We were honoured to have Steve & Rosemary organize a 'going-away' party for us. It was a wonderful opportunity to say hello and goodbye to a terrific group of friends. Our preparation for life in Dhaka has been quite a long process, and it all suddenly seemed much more real. Vancouver was our home, and it was difficult to leave the beauty of BC, our family and friends.

On September 7th we started our journey to Dhaka as a family. Mark and I were anxious about how Clara would travel, in particular, how she would deal with the ascents and descents. We were delighted to find that she was so calm during the entire trip. We arranged to have a bulk-head seat so that we could set up a bassinette for Clara. Here is a picture of Clara in her bassinette somewhere over the Atlantic.






I'm sure that she was the least jet-lagged of all of us! At the end of the journey we were all ready for a good sleep.









After almost 24 hours spent on planes (and almost 48 hours in transit), we arrived in Dhaka late on the evening of September 9th. We were pleased to note that all of our luggage arrived in one piece, and on the same plane as we did. Our driver was waiting to pick us up, and he ferried us to our temporary apartment. Mark's company, the Ontario Centre for Environmental Technology Advancement (OCETA), had rented this apartment to provide accomodation for expatriate employees and contractors working in Bangladesh. We spent one week in the OCETA apartment prior to moving to our new apartment. The first week was spent catching up on sleep and getting the details of our new accommodations worked out.

We were fortunate to be able to use much of the furniture from the OCETA apartment for our new home. The two apartments were quite close, but still required moving quite a bit of heavy furniture. Mark arranged for some local transportation as well as some help (ten people in total showed up!) for the move. Here is a photograph of the truck and furniture....see if you can spot Clara and I!





We are very glad to be in our permanent home, and are in the process of getting our household set up. We bought some cane living room furniture, which we are getting upholstered, and getting some drapes made. The apartment itself is lovely. We are on the top storey of a brand new 5 storey building. There are no footsteps overhead, and we are above the treeline so we get lots of natural light. It certainly is quite a change from our basement suite! The apartment has 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a separate drawing room and small living room off of our dining area. There are also 2 balconies. It feels really good to be making our home in such a lovely apartment, and I will be posting some photos once we have everything in place.

We have been having lots of fun with Clara. She is sleeping extremely well in the evenings (going to bed around 7:00pm, and getting up at 7:00am with one feeding in between), and she has discovered her hands. She sucks on her hands quite a bit now, and when co-ordinated enough she will manage to suck her thumb. I have tried a soother, but she only seems interested in the 'real thing'. She has outgrown her 0-3month outfits in the length...oh well, we know she comes by that honestly! ;-) She is quite a happy child, and its a joy to watch her develop her personality. She is also starting to hold up her head quite well, and I managed to get a snapshot of it the other day: