Our apartment is in the city in a relatively nice neighborhood. We don't play outside here and there are not any Bangladeshi kids in our building. So when one of our mom's language tutors invited us out to her place, we were really excited to go.
It took about an hour to get there, first on this road, and then off onto little foot paths that were mostly mud, as it had rained the night before.
(Side note: If you look carefully on the sidewalk on the right, you can see a light purple umbrella- a man there is using a machine to press sugar cane and then selling the sugar-water to people passing by. On our way home, our mom bought a whole sugar cane for us to try! Do YOU know where sugar comes from?!)
Mom's tutor and her husband live in one room, so we all sat on their bed and she fed us a LOT of delicious Bengali food. Neighbors and children who had seen us walking in were constantly poking their heads in the door to get a look at the white people. After some rest time and meeting some neighbors, we finally got to go out to the field to play! Their building was next to some rice paddies, but there was one square (about 30 yards on a side) that was plain dirt, and that is where the children gather to play cricket. It was so fun to play outside! And the kids were so friendly! They helped the boys learn more about cricket and Mary walked around with a deshi girl on either side, holding her hands. Dad eventually joined us and amazed all the kids with his magic tricks.
We kids timed each other to see how fast we could run around the perimeter of the square. It felt so good! We realized that it had been months since we had a chance to really run as fast as we could, and we loved it. It made us look forward to moving out to the country, for sure! And it made us want to learn more Bangla so we can talk with the kids.
