Work Stuff

I realized the importance of the work I do about 3 days in to my site visits in Germany. After a busy training in Heidelberg, we loaded into the rental car and took off for Bamberg and Schweinfurt, worlds apart from the life I know in Italy. At Darby, although there are complaints about how small the base is and how little action anyone sees, soldiers here are generally happy go lucky and relaxed. Things are different in Germany. In Bamberg and Schweinfurt, everyone is on edge, and there is a sense of overwhelming panic and doom lingering in the air everywhere you go – from the Taco Bell (yes, there is a Taco Bell) to the barracks, everyone seems to be waiting for the inevitable bad news that is always on the way.

The communities I visited are facing the murder of 5 soldiers at the hand of another solider, severe mental illness, the suicide of an officer’s wife in her home on base, a fatal car accident involving soldiers just home from Iraq… And all of that just in the one week I was in town.

So, the bad news is, children in these areas, already pulled thousands of miles away from their home, are surrounded by death and destruction every day. The good news is, while seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, Girl Scouts provides some sense of normalcy in these girls’ lives when everything (and often times, everyone) else around them is going to hell. And faith in that fact is what gets me through the hardest days over here…

I know this isn’t the update on Germany you were probably looking for, but I wanted to share a little bit about the work we’re doing over here, in between tales of my latest and greatest vacations. Don’t worry though, I’ll give a full run down of just how cool Heidelberg is, complete with photos from the castle illumination and fireworks display we caught on Saturday night in the next edition.