Random memory:

When I was in Thailand, one of the groups I was with were running a music program. They brought a box of maybe three hundred Recorders and handed them out to the village kids. Yeah guys. Great idea. Good program. I can see a lot of learning took place there.

Anyway, if you think one kid blowing away on a Recorder is fucking annoying (and you would be correct), imagine hundreds of kids running around a neighborhood, blowing into their recorders, making that nails-on-chalkboard noise. Day and night. It's in the jungle! Noise carries!

When one kid left and forgot his journal, we all read it and passed it around. It was obvious he wasn't a habitual journal-er and was only doing it because his parents told him it would be a good idea: entries started with "Hello Mr. Journal." He wrote about what he thought of all the kids on the trip - nothing positive - but my favorite entry by far was scrawled on one page, all by itself, towards the back:

"i'm fucking tired they're playing flutes"