There are so many amazing people to spend time with, and organizations to learn about, that I would have been hard-pressed to get enough of that in two years. I wish I had spent more time learning about the work that Acid Survivors’ Foundation does, the school boats made by BRAC, the medical and educational work done at the Centre for Rehabilitation of the Paralyzed, the legal work done for trafficking victims and so much more.

On the flip side, after just two years I was completely overwhelmed by seeing so much misery, so many people in need, and so much political upheaval and street violence. As with every country I live in and leave, it’s hard to put in words exactly what I have learned and how the experience has changed me and the way I see the world. Yet that’s what I feel is the essential part of living abroad. It’s not the sights I see. (I did get to visit Bandarban and see the Hill Tracts along the Burmese border, but did not visit the Shundarbuns to look for tigers.)

The experiences I had outside of Dhaka, in more rural areas of Bangladesh, did not change how I saw the country, as I thought they would. What I learned there was different from what I learned in the city, but I don’t think those trips made a big impact on my experience in Bangladesh. More than anything, I learned how difficult it is to travel in a country without infrastructure, in a delta flooded by the monsoons every year.