It don't come easy

I made it to Dhaka in a mere 23 hours. There was a bit of confusion around the India leg of my flight--evidently one should have an Indian visa to fly through Delhi--but I managed to get here in one piece. The food on the last two legs of my trip--chicken curry, dhal, naan, rice pudding, and some sort of vermicelli in sweet milk custard--was really good.
My first 14 hours in Dhaka were spent sleeping. I'm staying at the BRAC Centre Inn, which is housed on the first four flours of the BRAC main headquarters (BRAC being the NGO that I'm studying). The accommodations are quite comfortable--nice, hard bed, internet, and even a continental breakfast. I'll be here until Sunday, at which point I'll begin to housesit and keep company to an aging corgi, whose hind legs have recently become almost entirely paralyzed (it hasn't slowed her down though; she zips all over the place!). The place is beautiful and filled with art from all over the world. It's biggest selling feature though, is that it's located on the edge of a lake controlled by the army, which virtually gets no traffic. From the balcony today, I saw a 5-foot long monitor lizard, many kites and parakeets, and a family of gibbons (including a baby). Evidently sometimes you can see snakes and otters as well!
I've never been somewhere this visibly poor before--about 80% of the population lives on under $2 a day, and there seems to be a few really wealthy people and a lot of extremely poor (no middle class). As a result, there are not a lot of the industries that you'd expect--very little fast food or coffee/tea shops; it's either street food or a fairly expensive (and yes, by that I mean like your meal is $5) restaurant. There are starving little children asking you for money whichever way you turn, which is heartbreaking. Across the water from me is one of the densest slum settlements in the world. It at once reminds me of the importance of the work that BRAC and Global Health Delivery do, and the magnitude and immediateness of the issues.

Pictures to come--once I get a little more comfortable out on the streets I'll start taking pictures. I'm still too scared that I'm going to cause traffic accidents because rickshaw drivers and cyclists stare at me so long to focus on any sort of photo ops!