Learn Something New Every Day

Moving to a totally new place... pretty cool.
Getting out of a rut in my professional life... very cool.
Getting paid more to do it... bonus!
Seeing a whole new set of travel options open up in front of us... just keeps getting better.
Learning something new about my wife... fun!
I just watched Jessica play softball today. I knew she played in college and knew she was probably good. People have told me, "Jessica is a really good softball player." but I never really knew. Jessica is a REALLY good softball player. She exudes confidence and her movements show a history of practice and fine tuning. I missed her home run today but I did get to see some great field work and a nice base hit, but it is the way she carries herself on the field. You just know she is good. Here are some pics of her crushing it.

Nice extension!

Warming up

Let 'er rip

This weekend's project.

We have been trying to do some customizing to our home and since we don't have all our furniture yet we are kind of limited to paint. We had the apartment painted and the idea for the entry way is to do some gold fleur di lis. So I was at the hardware store and picked up some paint and here is the result...

This was the original that I modified. There were more ruffles on all the petals that I filled in. 

(Thank you graphics factory)

This is the design doubled in size.

The stencil cut out.

The first one done!

The finished look. I may do some gold lines between... Jessica says she wants more! but it is very time consuming.

Fabric Market

Jessica organized a trip to the local fabric market. First stop was the "New Market" and the next was "Chadni Chowk". We were a caravan of two cars and a total of 5 people and a baby. It took us about 30 minutes to get there as traffic was light and both cars made it at the same time (a feat I still cannot explain). We started wandering through the New Market which is just a collection of permanent, semi-permanent and temporary shops. The vast majority of which are completely useless because they are not what we were shopping for or were a near exact copy of the ten other stores right next door. Here are some gems from the New Market:

If this were the US the guy would have boxed them up and used a hand truck or maybe a small golf cart to deliver these. It is not only simpler here but it just looks better!

The stairway in the middle of the market. The best part? Guy in the middle is rocking a half shirt and it is not pretty.

The real deal

Veggies. Is it wrong that it looks better on some nasty concrete than it does under some florescent lights in a grocery store. The grocery store still wins though because it would take about 10 minutes of bargaining to get a decent price here.

Not sure I even need to caption this...

Its the little things. I still have not figured out the color coding system.

The next stop was Chadni Chowk's. I huge fabric market. The outside is temporary tarp covered stands selling shoes, clothing and the like. Inside are tiny little stalls, the largest about 8feet by 10 feet and the norm was about 6 feet by 4 feet. Each owned by a different person. Lined floor to ceiling with folded fabrics of pretty much any style. At this point all were overwhelmed and we just wandered through a fraction of the stalls. We will be back though! My mom would love it. It was really hard to get good pictures because of the close quarters and the florescent lighting but here are a few to give you the idea:

Jessica in the zone.

Hands on the hips signifying the resignation that there is no way any decisions are being made today.

Liz with baby and Wendy wheeling and dealing.

Michelle and Jessica.

The Stacks. I have no idea how things stay so neat.

Ride Number 2

This weekend is Eid (the end of Ramadan) and so a lot of the people in Dhaka go out to their villages and celebrate with family. It has a similar feel to Christmas in that there is an overwhelming sense of happiness and family love. All the stores close, people are dressed up in their finest and the streets are quiet. Really. All construction has stopped and traffic is down to about an 1/8th of what it was. So I, being the heathen that I am, think nothing of religion during religious holidays and decide that this will be a perfect day to ride my bike! I found a route on MapMyRide.com and spent all day yesterday trying to figure out how to get the course on my GPS unit... Wasted time. I got it on there but it turned out to be useless as far as giving directions so I had to go off memory of the map. Surprisingly I did not get lost! Here is a map of the ride from my GPS:

This was a great day in the saddle. Amazing scenery. I was on this one lane road that weaves through the river delta areas and all these small villages. People all taking it easy because of the Eid holiday. The random English greetings were thrown my way included "Hi" "Hello" "Howareyou" and my favorite, "Thank You" People would just shout thank you as I road by. I like to think that they were just thanking me for being so inspirational... nothing to do with the fact that they have no idea what thank you means. Here are a few pics of the day:

The local way of running pipelines

The barge that pumps the water:

Finally a decent picture of the local fishing nets:

These saw mills are all over. Pretty cool.

Boats docked right next to the road:

The colorful boats: