I now fully understand every aspect of Bangladeshi culture

Hey, thanks to people for posting. It really does pick my day up to check the ol' blog and see that people have said stuff. I feel like it's a good idea to adapt to this culture without completely letting go of American culture, so as to . . you know, not . . be . . screwy. Cut down on the reverse culture shock maybe.

So. Here's something. Pre-service training is kind of a drag, as any PCV will tell you. It's a lot of dumb seminars that could have been summed up in 10 minutes instead of 3 hours with multiple flip-chart diagrams and small group discussion. SO, for the talent show a few friends and I reworked some scenes from Office Space and fit them to our needs. Brought the house down. That felt good. And it was the right decision to play Ron Livingston instead of trying to do all the super-funny characters. I'm a consummate straight man. I see that now. It took all of this personal growth (gag) for me to reach this (temporary) epiphany.

There was a soccer game between some PCV's who are better at soccer than I and some Bangladeshis -- some of whom play professionally. It was organized complete with advertising (people with a loudspeaker driving around in a rickshaw talking it up -- hilarious) and uniforms. End score was 2-1 to the short guys (B'deshis) but the fun part was the people in attendance: there were riot police. Not that there was a riot, but there were riot police. With big guns. It's weird; in some ways you're way safer here than, say, Chicago, yet somewhere deep inside there's a little dude going "WTF . . get me out of here . . " I pat him on the imaginary head and give him a graham cracker.

During Ramjan (Ramadan - Muslim holy month of fasting), which is now, the Bangladeshis don't eat during the day, and then generally eat pretty good at night. The idea Mohammed had was for people to remember what it's like to be poor. Correspondingly, people give more to the poor during this time. They usually get up at 3 to eat again so they don't go nuts. Some people sleep more during the day. The intent is not to do that and not to eat at 3, but then again who's never slacked off on going to Mass or titheing properly? Way too many people just think Islam is messed up beyond all recognition. The framework of the religion actually does make sense, of course. Even the burkas (the black circus tents some women have to wear that show only their eyes) can make sense. The trick, I think is to decide where to "understand" and where to leave room to criticize. I think we all know that organized Christianity can at times leave something to be desired, like any organization at all, and without room to criticize human dogma, we'd have fascist religion. So naturally, in my humble O, organized Islam's gotta have flaws too. So what to accept and what not to accept . . .

Hey, does anyone want to know anything specific? I guess some people have already asked some questions and I've answered, so that's cool. But I don't wanna just prattle on for my own benefit. I guess it would be nice if other people would post and tell about their lives, but that seems to be asking a bit much for a blog, sort of like asking the world to come to me. So what's a good blog supposed to be like? Should I do shorter posts? Any suggestions?

Shiddi = staircase.