Language Partners and Embassy Briefing

On Tuesday we had our first weekly quiz, so we spent most of the extra-long weekend preparing for it. I tried to memorize all of the words we had learned, and it turned out that I was overprepared. The quiz was very fair and mostly covered letters and numbers. In the oral part Atif asked me where I got my salwar kameez, and I couldn’t respond because I didn’t remember the name of the store!
After class we met our language partners. My partner’s name is Moumita, and she’s a senior at IUB studying environmental engineering. We went to the cafeteria to get lunch, and sat on the courtyard steps for a few minutes to talk. She asked what state I was from, and didn’t know where Ohio was when I told her (story of my life!). She also taught me some new words, including nani, “maternal grandmother.” We didn’t have time to talk for very long, because the CLS people had a briefing at the American embassy.
At the embassy, we were basically given a security briefing and told that we need to watch out for petty street crime. The security officer gave us his phone number so we can call him directly if we get into trouble.
After the briefing, Devin and I went to Noddabajar. It was the first time I went without one of the Intermediate students. We walked to a few shops, and used Bangla to ask for things like tissues and Tasty Saline. Several people had asked us to get some mangos, so we went to look at the fruit stalls. We ran into Bennett, who is another person in my class. He reminds me a lot of Evan Pugh; he wanders around and talks to everyone. We finally found a stall that had good-looking mangos, and bought a kilo of them. He also had pomegranates, and I asked him how to say it in Bangla. They were too expensive, so I didn’t get any.
After we left Noddabajar, Bennett took us to the mythical cha stand on Road 12. I call it mythical because I’d only ever heard of it, and because it really does look rather mythical when you get to it. It’s a little shelter set back off the road and surrounded by plants in the middle of a residential area. I got a cha, which is tea mixed with milk, sugar and other spices – similar to a chai latte in the US, but different tasting. The stand also sells shingara (Bengali samosas that I actually like better than their Indian counterpart) and some breaded and fried onion thing. All of this food should be safe, since it is served right out of the fryer. I’ll try some of the food another time.