Do what you can

So Donna asked for knife fights and bug eating. I have neither. What I do have are interesting ideas on how to volunteer at post. Or not that interesting ideas depending on how you look at it.

This is clearly our biggest volunteer opportunity to date. We are in a mostly English speaking country and were able to become puppy walkers for the national guide dog group. This has been great, except for that time she ate the stairs. Yes we will be sad to let her go, yes she will 'pass' and we know that we did our part to make life much better for a local. And she loves Embassy trivia night and Happy Hour at the Marine House - added bonus!

This is one of dozens of pairs of mittens I cranked out for the school mitten tree last winter. It was easy enough, I did not have to go anywhere and my kids loved hanging so many pairs on the tree. I will gloss over the fact that I ended up making so many because I cannot pay attention and kept putting the thumb on the same side for each pair, thus the need for another whole pair.

And this was the easiest of all. In Beijing I could not stand going into the special needs orphanage run by foreigners. I knew I wanted to bring them all home. Luckily I found another way to help out. We had a yahoogroup for expats so everytime the people who ran it needed something or it was packout time, I put out the call. I think this load might have been a call for winter clothes. There was also that time I ended up with about 1000 used baby bottles in the garage, that was a kind of crazy one.

So, in summary, do what you can. Look for ways to help out in your host country and make the locals think fondly of Americans. End of PSA.