You Know You are in Bangladesh When...

There are many wonderful, funny, and beautiful aspects of life in Bangladesh. This past month my roommate developed a list of what we call, "you know you are in Bangladesh when..." items. I decided to begin my own list. Here is what I have so far:

• The electricity is shut off for lack of payment but you think it is just a normal outage.
• You get to walk hand in hand with children and women you do not know on the street. 
• People call out, “Hello!” to you everywhere you go. 
• A giant spider is relaxing in the stairway. 
• Your cook is Super Man (cleans the whole house, makes all the food, does laundry, fixes all the broken appliances, and solves the electricity problem all in a days work). 
• Sweat seems to be an accessory. 
• You can’t think of the correct language to respond in.
• You order a milkshake to cool off and it is warm. 
• The man can’t serve you cold coffee because they are out of ice cream. 
• You rip your clothes on a rickshaw. 
• The phrase “hot mess” describes your appearance most of the time. 
• A cockroach causes mass chaos to erupt in class. Desks even fly at times. 
• You will get run over if you are not an expert dodger while crossing the road. 
• You see men who look like they should be retired hauling giant carts of steel or bricks down the road. 
• You see women working right along side the men crushing bricks by hand, carrying them in baskets on their heads, and compressing them on the ground to begin paving, all while wearing FLIP FLOPS! 
• As my roommate said, “The man squatting on the side of the road is using the bathroom, not looking for something he dropped."
• You stare at white people you don’t know just as much as the nationals do.