughter anything at this point was guaranteed to get me into severe trouble or cause irreversible bodily harm. But I’d slept with the jambura on my bedside table (not a joke) and it called to me sweetly when I opened my eyes. “I am so edible and pink. Let’s get down to business,” it spoke.

*Not really—I wrote this last week.

This is what several jamburas look like when piled one on top of the other. This is also what I hope you are sending me for Christmas.

I know it’s been over a month since I’ve posted in my blog and you might think that I’d tell you some interesting stories about my trip to Dhaka or my new friends or the several trips I have planned in the next couple of months, but this fruit takes precedence over all of that. With a knife that I own that resembles a machete made for a lil tiny baby, I sliced the shit out of the fruit. It has a rind like a grapefruit but much thicker. I learned that I needed to use my lil baby machete to cut through it because when I tried peeling it with my thumb, I STARTED BLEEDING and now have a large gash underneath my thumbnail. I forgave the jambura for being such a dick and carried on with my task. Lil baby machete knife wields much more power than my weak thumb.

Needless to say, this fruit got DESTROY’D:

I’m not usually a big grapefruit person, so don’t be deceived by how grapefruity it appears. It is sweet while also being ever-so-slightly tart. And you pull it apart like a pomegranate and eat the little shreds but not the membrane because that stuff tastes like petrified pencil shavings, or whatever. After the decimation ended, I threw it all in a little Tupperware and found my vision goggles and went off to school.

A few delightful hours of refrigeration later, I had myself a snack of epicly delicious (and healthy!) proportions that was occasionally difficult to eat, given the throbbing pain that I now have pulsing under my thumb. But alas. I’m beginning a business venture when I return to import jamburas for juice cleanses for rich Manhattanites. It’ll be called Jambura Juice. That’ll work, right?

In other food-related news, I have found my favorite variety of mishti (mishti is the word for a sweet in Bangla) and it is called a balusahi. It isn’t nearly as intensely sweet as the other mishti here, which are generally always soaked in sugar syrup, but it is just as disgustingly bad for you. If I had to describe what it tastes like, I’d say it’s as if you deep fried a really densely layered croissant and then sprinkled it with some unidentifiable flakes that don’t taste like much. So crusty and carby but also really heavy and oily. COOL. WELCOME TO FAT WORLD, EVERYONE.

“Oh, mishti, you hurt so good.”

Anyway, how’s things? I’m good. Halloween is tomorrow, which is cool I suppose, but I hate Halloween so in actuality tomorrow is simply just Monday for me. Unless every house at which I might trick-or-treat is offering me custard creme pies or financiers, then I am inclined to say that I do not feel like participating. And besides, we have no real way of acquiring successful Halloween costumes here, and I have a feeling that my Greenman costume will reveal too much of my body shape, which is a big no-no here. I think I’ve forgotten what my body shape looks like, anyway, so it might be nice to keep it that way.

As I said a month ago, an article I wrote about my visit to the Chittagong ship breaking yards was going to published in a real magazine, and then it happened! It was published in Open Skies Magazine, which is the magazine you would read if you flew on Emirates Airlines. So all these people above the ground are reading my writing! A greater thrill can’t be imagined. 

Thanks to the Internet, you can click on that little image up there and go to page 41 on the web version and check out what I had to say. Pretty exciting for little old me. On that note, actually, I wanted to mention that I’ve finally made a website for myself that has all of my writing listed on it, in case you’d ever want to access it all at once. There isn’t a lot at the moment, but I’m working on it, dang. The link is—big surprise—www.daynaevans.com.

Also! I received two packages last week—one from my lovely parents and another from Open Skies with hard copies of the magazine. I know this makes me incredibly nerdy, but seeing my name in print was one of the more exciting things that has ever happened to me. In fact, this is how excited it made me:

Imagine the further thrill, then, when I opened the package from my parents and was presented with dryer sheets and artificial sweetener and my tote bag with the bear that has lightning coming out of his paws! And also Swedish Fish. My mother is a freaking angel and don’t you ever forget it.

