Day 2

Tuesday started with a simple breakfast of a sliver of omelet, toast, jam, banana, and tea or instant coffee.  Julie chose instant coffee for us, but it was not quite enough to hit the spot.  I feel like I have been in a perpetual caffeine withdrawal daze.  The tea is liptons, but even so, it seems light in the caffeine department.

We then did two school visits with the entire entourage.  First to an affluent school – a small school that does essentially k-12 and is conducted all in English.  Charming kids and wonderful teachers, many who have been to the states for study and pleasure and who have kids or relatives there.  One of the Rotary leader’s kids goes to the school and they are going to participate in Claudine’s letter campaign with the Amherst schools.  The have both a rotaract and an earlyact group there.

The next school we went to was the Teach A Child school (teachachild.org).  They cater to a unique group – those who have IQs of 110 or above and live on $2/day or less.  They offer a premium education for those too poor to buy one.  The concept is being run as an experiment to see if the children are offered the same level of education as their more affluent contemporaries if it is not a viable way to help them break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families.  They are 12 years into the experiment and if they can remain viable through out, they believe they can help make a major shift in the socio-economic situation over here.  The Rotary is already supporting them in a big way.

We have a pretty compelling video that I need to upload, but here is a picture of the $150/person lunch Julie and I had.  We left them with $300, enough to sponsor a kid for a year (and incidentally, the same money we were going to use to spend on presents for everyone back home….oh well.  Sorry guys).

After the time at the school we came back to the house and cleaned up and drove out to the Wagah border for their fantastic flag lowering ceremony with India.  It was pretty cool – here are a couple pictures form the area an a link to a video with some of the action!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeSX6AZ5xEI . Actually, the coolest thing was the dove that sat on the Indian flag pole for the entire ceremony.

one of the Rotarians taking pictures of Indians taking pictures of Pakistanis

After the ceremony, we drove back to town and had a formal meeting of all the Lahore clubs, gave flags and received presents and had dinner.  Then it was actually over to Max’s for certified non-muslim beer, replete with the required license that Anthony has.  The local Pakistani beer is a high alcohol lager (why doesn’t that surprise me).