Afghanistan

We're a couple days late on when we wanted to start our country project, but here we go. I'm going to try and do a blog for every country, but we'll see, there's not a lot to share with you all, so  I might put together a couple at a time. I mean, this is nowhere near the intensity of the presidents project, but there are nearly 4 times as many. 

So we started today with the first country alphabetically, Afghanistan. 

The boys basically get a lecture about the country, and these fun info sheets I put together. I've noticed how much more detailed they've gotten over time, this one is pretty simple. But, anyway, there's your snapshot of Afghanistan. The word of the day was 'Minaret', a tall slender tower, usually part of a mosque, where Muslims are called to prayer (in case you didn't know.) Honestly, I didn't until recently. it comes up a bit throughout the world. The Minaret of Jam is nearly impossible to get to, but the nearly 800 year old tower is impressive enough to make it on to our landmark. In later countries, I made sure to note if the Department of State has issued official warnings to visitors, but I wasn't quite there yet when I researched Afghanistan. We made sure the boys were aware it's much more than deserts and violence, there's lakes and mountains, and ruins of giant Buddha statues. It was a must stop in the 60's on the trail to India, and maybe someday it will be again. 

And in the first of all of our maps, we have our homemade Afghan flag, with Kabul written on the back, which we'll use as flashcards throughout the project to learn all of our flags and capitals. Peyton had already worked his way through most the world, so he knows a whole lot more of them, I'm hoping he can help his brother's out. 

We got out our books for pictures, and info, and breifly discussed Islam (which we'll get to more during religion week), and then the boys got to make their postcards. We put them up and voted, and I just realized I didn't take a picture of everyone's. 

Peyton got the most votes today, and has 30 cents in his jar, as Asa and I were a big fan of his 'Wish you were here' postcard  with the Minaret of Jam, and the yak on the mountain. Hayden and Calib both got a dime though, so they weren't left out. 

We scratched off our flag and our country on our board. 

And for dinner, Asa made the national dish of Afghanistan, Kabuli Palao (Ugh, spell check hates me lately, it wants to flag everything I type!) This dish is super important; a woman's marriage prospects depend on how well she can make this dish. Asa made it in the new dutch oven I got him for Christmas, and it was super pretty coming out of there, I should have taken a picture then. It's basically basmati rice, chicken thighs, carrots, almonds and raisins. Afghanistan is one of the leading producers of nuts and dried fruits, so not only did the raisins make sense, but we had dried apricots, too. Naan bread is a staple, so we added that to dinner as well. 

Our drink tonight was 'scalding hot green tea'. I love green tea, everyone else, not so much. (So I ended up drinking a whole lot of it, which is good- because I'm still trying to get over this cold.) 

So what did we think? The family as a whole, gives it 'One Spoon Up'. (Meaning only 1 out of 5 of us would like to have it again). 

It wasn't bad, but it was just ok. We decided we couldn't give 'half spoons', because that would be too much to keep track of, so a couple of us toyed with how to vote. Calib, meanwhile, HATED it. I didn't know how much he detested raisins until dinner tonight. We had a brussel sprouts type melt down. He did pick around them though, and do ok. Asa wouldn't be getting a ton of marriage proposals with that one, so he's lucky he already has me. 

After dinner, Peyton had the honor of coloring in the first country on the table. Nobody wanted to do it, because they were too worried about messing up the table. I did the outline around, and Peyton filled it in. 

Sometimes we'll have an activity, sometimes we won't, but today I had planned on having the boys go to the store and help me pick out some items we could send to the troops. But I am still dealing with this sore throat, and we had less than stellar weather today. After being out all morning picking up the 5K packets for Asa and Calib tomorrow and running errands, there wasn't any time before Asa logged in. So, instead we got online and donated to the USO. If you go online you can even pick what kind of gift you want to give.   Plus, we'll do other countries where US troops are deployed, so I'm sure we can send out a care package then. 

Anyway, that's it for our first country. There's not a lot for me to report, but I feel like if I let them pile up to do a few at once, it'll get to be a little much. 

1 down, 192 to go! 

Next Up: Albania