What else has been new? Well, as far as the professional side of life, teaching has been great and fun. I feel like I’m a student again, learning about literature that I haven’t read in forever and doing the work with students who are so eager to learn it with me. I love it. Not to mention, I am now going to be teaching classes for our Guitar Club, so I’ll be able to translate some of my minimal musical talent to a few women a week who are also eager to learn. I’m definitely going to teach them some fun songs, too. Suggestions are always welcome, unless you have bad music taste, in which case, scram.

Another awesome thing about teaching so far is the differences in culture I get to see every day. During my discussion group for my class today, my students and I talked about arranged marriages—all 20 students who turned up said that their cultures and their families encouraged arranged marriages. Given how badass they all are, though, they were all very open-minded about the idea of meeting someone themselves and bringing them to their parents for approval. I love when we have discussions like this. They know that I’m ignorant about certain cultural standards and so we inform one another’s understanding. They laugh when I tell them about some of the things that go on in New York. And they should because that place is crazy.

The city is wonderful, as always. The weather has cooled down, so yippee, but the weather cooling down also means more mosquitoes, so boo. More mosquitoes means maybe malaria which means I’m a goner. But man, humidity sucks, so I’ll take the mosquitoes if I have to. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here over two months already. Time is flying by. This Thursday we leave for our week-long journey to Nepal, which I am eternally stoked for. I have these leggings that my friends from Brooklyn will fondly remember as they were light-and-dark green tie-dye and they make me look like I am some sort of prehistoric creature (a velociraptor, perhaps) and I plan on wearing them every day while we hike mountains and eat dumplings made from buffalo meat. I’ll keep you abreast of how many friends I do not make while wearing these pants.

In other news, we went to Dhaka, the capital city, a few weekends ago for a little vacation. Boy that was fun. The population of Dhaka is 15 million people and since I am awful at estimating, I’m going to assume that that is the craziest amount of people to ever live in one city. The traffic is bonkers! There are people everywhere! And there is an overabundance of street food to fulfill your lonely sorrowful fat-kid heart with warmth.

For reference:

I love eating fried food straight from the frying vat. That sounds like I’m joking, but I’m not. Is there anything more satisfying than a hot fried samosa? Tastes so heavenly! Burns so nice!

Dhaka was an interesting experience, as we went for the holiday of Durga Puja, which if you’re interested, an entire Wikipedia page exists to explain it far better than I ever could. What we got to see, though, was some real life Durga Puja festivities. Essentially—and don’t ever think that I am condoning this as a safe and wise decision—two friends and I were provoked to join the parade that was heading to the festivities. And by join the parade, I mean ride on the back of a dumptruck. And by heading to the festivities, I mean hours away from the actual city itself, causing us to be far away with strangers in a strange place where effigies of gods were being burned and thrown into a river. Yes, it was as crazy as it sounds. Here are some photos to prove it:

This is when things were all, “Yeah! Let’s join in for a great cultural learning experience!”

A few hours later we were then saying, “This cultural learning experience could become quite dangerous soon!”

And then there was a burning Hindu effigy being thrown off of a boat and we were mesmerized enough to stay longer.

But not long enough to let ourselves die. Somehow, with the help of about forty different kind broken-English-speaking men, we made it back to our guesthouse. After which point, we got ice cream to celebrate still having pulses and all of our body parts.

What else happened in Dhaka? We found a shwarma place, which was delightful, and we took a boat ride. That was maybe the sweatiest boat ride of my life, which I guess doesnt mean much since I haven’t taken that many boat rides. But even if I had, I can guarantee I’d have never sweat as much. The boat took us around the river and the guy was like a Bengali gondolier who sang songs in Bangla, it was cool. Here is a photo of me attempting to row a boat:

I don’t know why my shirt is so wrinkly. Oh wait, yes I do—it’s because I stopped caring what I looked like when I got to Bangladesh. Who am I tryna impress, amirite? It’s not like I’ll turn down a street and run into Leonardo DiCaprio. Though maybe by my saying that, it’ll happen and it’ll be one of those “That’s what you get for being an asshole” sort of things that happen to me all the time. Anyway, look at my sweaty neck. That is all.

We went to a place called the Pink Palace, which is fairly literal nomenclature:

I also woke up early the next morning to watch my precious Phillies completely blow it in the NLDS, so that was fun. It was at a big, nice hotel in Dhaka and I got a fresh-baked croissant out of the deal, so I guess it was all right in the end, but can you even imagine how hard they blew it? Ugh.

