I recently finished Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson's story of the struggle to build a series of schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. After failing to summit K2, he finds himself lost in the middle of Pakistan. He stumbles into a small village where he is nursed back to health, and in exchange promises to build the villagers a school. The story of his struggle - nights working in San Francisco's ERs and days spent sleeping in hallways and the back seats of cars - to raise the funding for the school, and the experience of building the first school are moving. More remarkable, however, is the insight into a culture very foreign from our own - one where education is not readily available, and customs dictate how many interactions play out.
