The Big Book Shop

Have you ever been in a book store and attempted to buy books in a language that isn't your own?  Hundreds of dollars worth of books?

Me neither...

Until today.

It was only when I arrived at the bookstore that I fully understood what a huge undertaking it was going to be.  A lack of language and a disconnect from the needs of the school combined with the fact that all the books were wrapped in plastic made what I thought would be a fairly straight forward task into a fairly overwhelming one.

But with my friend Tyra to talk things over with and her son Kenzie to give some age appropriate recommendations we managed to fill 3 HUGE tote bags full of flash cards and learn to read books and encyclopedias and comics and older readers too.

Needless to say the staff were somewhat surprised when I piled the overflowing bags onto the counter and no less so when I explained that I lived in remote West Papua and that I had been collecting donations in order to supply a village school with some books to start a library.

I wished that I had taked some video of the shop and the staff and in particular the receipt printing out!!

Photos will have to suffice...

I'm in the bookstore ready to go.  This is before I realised how difficult the job was going to be...

One little helper!  I enlisted the help of Tyra and Kenzie - one primary school teacher and one primary school student.  In other words, experts!

4 big tote bags full of books.  Yes, two of them have guns on them.  I didn't notice that until I got home and took the picture.

One mermaid sister requested that her donation be spent on books about ocean health!  Ocean creatures, next best thing. (I'm still on the lookout for books on ocean health if anyone has any recommendations)

2 book fairies scouting for books and one very long receipt at the end of the day!

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Thank you so much to everyone who so willingly donated to this project.  It couldn't have happened without you.