Dhaka is a cool place and I’d like to spend more time there as it feels like an interesting mix of real city and real Bangladesh. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed when I first arrived as I had convinced myself that we were going to, like, London or something. And then there were CNGs and people yelling and trash. But it won me over. In fact, we are taking an overnight train from Chittagong to Dhaka on Thursday and will have some hours to kill in the morning before our flight leaves for Nepal, so we’ll probably go get a big breakfast somewhere in the city. Did you hear what I said? Big breakfast! If you know me well, you know that every day I dream of eating big breakfasts and then going back to bed.

This past weekend, we went to a really interesting Bangladeshi party. Well, let me back up. To preface that, we made new friends—Frenchies and Thais who are working in Chittagong in varying industries—and that’s how we got to this party. I guess that detail wasn’t that essential, but it served as a good entryway to show you a mega-cute picture:

Look at how handsome all of these people are. Lauren, Zena, and Mandy are trying to spell out NOLA—I dropped the ball and forgot to provide the “O.” Long story short, the four of us plan to spend the summer of 2012 in New Orleans so I guess that meant that gang signs were inevitable. Beignetttttsssssss! But yes, these are our new friends. Back to the party story.

Every year since 1980, this Chittagong man has thrown a big feast on the anniversary of his father’s death. He owns property just outside of the city where thousands—yes, thousands—of people come and eat for free in honor of the man’s father. We were taken there and given sweets and then a giant meal of mutton, beef, rice, lentils, chicken, liver. It was hands-down the most meat I’ve ever eaten in one sitting and it felt like it just kept coming. I forgot to take pictures, unfortunately.

We hung out on the roof of this giant house afterward and I had conversation with two Bengali men who wanted to talk about America. As we all know, I’m always willing to talk about America, so that made for a nice interaction. Except at the end when the one man told me he was unmarried and I realized that I probably looked like a huge hussie. Whatever, anything for America.

It looks like that’s all that I have to report today. As far as the next time you’ll hear from me, I’m assuming it won’t be for another month. Maybe I’ll post about our Thanksgiving plans. Imma try to bake a pie. Or forty pies.

UNTIL THEN, MY BABIES, I MISS YOU ALL.

Howdy, y’all. I know, I know, I suck at blogging. I really thought I’d get into the swing of it and post at least once a week, and then other stuff happened, like the discovery of this website about a cat named Maru. And I started reading this book where a guy rubs cocaine into his eyeballs (what!!!). Amazon got a redesign, Kardashian got married, and then school started. So, really, I was doing a lot of other important stuff, which means I have an excuse to not blog. What’s your excuse? Ya don’t have one, kablammo.

I did a few really cool things recently and I want to talk about all of them! But let’s start small. First of all, school started and is already going swimmingly. I’m a teaching assistant for a World Literature class with a lovely professor whom I couldn’t adore more, and I am already learning so much about the world by just being in class with the women we’re teaching. My students are from eight different countries: Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. They’re all brilliant and confident and kind, and I feel privileged to be a volunteer for them. Plus, we’re going to be reading Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and you must know that I am in love with her. If you aren’t, you should be too. Read this.

Now that school has begun, everything is quite busy here. I’ve also started working in the university’s writing center, which is slow at the moment since no students need help yet. But it’s been nice to reassess some of my ideas about writing. I’ve remembered how hard it is to write not only an academic essay, but to write anything when it isn’t in your native language. Some of my French papers of yore read like the dream journals of a miscreant seven-year-old train hopper. I’m glad to be serving as a writing tutor to those who simply want to improve their English. Knowledge is freedom, after all. (I know that sounds uncharacteristically sappy, but I do firmly believe in the doors education can open and the gift it can be to help open that door for others.)

It’s around this time in a blog post that I like to show you a photo because it’s around this time that you lose patience and start typing “how to never have to iron” or “what’s Katy Perry’s confirmation name.” So, a photo:

I am on the far left with the giant green scarf that I stole from Olivia. These are the women in my program. They have the hearts of angels and the faces of many Giseles (and gazelles).

