Reality check

I was looking back on some of my posts and realized I'm only showing you the best and most fun things I'm doing here. Someone recently said to me--looks like you're having an amazing tropical vacation!
Do not get me wrong - it is VERY challenging to live here. I don't want to complain because I've been trying to be conscious of only speaking in positive tones and utilizing productive speech, but I just want to highlight a few things that aren't so beautiful or tropical about living here. I also want to use this blog to give people a feel for what it's really like and so far it's definitely been a little one-sided. Some of it I've mentioned here and there in the past, but here it is in more detail:
1) The weather--it's HOT and HUMID. ALL THE TIME. It's supposed to cool down some in the winter, so I'm looking forward to that.
2) Perils of walking--there aren't really any sidewalks, and where there are sidewalks they're full of HUGE holes/cracks/garbage/obstructions. The streets are an insane mess of various vehicles, people and sometimes cows. It's very difficult to "go for a walk" because you can't relax or even walk at a brisk pace - you're constantly watching the ground and over your shoulder for rickshaws and other dangers because you're in the street, weaving in and out of traffic and brushing off beggar children.
3) no social activities/outlets-there are no coffeeshops, bookstores, bars, gyms or really even parks to hang out at. There are a couple small exceptions to this, but as a whole, places you would normally go to hang out or kill time do not exist. I really miss my friends a lot and even though most of the faculty is fun to hang out with, they're also my co-workers and the circle of friends is very finite. I'm glad I live in my own apartment, but I'm such a social person it gets a little boring/lonely at times.
4) Giant flying cockroaches and endless streams of ants.
5) big piles of garbage in the streets that you have to cover your nose and mouth as you walk by. there are "designated" areas of garbage piles--they're not just random, but they're about every block and there's either dogs, crows or garbage-pickers getting the good stuff out. Periodically the garbage get shoveled into a larger vehicle and carted off somewhere, but the area is never clean and always has The Smell.
6) gross sewer ditches--Bangladesh is a land of endless water, but very little of it is clean. nearly every street has a big ditch/small river/creek running next to it that people directly dump garbage into and drain sewage from their house. I was behind the university the other day and the drain from the kitchen dumps straight into the ditch running there. They smell TERRIBLE and are gross to look at. It's also another peril of walking outside--often the holes in the street are holes in the grating or concrete covering these ditches so if you fall in, you'll not only twist your ankle or worse, but land in nasty sewer water (happened to another faculty the first week we were here).
7) General 3rd-world crappiness: everything is cheap, broken, falling apart, moldy, out of date or unsafe. A few quick examples that come to mind: no fire escape for our 14-floor apartment, no evacuation plan for the university, half of the pipes in my house leak so my floor is wet all the time, and often water coming out of taps is brown.
8) incessant noise--the traffic here is really crazy and the horn-honking never stops. Combine that with the factory banging noise that never ends outside my window and it adds up to a LOT of nonstop noise. The Eid holiday we just had was GREAT--the factory shut down for a few days, everyone left town and it was nice and quiet.
9) no alcohol. There are a few small exceptions, but there is no wine, only 1 or 2 kinds of bad beer and gin or whisky. With the exception of the beer vendor in the alleyway across town, if you want a drink you have to go to an expensive hotel, which may or may not be serving any alcohol that day and pay a lot to drink in a place with no atmosphere. There's also no pork. ANYWHERE. I haven't even found an exception to this. On the list of difficult things in Bangladesh, though, the lack of pork is pretty minor.
10) No coffee--I drink tea now and I have acquired a serious love for Nescafe. There is one place near the university to get real coffee-bean based drinks, so I go once or twice a week for a treat.
11) the difficulty of getting anywhere else--I'm so close to a lot of places I want to visit in Asia, but in order to fly anywhere, you have to go to the capital, Dhaka which takes one day each way. It doesn't actually take that amount of time to get there--it can be as little as 2 hours by plane, but you can't rely on buses or airplanes to ever get you there on time, so you have to leave a half day or more leeway. This reduces the "weekend trips" to about 2 or 3 locations within Bangladesh.
12) the risk of Dengue, other tropical diseases and food poisoning. So far I haven't had any stomach problems at all--I've been pretty safe and conscious about what I eat, but i've also been getting a little more sloppy lately. It helps to cook for yourself more. There was an outbreak of Dengue last year at the university and a handful of students had it right when school started this year--the campus is swarming with mosquitos and it's impossible to keep them out because people don't shut windows, doors, etc. and everything is just open. So far, so good for me, but there's still always that risk and constant worry of what's safe to eat.
Okay--I think that's enough depressing stuff for one post. I know I chose to come here and I knew pretty much what I was getting myself into and there haven't been that many big surprises. So far I'm glad I came--overall the positive aspects are outweighing the negatives for me. I love adventures, new places, new culture and new food--plus I came to teach chemistry, not live a tropical vacation life and so far the chemistry teaching is going well. Some of the other foreigners here are really struggling and complain all the time. I've been trying to be really positive and embrace the good aspects, otherwise you're miserable all the time! And that's no fun. Nothing is solved by sitting around complaining (and in fact it usually just bums everyone else out), so I've either been working towards changing the situation for the better or only making positive statements. An example: someone was complaining about the milk tasting bad, there not being any real coffee and the powdered milk not dissolving, so I said--sweetened condensed milk is awesome and really makes nescafe taste better!
So now that I have this out of my system, you can look forward to more 'normal' positive posts....