don't be alarmed if I fall head over feet

Today is October 3rd, and I am now feeling a bit at home or at ease in this place. I can take a rickshaw to the market – though I go to the fixed price markets because I’m not attempting bartering for goods yet…bartering for rickshaws yes, for goods, no – I can find my way from my friend’s places to mine again, I know what my favorite dessert is here (surprisingly not cake), I know most of what is in my neighborhood, I know a few key phrases in bangla, I know what I’m doing for my internship, I have a phone and internet and an office and I feel good. There is a powerful beauty in KNOWING.
I hopefully begin doing some field work in the slums this week. (I am finalizing my work plan with my supervisors this afternoon.) I’m excited for that because first of all, I’ll be really getting into my project and second, think of the pictures I can take there (mind you, this whole city is like a million photographs screaming to be taken). I didn’t take my camera out in the street until this week because if I had at first, I would have taken 2,000 cliché tourist shots a day. I think the more intriguing shots are the ones that you see when you intimately know the place you’re photographing, because you can see the intricacies of your subject. Anyways, enough photography theory, suffice it to say I’m gonna try to get some photos up in the next 10 days (sorry I can’t be more specific than that! Haha)
In other news, I live on the top floor of my building and elevators are not really something that happens here, so I have to walk 8 sets of uneven stairs to get to my flat. Yes, pity me and my distaste for exercise. Mind you, I think all of you crazy people who love to do such things would probably decline doing so considering it is consistently 36-39 degrees here with a humidity of 82-94%. Yes, that makes the stair climb all the better.
What is worse though is the power outages. It doesn’t matter so much at the office because we have a generator there, but at home when the power goes out (which it does at least 3 times a day – more on hot days) it gets HOT…we don’t have AC and with the power out, even the fans don’t run. So you sit or lay in one spot very still and wait it out (read by candlelight) until an hour later when the power comes back on.
All in all though, the power and the stairs and the heat are all very little things in the scope of my experience here thus far. It is so good to be here and despite its overwhelming craziness, I am beginning to really like this place.