In that photo, we are at Cox’s Bazaar, which is the longest unbroken stretch of beach in the world! I guess there’s no beach in that photo, so I could very well be lying, but I can assure you that I verify my sources, unlike that dude in season five of The Wire. It was a cool trip to a cool place with cool people, and I hung out with little kids. This is something I do often.

Children everywhere are masters of the “Everything about you is boring me” look.

Another group trip that we took recently was to Jobra, the town were the Grameen Bank was founded. Do you know about the Grameen Bank? I sort of did, but only because all my friends here read Banker to the Poor and gave me the Cliffs Notes rundown. I have big plans to read this book myself, but as I said before, I’m quite busy with my cocaine-in-the-eyeball book. So the Grameen Bank was founded by Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, and it’s a microfinance organization that lends small loans to impoverished people to get their businesses started. It’s been insanely successful and is in many different countries now—well, we got to see where it originally began. Also, if you want to know more thorough information, maybe information that doesn’t read like a slop of stale oatmeal running down the back of your neck, here’s the Grameen Wiki page.

The best part about Grameen is that it’s 90-something percent owned by the borrowers themselves, and do you know what else? Most of the borrowers are women. As we say in the States, sisters are doin’ it for themselves, nah mean? It’s so great. We went with some of the bank managers to their little village and sat in on one of the weekly meetings they have with all the women. They were beautiful and inspiring and such a range of ages—one woman had been borrowing from Grameen for 29 years. It really got me thinking, as these things tend to. Some of these women are illiterate yet have been able to send all of their children to university, sometimes even universities abroad. It’s fantastic. They own their own businesses, they have a definitive and important position in their families, and what’s most amazing is that they are confident and skilled and able to achieve more. And all because they were given a small (tiny! it’s barely anything) loan to get their lives started. Can you imagine how difficult that journey must have been? It’s women with this kind of drive and motivation that could change our world, if only we let them.

If any of this speaks to you, I highly recommend you read Half the Sky. I am a psychopathic advocate of this book for anyone who has interest in service, women, or just…the future of our planet. The notion is that if we only utilized the brilliance of women worldwide, instead of keeping them in the house, we’d see more positive change than we ever thought possible. Here are a few photos from our Jobra visit:

Rice fields!

This is the register of their loans, when they pay them back, and where they stand currently.

A man and his son.

Here is their meeting room:

This was a child I thought about kidnapping. Not really because I’m not a vicious criminal, but wowwowowowow here’s to hoping my kid is as cool as this lil guy was.

A few weeks later, I was presented with a great opportunity to be a pretend journalist and visit the ship breaking yards 15km outside of Chittagong. I suppose I wasn’t technically pretending to be a journalist, since I will actually have the article published (in a magazine! a print magazine! more details to come), but it was weird. You know Jennifer Connelly’s character in Blood Diamond? How she just looks like a journalist when she wears army green shirts and loose-fitting pants and talks to people with a notepad in her hand? That was me.

Visiting the yards isn’t easy. You really have to know someone to get in, mostly because there have been so many human rights groups trying to fix the awful conditions there that the yards are getting really bad press (which they deserve). But luckily, through connections at the university, I was able to get in, interview people, and poke around. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my adult life. We just don’t have a concept of this kind of thing in America, so it’s one of the strangest sights to see. For those who don’t know what ship breaking is, here’s a one-sentence description: Ships that are no longer usable at sea come to the shores of Chittagong and then laborers break them apart piece by piece with blowtorches, and then melt the metal down to make steel rods, which are sold for a lot of money. It’s effing bonkers and wildly unsafe.

Though there are signs posted everywhere about safety, there were very few precautions being taken, ever.

This is what that top part of a ship looks like when it’s on its side. You know the blowhole part? Yeah, this guy.

This picture barely does the scale justice. The ships are preposterously large, while the men pull on ropes that are supposed to bring them closer to shore. No helmets or gloves!

For example:

Me as Jennifer Connelly in Blood Diamond, except my movie is called Ship Diamond and Leo isn’t South African, he’s just my boyfriend.

But what if cure already exists? Right? You guys?

A hollowed-out ship.

The men:

I had a really interesting time at the yards and I hope that my article looks okay once it gets spiffed up for the magazine. I’ll blog it here!

