Conjugations and errands

On Thursday morning, my roommate and I took a rickshaw to school. It later turned out that we will have a bus to take us there every morning, but we didn’t know that at the time. Margo was the one trying to hire the rickshaw, and we had trouble finding one that was willing to go to Bashundhara. We finally found one that charged way too much and didn’t take us to the right place, but got us close enough to walk there. So we walked around the block with the rickshawallah following us to make sure we got to the right place.
Class was mostly grammar lessons, actually learning basic sentence formation. Bangla has a zero-verb structure that’s very similar to Arabic, so it was easy for me to understand. Our class with Sharmad was over adjectives, and his classes are always fun and extraordinarily helpful in terms of cultural understanding. In our last class we did two role plays, one with a rickshawallah and another ordering food at a restaurant. Atif played the rickshawallah and the waiter, and we were the passengers and customer.
After class we had a lecture on Muslim architecture by a professor from Dhaka University. She was a very good speaker and gave us a lot of good information on Muslim architecture and culture. Her talk was specifically focused on Bengali architecture. The Bengali style of mosque building is particularly interesting because it is patterned on Bengali huts that are the traditional village house. We will be seeing some old architecture when we are at Sonargaon this weekend.
When the lecture was over, I went out with Moumati. We first went to a tailor in Noddabajar so I could get a salwar kameez made. It turned out the fabric I bought at Newmarket wasn’t quite large enough for the pants, so hopefully he’ll be able to do something about that. We then went shopping for a bedspread, since I really needed one. Most Bangladeshis just sleep with a single sheet, but I was getting cold at night with the air conditioning. We went to Golshan Dui to run some errands, and then took a rickshaw to a wholesale market down in Golshan Ek. I found what I was looking for there: a handmade cotton bedspread. Moumati managed to bargain it down from the original 1600 taka, and I got it for 1150. I then realized that I was going to be late for dinner, and we hurried to get home.