Another Week

What a week it has been! Austin left bright and early Sunday morning (our weekends are Friday and Saturday here) to a rural area in the north where he put on a batik training for one of our partner organizations. So the boys and I were on our own for nearly 4 days. We had our moments, but, as a whole, it went well. Little Mr. Sunshine kept coming up with funny things to say and do, which helped. We were looking at a book one day about the supermarket and I was asking him what different things were. When we got to the eggs, he was a little confused. A few of the more modern stores here have begun to sell eggs in cartons, but most people buy them at little shops and carry them home in paper bags and wash them as they are pretty much fresh from the chickens! So he probably hasn't seen an egg carton for a while. There was a picture of a chicken on top of the display though, so I didn't think it would be too hard for him. He looked at it a little and then replied, "chicken milk." I had a hard time keeping a straight face, to say the least!

Austin was back in time to take Riley to watch his brothers participate in sports day, where they ran races and did all kinds of games and relays. They came home after a picnic lunch, completely exhausted and quite happy for a quiet afternoon at home. They spent hours sorting and building with lego and I enjoyed having my family all home again.

Friday was a special day for us as we had both Jensen and Pruitt's teachers over for lunch. We spent a nice long afternoon chatting with them and are so grateful, again, for such wonderful teachers for our boys. The boys are all thriving in their learning environment, which is also filled with fun and friends for them. Jensen has been given the opportunity lately to learn first hand what conflict resolution is all about. After several afternoons of him coming home really upset about someone he was working with, I was quite tickled to hear him tell me, with much enthusiasm in his voice, how they had found a solution that made them both happy.

We spent Friday evening with some friends and met some more "bideshis" (foreigners) who live in the area. It was great to kick back, eat someone else's cooking and get to know others better. While we were chatting, we heard that Bashundara City, Dhaka's largest shopping mall, was on fire. It was the city's only building with a full-fledged integrated fire fighting system, yet the system and all the back-ups failed. Even the water reservoir for the building was empty. 7 people have died and more injured. We came home and looked on line for news updates and read that there were 20,000 people outside of the building, watching. Only in Bangladesh! I saw a photo in this morning's paper as well, of the road in front of the building looking completely blocked with people. Meanwhile, 6 floors were gutted by the fire and it took over 8 hours to get it under control. So so sad.

And now it is a quiet Saturday morning. I have my house back in order, the weekend's dust mopped up (for a few hours at least) and the guys are all off to another sports event. It looks like this coming week will be a little more normal than last - but you never know!