22 Feb

It has been just under 2 months since we last visited the local grade school, so today we made a surprise visit and it turns out we had a bit of a surprise ourselves. Apparently on Wednesday evening the President of Iraq declared Thursday the 22nd as a National Holiday and therefore, school was cancelled. Since the schools here do not get "snow days" I suspect any last minute school cancellations are always celebrated by the children and of course, frowned upon by the parents - there are just somethings that are consistent across all cultures. So...how does one save the day on a rainy day off? You convince the kids to go back to school and you feed them; and that is exactly what we did. Not only did we bring smiles to the kids but I am sure we brought a few minutes of relief to some parents. Within a few minutes of our arrival we had over 300 kids in the school; the school only instructs 170 children. Every kid left with a pair of new shoes, and a full stomach; and the majority of the children also received a back-pack, a soccer ball and a few other small goodies. Over all it was a great success. I contributed all the items I received over the last 2 months and for those of you who are putting last minute touches on some more goodies for the kids, please know we will be making another trip in the not so distant future. I believe I will be around for only one more visit but I have no doubt regular trip to this school and some other outlining schools will become a event. Above is a pic of me helping keep the kids in line as they make there way to lunch. Maybe it was good that school was cancelled for the day - this way we were able to provide a nutritious meal and new shoes to 305 kids vice the 170 that normally attend. I guess you could say today we brought some sunshine to an otherwise rainy day for some local children.