2/5

The quarterly meeting for the senior staff is happening today and tomorrow. This means that all of the upper level staff come to DDC and give short presentations on their work over the past three months. There are also educational pieces where government or other important officials come and inform the staff about new schemes, or to teach the staff about working with their organization. The power-points were all in English, which was supremely helpful, because everyone spoke in Bengali. Although when someone is speaking Bengali there are usually quite a few English words interspersed, especially when they are speaking in a professional environment. This means that I can usually understand what the person is talking about, even if I don’t understand the context of that subject.
I came after class, which I ended early, so that Susmita and I wouldn’t be too late for the meeting. Class was uneventful; I spent quite a bit of time with the old vocabulary words, so that the students retain them. The auto ride over was also uneventful, the auto was even pretty empty, only 15 people, which for an auto is unusual. Once arriving at DDC, I listened to two or three morning presentations. Sr. T sat next to Hannah and myself and translated, so that we weren’t too lost. The presentations were only Community Health Systems, Anti-Human Trafficking, and Microfinance/Revovling Fund. They were all very interesting. Hannah and I took a walk around DDC when the Bank Manager got up to speak. He was from the government bank that’s only job was to take money from the government and give it to small banks to loan to people to develop rural and agriculturally areas. Puthumai found us on our walk and told us all about the bank manager and what he was doing. It was nice to have someone explain so directly to us in English what was happening.
On our walk we visited all of the wildlife that lives at DDC. There is a puppy, which I have named Sugar, who is black with a few brown and white spots on his body. This morning one of the pigs had piglets, so there were baby pigs to visit. And yesterday the mommy cow had her calf, who was so white and had such skinny long legs! After visiting the animals, Hannah and I took lunch (after a thorough washing). Lunch was tasty: rice, dal, cabbage with spices, and bananas. The bananas had seeds because they were from the trees outside. The seeds were red and were in the middle. I ate them on accident because I didn’t know that bananas could have seeds. It reminded me of my mother telling me (as a small child) that if I ate watermelon seeds then watermelon plants would grow in my stomach.
Everyone took their lunch just after we finished, so we walked to Mission Moore and snooped around a bit in the shops. We bought these little caramels that Hannah like and some treats for our girl’s night. Because what is a girls night without junk food! ☺
In the afternoon there was a government speaker about non-life insurance. Sr. T was really helpful translating his speech, she translated every sentence for me. It was interesting to hear the different policies, coverages, and premiums. It was also strange to think of a health care system so completely different from America. After his speal we had tea. Hannah and I stumbled into the room where Puthumai and the speak were having tea. They invited us to join, and I was able to ask the man a few questions about his presentation. He was very engaging and had an insightful perspective. Plus the tea was hot and the biscuits were good.
After another visit to the animals, Hannah and I listened to Puthumai’s presentation about Quality Monitoring. I was so excited because his power-point background picture was of the I-5 bridge in Seattle. The majority of the photo was gray clouds and for a few moments my insides ached for rain and overcast dreary clouds! Puthumai’s PP slides were well-written and pretty comprehensive, so I understood quite a bit of his talk. Then we had another break and in the evening we watched Slumdog Millionaire.
Tomorrow the meeting will continue and since today was so behind schedule on presenters we will hear from quite a few people tomorrow. That’s all for now, sending my love.
Oh! And I put commentary on the photo albums in the links below. Hope you enjoy them ☺