In other news, I’m drinking black coffee like a boss and plan on returning to my weirdo book so I can finish it and get it out of my life. We had dinner with some very wonderful people last night and I think I’m still quite tired from that whole social event. I was up till 2:45AM, which is the latest I’ve stayed up since living in this country. We had a great time and that feeling was captured in the beauty of this photo:

I’m out, jabronies!

For several years now, I’ve been quietly checking off names on a list of countries whose nationals are heavy tea drinkers. England, Morocco, Bangladesh. There are more than just three, but if I wanted to share them all, I wouldn’t have said “quietly.” These are my people and these are places in which I belong. All ye tea drinkers, unite. All ye others, look at this totally meta sign:

A moment ago, I filled out a Facebook app (who am I?) called “Where I’ve Been” and was surprised to see that I’ve only seen 9% of the world. After I recovered from the initial shock, there was more shock, which was somewhat combined with outrage. But then, a moment of “Aha, you dummy!” happened wherein I realized that traveling isn’t about competition or numbers or dumb maps that you put a little pin in, it’s about all the cool stuff you see and the knowledge that you gain. This was good information to remember as I have been stressing about what to do with my fall and spring breaks. I keep thinking, “Ohhh but you’ll never be in this region again!” Uh, says who? I am a fool, and if you are curious, here is what the heck I’m talking about:

Kind of interesting … for an app, which is a word that instigates anger within me.

This is relates not at all to my Bangladesh experience, so let me abandon all thoughts of travel elsewhere to tell you about where I am now. We’ve been here for over a week now, which is incredible because basically every time I travel, the initial first part feels like it goes on forever and then boom bam boom, I’m home again. It’s the strangest! I’m still getting used to this crazy environment that I’m in and all the wonders it has to offer, but am of course doing it in styleeeee:

No, but really, I can’t find any shalwar kameezs (see pink outfit above) that actually fit my large Western body yet, so I’m stuck wearing my normal boring clothes while people like Alex get to wear the unbelievably dope Bangladeshi clothes. But at least I’m wearing the colors of Bangladesh, right? Actually, this was right before we went to a fancy iftar dinner, which was full of delicious delights like samosas and jalebys. For reference, my heart beats at double the pace for these fried little tasties:

We are still going through our WorldTeach/AUW orientation, which is getting much easier now that I don’t want to be asleep for 42 hours of each day. That’s right—I’m getting over jet lag! In fact, I woke up this morning and hit the snooze. Now I’m going to provide a photojournalistic tour into the past ten or so days and you can also choose to hit the snooze. Or watch season five of The Wire, which is what I do when my internet doesn’t work (read: always).

There is an amusement park slash manmade lake in Chittagong called Foy’s Lake. It looks like this:

But be careful, the water is shark-infested!

This poor little stiff-necked turtle can’t get away fast enough from the toothless shark. Believe me, you do not want to be in that dude’s shoes right now.

BLACK HORSE: EYEBROW RING + KILLER AXE - HAIR PRODUCTS / SHORT CAN = ENERGY

We went to Pizza Hut. Don’t yell at us, okay. You would too.

Chittagong is very green and very lovely when looked at from above! This gets me so excited to go to the Chittagong hill tracts, which are apparently beautiful and interesting. We will go there soon and I will tell you about it soon.

On the other side of things, there is a beach.

On the beach, we found a man making honey. At first glance, I had no idea what I was looking at and nearly ran away in fear. And then I saw that one of my favorite tea ingredients was being manufactured before my very eyes, and had to be told not to get much closer. Mm. Mmmmmm.

There is an iftar* stand outside of our grocery store and they offer wondrous things like samosas and biryani, but then there are also donuts. In the States, I had something called Doughnut Fridays, a day dedicated to eating one glorious doughnut and also served to prove what a terrible slob I am. I thought that I could extend this tradition to Bangladesh by eating a mini donut from the iftar stand. The results: I am fairly sure this donut was fried in the same oil as the savory food and it tasted like a curry powder pillow with liquefied toxic cocoa powder. It looks like Doughnut Fridays will be retired for a while. Womp womp.

*Iftar is the meal used to break the fast during Ramadan

Mandy shows me exactly the face that I made after eating my curry flavored doughnut. Disdain abounds.

