Feb 12th-13th - Stephanie

As with all good things, our trip had to come to an eventual end... still feels like we didn't get a month though, it went by soooo quickly! I didn't take as many photos towards the tail end of the trip, but I wanted to wrap up the blog anyways :)
(Don't worry your pretty little heads though, I am sure I will continue posting in the blog until at least our district conference!)
February 12th was our last full day, and Holly and I wanted to squeeze in some last minute shopping, so her host mother Asma gave us the use of her car until our lunch meeting at 1pm. We especially wanted to get extra gifts for our Dhaka families, since mine had to put up with me when I was sick and overall we spent more time in Dhaka than anywhere else. I had previously purchased an extra gift for my host mother Haseen, but it completely went missing in the shuffle, so I decided to get her something else in case we didn't find it... (and even now that I have unpacked back home in Arizona I still haven't found it :-/)
We went by Jathra and Aranya, two artisan shops that sold local handicrafts, and picked up items for our sponsoring Rotary clubs, as well as a few other odds and ends... They did have one GORGEOUS sari I wanted to purchase, but it came out to about $200USD even before adding in a petticoat and top, so unfortunately I just had to walk away... I know my opportunities to wear it would be limited, but I have never seen such beautiful fabric in my life as I have shopping in Bangladesh!
Then we headed over to the Gulshan shopping area where I picked up some pretty pearls for Haseen and a few other people, and Holly bought a LOT of gifts for people back home.
We ran out of time for more shopping and had to run to our lunch, which was upsetting because I still hadn't been able to pick up a gift for my host father Mahbubur, but this lunch was with some extremely powerful women and we didn't want to miss it!
What we didn't know was how funny and entertainingly irreverent these ladies would be, and one of them opened up with a story about the first time her grandson came to visit her from the states and he saw a nanny goat for the first time... slightly inappropriate language but we were pretty much rolling on the ground! The lunch was delicious, and as a BONUS our friend Zubeida from Chittagong showed up!!! She missed the District Conference due to a death in the family, but I think we all were pretty darn excited to see her!!! (and I think Holly has  pictures... hint hint Miss Holly!) :)
After lunch we were hearing rumors of some kind of spontaneous violence around where we were supposed to have our last meeting so we were told it would be canceled, and we were taken directly home (which killed my other potential opportunity to shop for gifts for my host father), but then about 30 minutes before our meeting we were told it was back on!! So we all had to rush to get ready and Fawzia sent her car to pick up Holly and I, since neither of us had access to another car!
The meeting was at the Sonargoan Hotel, a very VERY nice hotel, that was all decorated for Valentine's day, which reminded us that V-Day was only two days away, I think all of us forgot! We did have to run up to our meeting though, so we promised ourselves a photo session later ;)
Our meeting was a lot of fun, and we got to really do the presentation that we had created for the District Conference, that ended up slightly messy because of some A/V issues... this time it came off without a hitch, but I made the mistake of musing out loud that maybe I should look for a Bangladeshi boyfriend, because the men are slightly more responsible and definitely more respectful than the guys I have been meeting in the U.S.... Good thing we were leaving the next day! My host father had shown up to this meeting about half-way through our presentation, and afterwards he commented that he knew a guy who was tall, good-looking, and smart that worked for him at the bank!
This club included Mr. Alam (AKA "Grandpa"- Fawzia's Father in Law) and Capt. Khaliquzzaman (Meredith's host father) as well as a lot of other people we had already met, so presenting to them was like speaking with friends, easily one of our best presentations... and then they gave us some VERY nice gifts to take home with us!

They did have a special guest at the club that night (Besides us ;) ), a businessman from South Africa that had actually been a GSE Team member himself! He was very interesting to talk to, he had been in Rotary for quite some time!

When the meeting ended we went back downstairs for our "photo session" with the cool Valentine's Day decorations...

And then we went for our farewell dinner with the District Governor Ishtiaque Zaman and his lovely wife Tahia, as well as PDG Jamaluddin and Fawzia... it was good to have a quiet dinner to go over the trip and how everything had gone! Everyone was so kind and wonderful, we didn't even want to leave!!

We had our early flight the next morning, but my family said goodbye to me at the house (I'll admit, I got a little teary-eyed) and then my car took me to Holly's house, so we could go together, and saying goodbye to her host-mother and sisters was very hard too! Holly's host father Sadeque was able to go with us to the airport, but it didn't make saying goodbye any easier... Overall I don't know what to say about this experience, other than that it was wonderful, eye-opening, life-changing, and inspiring... the people in Bangladesh could teach us so much, and I've said it before, but I think in about 10-15 years Bangladesh will be quite a force to be reckoned with, economically. The entire country is still recovering from their war for liberation, but the construction and growing industry show that it is going just beyond recovery and is now entering a period of massive growth. I look forward to coming back to visit someday soon, to see my huge extended family and spend more time enjoying the natural beauty of this part of the world!