Well, postcards are sent… and do I have a story for you

Yesterday I had an adventure, and it’s too good of a story to not blog about. So here goes.

After class, Audrey and I went to the National Post Office.  We wanted to mail postcards and make sure they were actually sent, and the best way to ensure that is to send them from the main branch. This is like going to the central post office in Washington DC to mail a letter. So after class we walked to Bashundhara gate and hired a CNG. After about two minutes in the CNG, it started to pour down rain. I mean a real monsoon. The streets started to flood. We made it about to Rampura when the CNG got a flat tire. The driver stopped and got out to change it in a puddle in the monsoon. We, thinking that the post office closed at 5, decided to get another CNG. We stepped out into the monsoon and not another empty CNG was to be found. We got a rickshaw to take us where we could find another CNG, and hired another one. Even though we explained that we were in a hurry, this second CNG decided to stop for gas. So we got out and found a third one, which finally got us to the National Post Office at 4:34.

Inside the post office, we found out that we could have bought stamps as late as 8 PM. Oh well. We stood there soaking wet attaching stamps to each postcard. Between me, Audrey, and several other people who had given us postcards to mail, we sent 40 postcards. Each postcard to the US was 39 taka; to Europe postage was 31 taka. Which meant that each US postcard had four stamps on it: 15, 15, 5, and 4. Basically they look like wizard letters from Harry Potter. (And I apologize in advance for putting the stamps on top of the messages!) The postal service workers were very excited that we were there. There was one man who stamped our completed postcards (i.e. to indicate that they have been processed) as we stood there, then placed them into a big jute bag that, he assured us, will go straight to the airplane. We have been assured that these postcards will, at the very least, leave the country.

After finishing at the post office, I wanted to take a bus to my language partner’s house. After wading through knee deep water to get to the bus stand (where the ticket seller was sitting in water, with his little wooden desk about four inches above water level), I got on a bus that took me to Dhanmondi, from which I took another bus to Farmgate, and then walked to her house.

I was also wearing a new outfit, so I turned completely green from the dye. Seriously. I looked like Spock.