I tried to wash my clothes in Bangladesh, but the buttons were in Japanese…now I just have to remember how I used the washing machines in China.

I have moved once again to a new apartment about 2 minutes away from my old one. Let me describe a few of the quirks of the old place. When I first moved in, Supriya and I talked about how there were strange squeaking noises coming from her air conditioner….as well as some other physical “evidence” coming out of the air conditioner that confirmed out theory. It was really pretty creepy, but whatever it was seemed to be confined. Then one morning some people came to fix it. It was clean and squeak free. But later that evening, Supriya took refuge in my room because there was something flying around her bedroom when she turned off the lights. What our cook and the air conditioner cleaners failed to tell us was that there were several bats living in the air conditioner and that they captured “almost all of them.” We had several more sightings of this creature and the cook did not hesitate to put it in a tissue and toss it out the window the next day. Apparently people here do not know much about the link between undetectable bat bites while one is sleeping to rabies link…nor have I discovered do many people in the US. If you have had the opportunity to see the episode of the Office where Michael Scott puts together the rabies awareness run, I highly recommend it. It is a very funny episode, and they make fun of his excitement over curing disease that has been cured. However, I think that there is still a lot of misinformation out there! So maybe Michael is not actually that far off the mark for once.

Anyway. ..so although the chances are very low that either of us were bitten, I did not want to risk it and we finally made our way to a clinic to start the 5 start rabies vaccination. It did not take much time and they had the vaccine on hand, in the fridge, in the room where we both got our shot. It almost seemed too easy. $8.00 worth of vaccine later and we were on our way.

Washing my clothes in Bangladesh has been a small challenge. The washing machine and dryer in our old apartment worked in a similar fashion to those I am used to. However, all of the buttons were in Japanese so we just had to randomly press buttons until it started to do what we wanted it to. The dryer was straightforward. The washing machine in our new apartment is all in English, but it is the same type of washing machine that I struggled to use during my study abroad semester in China. I won’t bore you with the details, it just involved a lot of steps and moving the clothes back and forth from compartment to compartment.
I am really looking forward to a good night worth of sleep. For some reason, the cook came at 7:30am today and then shortly after, the landlord came to collect rent. Soon after that the internet people came to install the internet in our rooms. I started to feel pretty sick this morning but went to sleep for a while and woke up. I was glad to discover that I could eat something and not feel too nauseous.

A handful of people have contacted me regarding the violence in India. It is certainly a scary situation, and we have talked a lot about it here and have stayed on top of updates. However it is important to keep in mind that Bangladesh is a separate country on the eastern side of India, and Bombay/Mumbai is on the western part of India. So for the most part, we are really far away. Interestingly enough, I had considered booking a flight to Bombay to meet up with a friend in late December, but I changed my mind a couple of weeks ago and never bought that ticket.