A bit of a rant...and some Bollywood

A street in Singapore compared to a street in Dhaka; one is meticulously clean with paved lines where traffic stops at stop lights and uses turn signals and flows at a decent pace. It's quiet and people press the button to use the crosswalk which has a card reader for seniors who can use their special card to receive extra time to cross. The other street contains rotting piles of trash and puddles of rain or sewage, one can never be sure, cars, rickshaws, buses, and pedestrians moving in every single direction, disregarding traffic lights and making up their own rules of the road, honking non-stop and not caring who is in their way.

Sentosa-close to the beach in Singapore, see how clean it is?

Eating some waffles on a street in Singapore...that one piece of litter would be a fine for whoever dropped it.

Back in Dhaka, sharing the sidewalk with goats.

Sigh, well, it was a nice break. That's for sure. I definitely appreciate those little things more now, things like crosswalks, clean streets, general regard for traffic safety, and the overall feeling that people are not jumping at the chance to rip you off at every corner. It was a nice change.

But back to reality, here I am at work, trying to get things ready for report cards that are to go home next week and we still don't have a template...there are things I miss about teaching in Canada. Things like staplers, construction paper, stickers, unlimited access to paper, substitute teachers to call in when I'm sick, more than 20 minutes for lunch, markers, internet that doesn't stop and say "buffering" every 20 seconds, power that stays on all day, instruments in a music room, books in a library, you know, to name a few.

One last complaint, I swear. These hartals, they don't make any sense. From what I understand, there are elections in January and the current opposition party has declared hartals every week from now until elections, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Hartals are basically a strike where a group of people walk around destroying property and targeting homes and businesses of politically involved people of the party in power. So it's not safe to be around the area where this is happening and as a result, businesses close, schools close (except for international schools), and people just stay home. So nothing gets done. Three days a week. For several months. And because some students live far away from the school, they don't come during hartals because it's not safe for them to get here. I tried asking why but I have learned that there is rarely an answer here. We just shake our heads and try to keep going about our daily business. Even my students are immune to the chaos, they tell me there is nothing to worry about, we are living in the diplomatic zone, we're fine, this happens every year, no big deal, they don't understand what it accomplishes either but it's a part of living in Dhaka.

But here is some good news, my students are so awesome. I didn't think that teaching Grade 7 could be this fun but I had a debate in English class about violent video games the other day and my students were so into it and had great arguments on both sides and it lasted the whole period! (We touched on other subjects of our novel study too). And I'm teaching them about persuasive writing and they were so excited to start research on their topics that they worked absolutely silently for 20 minutes...what?! Students can work independently and productively for that long? Who knew?

In other news I went to a Bollywood fundraiser and my friend had some fun with my makeup and lent me one of her saris. It was really fun, and watching the dancers made me want to learn Bollywood even more! My room mate has a Bollywood movie marathon lined up for me, so I shall be fully educated on the subject.