I was touched by the dedication of the eldest brother to feed his siblings and by the way he ate last only after caring for them, and only if there was any food left after they ate. To me, it was depressing just to see; for them, it was their daily life. I gladly gave them two hundreds taka (about 3 dollars). Even that experienced paled in comparison to what I saw in the homes of the poor. Millions of people in Bangladesh can't afford anything resembling what we here would consider a "house" by any stretch of the imagination. They live in huts made from straw and scraps of wood; there are no floors inside either, just the hard ground with a roof on top. Still, it is a place that provides a sanctuary from the filthy streets. Naturally, these huts are all blown away and flooded during the monsoon season and their inhabitants must start over building another hovel. Inside these homes, there are no televisions,...

Their inhabitants slept on dirty rags.
My visit to Bangladesh left me with a desire to understand the difficulties and struggles people go through in impoverished countries. It left me with a changed perception of what "poverty" really is and it frustrates me now that so many people in the U.S. completely take for granted how lucky they are to live in a First World nation. While people in this country worry about finding designer handbags and shoes on sale, or when the next version of their cell phone is being released with new web-browsing features, millions of people in other parts of the world live in abject poverty that most of us have never even witnessed, let alone experienced. I know that I have been changed by my trip to Bangladesh and the experience has left me with questions about my values for which I do not yet necessarily have any answers.