Staycation!

Chris and Kaya recently had a week + one day of vacation to celebrate Eid al-Fitr and Durga Puja. Many of our friends used the vacation days to travel to exciting places like Thailand and Cambodia. We, on the other hand, decided to enjoy Dhaka at its best: emptied of the majority of its 12-15 million residents, with almost no power outages and no traffic. Yeah.

[Note: Of course, "empty" is a relative term. When we decided to go to Pizza Hut for their all-you-can-eat iftar buffet one evening before Eid, we (really only mama) thought it would be smooth sailing. Instead, we arrived at 6pm and were told that there would be a two-hour wait. The guard helpfully informed us that we should come back tomorrow, and to come earlier, like maybe around 4:30pm. For a meal that would start at 6:30pm. No thanks. We went to El Toro instead, where Kaya consumed three full giant quesadillas before falling asleep mid-bite, with a little triangle of tortilla hanging out of his mouth. End of note.]

Aside from that little adventure, Kaya got to spend time doing many of his favorite activities:


:: Lots and lots of swimming, when it was not raining ::

:: Building, building and more building of endless block towers ::

:: Eating Australian food, courtesy of our Australian friends. (Okay, this is a favorite activity of mama's, not Kaya's.) Here, pumpkin soup and scones. Yum. ::

Mama had to spend much of the week working, so Kaya and Dad got to work on several projects together. There are big things underway here in Dhaka:

:: Grow, little plants, grow!! ::

:: The beginnings of a new craze in Bangladesh: cornhole! ::

:: A big pot of liquid, cooling in a tub of ice. You will definitely, definitely see this again. ::