A few of us, feeling adventurous and desiring to risk our lives, decided to take a CNG, which is a little vehicle that looks like a bug and feels like a jail. Don’t tell my mom, kay? These drivers are absolutely mad—they have no fear of anything at all and dodge in between goats and bikes and rickshaws. I always thought I was kind of a superhero for navigating Times Square traffic in a car when I was a chauffeur/babysitter one summer (that is actually true), but my ego has sufficiently been deflated.

Look at how the wind blows my hair in my face. It’s like surfing. And death. Surfing slowly toward death.

But at least we’re happy, no? And next time, I’m just gonna travel like this because it seems much safer, all in all. Hedging my bets:

We took this CNG to a market area that is a little farther than we’d ventured out before. Bangladesh has a lot of shopping. This is a shame to me because I recently discovered that I hate shopping unless it’s on the internet, so places like markets and malls just freak me out. In this photo, we see my friend Zena braving the madness. But do you notice something else? There are so few women! This is a fact of life in the city we’re living in: we are most always the only women we see. So far, I think we’re doing a stellar job handling it but it can occasionally feel a little strange and uncomfortable, particularly because we stand out so much already. Apparently, when we visit Dhaka (the capital), we’ll see a great deal more diversity. Until then, this:

I bought a lightweight long skirt and a pair of white pants that say “Sesame Street XL” on the butt. I thought those were worthwhile purchases. Unfortunately, haggling or bargaining were kept at a minimum because my Bangla is abysmal and seems to be improving backward. If you’re in need of a visual, this is how much Bangla I know:

Goodnight, other side of the world. I miss you!

Today we had cyclone training. Despite what that sounds like, it was not ice cream or baseball related. It was this:

I know this makes me naive and ignorant but natural disasters were one of my last fears when applying to this program, probably because I am not from a place that has ever had one. Southeastern Pennsylvania has seen one tornado in my time and it was like Taylor Swift sneezed on my town.

Now, after my thorough and informative disaster training, I know what to do when there is a cyclone, other natural disaster, or even regular ole miscellaneous disaster. All are just as scary but I’m totally prepared. As far as my mental preparations, I’m just going to channel every Die Hard movie and hope for the best.

The main reason I wanted to post so soon after my first entry was to provide contact information for any and all who want to send me things like postcards, presents, imported chocolates, diamond earrings, etc. I have an address and a phone number and wish very much for you all to stay in touch with me! Right before I left, I was given a pack of one hundred postcards from my dear friend Amy—if you email me your address, I will write to you and that’s a promise. Also, if you plan on sending anything, PLEASE send mix CDs with new music on them. The internet speed is not exactly fast and I will be in a rare state of misery if I can’t download some new tunes. Instead of sending that full Juicy Couture sweatsuit, I’d ask you to save the money and just send a CD-R with some dope mp3s. Thank you.

Dayna Evans
Asian University for Women
20A M.M. Ali Road
Chittagong, Bangladesh
Phone: 011 880 1926673024 (dial exactly this way if you’re calling from the States)

And now some pictures, because I know that’s all you care about.

Nic Nac, as modeled by Alex, is my new favorite example of copyright infringement. Just to inform you, I have plans to begin a museum called The Museum of (c) Infringement where all the items I’ve ever seen appropriate imagery from previously existing products will get their time to shine. Nic Nac, this is your big break. (Get it?) Also, you all have permission to steal my idea and make a museum called The Institute for the Appropriation of Copyrighted Images.

We went on our roof last night during the call to prayer. It was a new experience for me, hearing the songs over the loudspeakers throughout the city. I believe I said something like, “I feel like I’m in a Stanley Kubrick film,” to which I got no response.

Saris! Beautiful and silky! And too fancy for me, wah.

The electricity in Bangladesh is uhhhh unpredictable? Basically, my electricity has been alternating between powering my internet to powering my light switches. Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad, so I decided in order to not go crazy (we can’t go out after dark!), I’d rather be drenched in nighttime than lose my internet privilege. Here I am, cooking an omelet in complete darkness. The streak of light blue in the bottom left corner is the fire for my stove. I must be some sort of hero, right?

Send me letters and stuff!

