One of the most striking changes has been the availability of goods- particularly import goods- in the shops. When we arrived last year, the grocery store down the street from us carried a small basic stock of goods, but nothing really imported. In fact, it was part of the total unfamiliarity of new arrival- the shops held bare shelves and the products were strange and unfamiliar. Today, the same store is brimming with imported goods (we still don’t buy them because they are expensive, but they are at least available!)
In fact, possibly the most major and shocking change Sam has witnessed since her first visit in 2007 occurred just last week in that very shop. She glanced over to the aisle behind her that usually just carries diapers and maxi pads, and lo and behold- TAMPONS! You may wonder what was so surprising, but in the past (as any female visitor can attest) they were definitely not available anywhere. Nobody knew if it was a matter of them just not having a market or if there was some sort of disapproval involved, but they were just nowhere to be found. Now, they were just stocked on the shelf – what a sign of the times!
Anyhow, so a lot has changed and a lot hasn’t. We decided to celebrate our one year anniversary with a dinner out to one of our favorite restaurants, Arirang. This is a Korean restaurant that Sam has been going to for a long time. We like it there for many reasons, including that they have the best miso soup in all of Dhaka, it is actually fairly cheap for us all to eat out there because the portions are huge enough that we can share one dish, they give you a bunch of free appetizers, and now we know all the people there well enough that we barely have to order. Of course, the best reason is that you can get cold beer with your meal. We enjoyed a few Foster’s with our supper, and Atticus always enjoys the free cinnamon tea at the end. It was a fun little dinner at a place that certainly signifies our familiar place in the city.
We also decided to get a celebratory cake for our milestone. We decided not to get a King’s Confectionary cake this time because they are kind of expensive, and we thought we should try another place out. More on this decision in a minute. Here is our cake – it is beautiful, and says “Ek Bochur Dhakai” which means one year in Dhaka, and we had a perfectly fun time picking it out. Here is also a picture of us with the cake- we don’t know what we were going for with the photo- we wanted us all with the cake, but there was a shortage of places to put the camera on timer, so we just ended up with a fairly awkward shot of us with the cake kind of in the picture. It just didn’t really work out like we intended, but oh well, it’s a freaking family picture with the cake, ok?
So, as we said, we thought we’d try out a new cake place, even though a lot of cakes and cake places in Bangladesh are terrible. There is a general mis-translation of the notion butter-cream that often leads to cakes being literally frosted with butter. Often these cakes are beautiful, usually in fact, but underneath is nothing but a dry cake and a bunch of whipped butter. When we went to get the cake, we got a rickshaw ride home from a guy that had been eagerly wanting to give us a ride home. He followed us as we walked through a congested area and finally we figured, sure, let’s actually take this guy home. A few minutes into the ride we noticed that he only has one leg. Damn it! All three of us are piled onto the rickshaw and he’s going along in an impressive yet terribly depressing fashion to haul our butts, and our cake, home. Naturally, we feel like monsters. Sam tells the guy “Look, we are three people, if this is too difficult just let us off and there’s no problem at all,” but he said it was ok. We got a lot of looks, and the ride seemed like the longest rickshaw ride ever, but finally about 2/3 of the way back he pulled over and we got off. We gave him a ridiculously huge fare and walked the rest of the way of home . It was a reminder that even when things are just a running along in a boring everyday life mode, there is still a reality and a harshness that can pop up at any moment that we live in one of the most dense cities of one of the poorest countries in the world and life is just really hard for a lot of people here.
Our cake, which was entitled “Caramel Dream” was not the worst cake we’ve had here, but by far, not the best. The cake itself was actually tasty, but the frosting was clearly made with vegetable shortening and powdered sugar whipped together- not surprisingly, the result is that it tasted like shortening with sugar – not exactly yummy. Jon and Atticus had an easier time stomaching it than Sam, but all in all, the new cake place was very much not a good decision. Next time, we’ll just shell the big bucks out and go back to King’s. Lesson learned.
The final milestone of our anniversary is that Jon finally finished peeling all the paint off his water bottle. He bought a black metal water bottle a while ago in the US and since then has been picking at the paint. At some point, the project became formalized and he set a goal to turn the bottle silver. Here it is in the final stages. He’s quite proud of the accomplishment.
So, we have about 4 months more of living in Dhaka. Sometimes it seems like that can’t go quickly enough, (like today when the construction work upstairs started back up) but we know in truth, that December will come way too fast and we will truly be leaving home when we go from here. Dhaka is sometimes hard to live in, but more often we are reminded how lucky we are to be here and what a fun experience it all is! 
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