ami bangla shikchi!

ami bangla shikchi

I am learning Bangla/Bengali! 

We spent 2 weeks in Bangladesh taking a crash course in learning the Bangla language...It was crazy! The rest of our team is still there - they're all staying for a month - but Kyle and I knew the kiddos (and therefore we) couldn't take living in a hotel for an entire month going to language school, so we kept ours to a short 2 week class. And for the record, I purposely didn't capitalize the words in the Bangla phrase there, because they don't capitalize. Anything. Not even names/proper nouns. It about killed this English major here.

I'll be honest...language school was TOUGH! Partially because learning any language is tough, and partially because I realized I haven't gone to school/been in class/studied for EIGHT years. And somehow the whole school thing is not like riding a bike - it did not come back naturally!

Like I said, Kyle and I just took a short phonetics crash course - we had 8 days of class for 4 hours each day. Needless to say, drinking out of a firehose meant not a whole lot of the water actually got swallowed, but we took really good notes so we can look back and study!

A few pictures from our "textbook" for the 3 of you out there who are curious to see what we learned.

Language school was fun, but the best part about being in Bangladesh was getting to hang out with our team so much! We stayed on one floor of a hotel/guest house, and the set up was perfect - you walked up the stairs and there were two sets of living areas, one to the left and one to the right. We were on the left, which had a living room, kitchenette, and two bedrooms. Everyone else was on the right which had a HUGE common living room, kitchen, and four bedrooms. So every day Landon and Layla would just run across the hall to the "other room" to see all their friends! It was a blast! We cooked dinners together, watched the first two Lord of the Rings movies (some of my favorite movies of all time!), went out to eat, visited fun coffeeshops...oh and studied. We did study. 

Several people on the team were doing the Insanity workout videos together and Layla decided to join in one day. 

It was unbelievably adorable.

Layla's first flight with her own seat! Travel just got more expensive!!

The team's big common room

The kids were overjoyed because there was a bathTUB!! Lots of baths.

 Landon and Layla shared a bed while we were there, and it was so precious! I was nervous they wouldn't sleep well and would keep each other up, but they actually seemed to enjoy being close to each other! And it made for really sweet pictures.

 Until one night when I went in to check on them before I went to sleep and Landon had apparently taken over the bed. Poor Layla.

The other great part about being in Bangladesh....BEEF!!!! We were all beyond pumped to eat beef - we frequented the A&W burgers (they even had the A&W root beer), we enjoyed making spaghetti and tacos with ground beef instead of chicken, it was bliss! And the best best best part was this steak restaurant called The Rok, where you can order a steak that's brought out to you uncooked on a sizzling hot rock, with all sorts of marinade sauces, and you just sit there and cut off little bites to cook on your rock and drizzle them with marinade. It was probably the best steak of my life (two steaks...we went twice).

The picture is a little dark, but you get the idea. A bacon wrapped filet...mmmmmmmm. It's maybe worth the trip to the country just to eat at that restaurant!

We had a great time, but we were definitely ready to get the kids back home to their normal surroundings and routine. Now we're ready for the team to get back!