In a perfect world, I would have closed my eyes on Thursday night and not opened them again until I was cozy and snuggled in the bed in my apartment in Chittagong. In an even more perfect world that I have crafted, I would have seen the word “perfumed” on the napkins that I bought two days ago and not purchased them. In my unblemished utopia, I would have instead been wise enough to buy this:

Unfortunately, I was too busy thinking of ways to expand the butter flavo(u)red food industry that I didn’t remember to buy this little nugget of delight. There’s always next time.

I’m in Chittagong, finally. For starters, I’d like to encourage you all to never fly on an airplane. Do everything in your power to avoid them, even if it means beginning your career in aeroscience to invent a new way of traveling that just simply is not in the air. Our flight was something like 94 hours and my seat was like the jagged skeleton of a Bengali tiger. But alas, I’ve been in Chittagong for three full days now and am happy to say that I have left my nightmarish flight in the past. The process of overcoming my flight pains was only furthered upon receipt of a piece of artwork sent to me over email from an unnamed friend:

Astounding.

There are so many things that I have to say about being here that it’s hard to know exactly where to start. I haven’t fully recovered from jetlag yet so my brain is operating how a moldy towel would act if put through a juicer. But let’s see if I can tell you some of my first impressions of this amazing, weird, and new city.

When we landed and started seeing/hearing/smelling the city, I was initially reminded of Ouagadougou. There are hordes of people spilling into the street, rickshaws that speed in and out of traffic, and an intense gasoline smell that hits you in the skull. Ouch, my skull. It’s wild. It’s also immensely vibrant and full and lively. In some ways, it feels like being in New York but in a Halloween kind of way. The smells and sounds are similar, but the taxi cabs are dressed up as CNGs and the trash is banana peels instead of Olde English forties. In fact, the first night that I was here, I went to sleep at 5:30pm (that’s for real) but slept all through the night till the morning because of all the honking and yelling going on outside my window. Like music to my ears.

Transportation:

It’s all so new and strange being here, not just because it’s a new place with new people, but because the experience comes with the certainty that I’ll be here for the next nine months. Everything looks different through the lens of almost permanence. (I was going to say ‘temporary permanence’ but I realized how dumb that sounded, so you’re welcome.) When I eat a meal, I think things like “This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. When will this no longer be novel?” Speaking of, this is a photo of my fellow volunteers (gorgeous, all!) waiting for dinner after I had told a bad joke:

Just kidding, I don’t ever tell bad jokes.

That’s the second part of being here that is new and incredible. I can barely wrap my mind around how amazing these other women are. Okay, so I was a Children’s Writing major at NYU. All the other volunteers that are with me got Aeroscience PhDs at the Harvard-Princeton-Oxford combination university. I am so intimidated by their brilliance.

In all seriousness, these are some fantastic women with amazing backgrounds and they are all bright, funny, and wonderful to be around. There could be no greater comfort when you are in a strange place, particularly when you feel jetlagged or homesick. We’ve all made plans to do an absurd amount of traveling while we’re in this region of the world because who knows when we’ll be over here again. Our fall break we’ll be in Nepal, winter break in India, and spring break … Thailand? This may be raising the question for you: What are you getting breaks from? Regard:

My job while I’m here is as a teaching assistant at the Asian University for Women, which I can be seen cheesing in front of in the above photograph with all my other lovely ladies. I cannot tell you how excited I am to be a part of this program and at this university. I haven’t been given my teaching assignment yet, but it hardly matters—just being at the university for orientation and being introduced to some of the students and professors is enough to get me excited for the entire year. Everyone is so kind and welcoming and the job itself feels so special. As we go through orientation and get to know more about our volunteer placements, I’ll update you on how it’s going. For now, we’re merely trying to get a handle on this vast city, the great people, and the Bangla language, which I can safely say I will never not struggle with. It is new levels of difficult. (Luckily, there’s a French Alliance in the city of Chittagong, where I plan to go to boost my confidence levels when I am feeling particularly down about my poor Bangla skills.)

That’s all I have to share for now, but I will write again soon. To conclude, I will share with you a photo of the Times Square of Chittagong, followed by our reactions to it.

This:

Us:

I leave for Chittagong, Bangladesh on August 11th, to return in May of 2012. I will be chronicling my adventures and misadventures here. Check back for updates in the coming weeks—there will be many, this I do promise you!