My best day.

What a great day. I mean fantastic. Today was the day we took all the great stuff you guys sent, and delivered to the school, and let me tell you, it was just incredible. This is the same village we have been too now three times, and this time we got to actually go into the school and hand out the goodies to all the kids in their classrooms.

We started at about 9am, I loaded up the back of the SUV with all the boxes to head over. We met up with a group of Army folks from Camp Phoenix who brought just a huge pile of regular notebooks (we wanted to ensure each kid got one and didn't know how many we would come across today). We all drove over and as soon as we hit the village kids were following us. We made it over to the school and unloaded the boxes into an empty classroom and sorted as best we could to get started. We started on the girls side of the school and it was unlike any classroom I've ever been in, as they were silent and as obedient as any children I've ever seen. We started by giving each of them a notebook and two pens, and then colored pencils, erasers and pencil sharpeners The incredibly shy smiles, followed by the look of joy was so awesome. It was very obvious people don't just show up and start handing them things. A couple even got brave enough to whisper under their breath in Dari the word for thank you (tasha khor). We moved our way through that wing, and even managed to get a good chunk of the girls little stuffed bears and animals and you would have thought they won the lottery.

We moved onto the boys wing and it was a much different story in the boys classrooms. Now, don't get me wrong, the boys are great, but they are so much more aggressive and end up getting so much more than the girls, it was much easier giving things to the girls. They sat quietly and you could see genuine appreciation. The boys are scammers! :) They would get something, hide it and ask for more. Some of them are setting up for lives as used car salesmen. Either way the girls get so much less in this culture, I feel bad not giving them more than the boys. The last class we went to had a ton of kids and we had a whole bunch of little toys. Carnival type stuff....little bendy guys and balls etc. We got MOBBED. It was like the LA Riots with kids up on desks, and the teacher having to push them back to keep us safe. We ended up basically having to toss some of the little bendy guys towards the back of the room to escape. It was fun!

Fortunately, due to your incredible generosity, we gave a pile of stuff to each kid and then some. I think all told, there were probably 300 kids in class today, and as I said, each one got what I would consider standard school supply list of things each. That didn't include the glue or crayons as we gave those to the teachers so the kids didn't eat it or write on the walls.

I want to thank all of you who sent stuff for letting me be your eyes and ears on this project. It was a joy to give out, and I thank you all sincerely for taking the time to send it, and I want you to know that you have made an entire village of little kids happy.

I posted pictures here on my picasa page, please take a look. I will get more up when I get the ones from Steve, Bob and Andy.

After the school visit, Deb and Babrock (sp?) had us back to their house for a lunch of Afghan ravioli and naan (bread). It was great, and nice to wind down. The are very hospitable people.

We learned today that the pens, pencils, standard notebooks, small erasers, small sharpeners, and ANY small cheapy little toys, plus stuffed animals are HUGE hits. I'd actually like to get a run of just little toys for all of them. If you run across a place that sells little toys in bulk and want to send me some, I'll be happy to play Afghan Santa again. The clothes and shoes we didn't give to the kids, we gave them to Debra so she could ensure the families that needed them most would get them.

That's it! I'm tired and sweaty but it was GREAT. Thank you again for letting me do that!

Gary