{"id":4601,"date":"2017-11-07T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-12T15:12:04","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T19:12:04","slug":"so-your-character-is-from-bangladesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriagracehowell.com\/staging\/6258\/so-your-character-is-from-bangladesh\/","title":{"rendered":"So Your Character is From Bangladesh … Featuring Shouni @ Through the Book Portal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nIt’s time for this week’s So Your Character is … Post! This is a weekly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country or having a disability. I’m hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven’t checked out last week’s  So Your Character is from Romania … be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!<\/span>
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<\/span> Disclaimer: The content below may be culturally shocking to some. Each of these posts are as uncensored as possible to preserve the authenticity of the cultures of each of the interviewees.<\/span>
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<\/span> (None of the Images are Mine)<\/span>
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\nHello, everyone! My name is Shounima (pronounced show-nee-ma), Shouni for short. I was born in Bangladesh but moved to the United States when I was nine (first to Dallas and now live in Atlanta). I am currently a college Freshman majoring in Computer Science and spend way too much of my time procrastinating and reading when I should be studying. I started my book blog a little more than two years ago and it\u2019s probably one of the best decisions I\u2019ve ever made. <\/span>
\nBlog<\/a>\/\/Twitter<\/a>\/\/Pinterest<\/a>\/\/Goodreads<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\nWhat do you feel is unique to your country? Landmarks? Celebrations?<\/b><\/span>
\nBangladesh is a majority Muslim country so we celebrate both Eid-ul-Adha and Eid-ul-Fitr, and they have become both a religious celebration as well as a cultural one. <\/span>As for celebrations that are only unique to Bangladesh, we have the start of the Bengali calendar of \u201cPohela Boishakh\u201d (Pohela means first and Boishakh is the name of our first month). Since it isn\u2019t a religious holiday, everyone celebrates it and people of all religions often come together to sing and dance. In our family, we all get together and stuff ourselves with food and maybe sing a few traditional songs. People dress up in red and white (the women wear red sarees with gold borders, even young girls who normally don\u2019t wear sarees).<\/span><\/p>\n
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\nTell me about your country’s environment. What are some of your favorite places?<\/b>
\nBangladesh has six seasons and each season is about two months. It gets really hot and humid in the summer so sweating is inevitable. There\u2019s a monsoon season right after the summer and there\u2019s always a certainty the roads will flood. In the winter though, it\u2019s really nice, the weather doesn\u2019t get too cold. <\/span>Because I\u2019m an indoor person everywhere, my favorite place is our apartment there.<\/span>
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\nTell me about your country’s food. What are some of your favorite dishes?<\/b>
\nThe food is probably my favorite thing about being Bangladeshi. There are so many varieties and I\u2019m a food addict. For breakfast, a meal usually includes ruti (kind of like tortilla bread), eggs, vegetable curry or some kind of meat curry, and cha (tea) as a finisher.  <\/span>Rice is a must eat for everyone; people have rice for lunch and dinner. Sides include meat, fish, vegetables, lentil soup, etc.<\/span>
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On special occasions and when guests come over, people eat biryani and \u201cricher\u201d food. Biryani is definitely my most favorite thing in the world.<\/span>
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\nTell me about any different speech patterns in your country. Slang? Idioms? Words for things such as \u201cbiscuits\u201d instead of \u201ccookies\u201d?<\/b>
\nThe main language in Bangladesh is Bangla (Bengali). Our language is very important to us because it\u2019s the reason we went through civil war and got our independence from Pakistan (fun fact: Bangladesh means \u201cCountry of Bangla\u201d). Bangla has many different dialects in the various districts of the country, some are so different that you may not understand what they\u2019re saying.<\/span>
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<\/span> Bangladesh also uses British terms when communicating in English. So yes, \u201ccookies\u201d are \u201cbiscuits\u201d and \u201celevator\u201d is \u201clift.” One thing that confused me a lot when I first went to school here was calling a period (.) a period and not a \u201cfull-stop.” <\/span><\/p>\n

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