Operation Smile Wrap Up and Pics

So, I just got back down south after completing operation smile... which was such a great experience I can't begin to describe it.
This morning at breakfast, a father gave me an Iraqi bill (in Iraq there are no coins, so I got the equivilent of a penny... but it is on paper bills) cause he said he wanted me to remember them. Believe me when I say I could never forget this experience. The only thing I didn't get to do (just cause of scheduling) was to get over to the hospital to see kids in recovery (which, I hear from volunteers who did operation last summer, is a profound experience).
But, I have uploaded pictures and wanted to point out a few interesting things to you.
First, many of the kids don't look like their deformities are too severe. This is for a couple of reasons... some only had cleft palate surgery so there were no visible areas that needed surgery. In addition, many of the kids were coming back for follow up surgery of some kind... so they already looked pretty good. It was mostly the young babies that had more severe problems that needed repairs.
There are a few pics of one little boy I grew attached to. Pic numbers 892 and 893. Leave it to me to find him in our group of 80. He is blind, autistic and also needed surgery. Well, after the trip he was told he couldn't have the surgery cause he has seizures and, being that operation smile is non profit, they don't want to assume the risk of more complicated surgeries like that. Well, the day we took the pictures we were doing art... which he just was not into. So I went down to the room and got a tambourine I had purchased the previous day and brought it up to him to play. He just loved it.
The other little boy I fell in love with you see in pictures 916 and 917. He was a little spitfire. He was having his 7th surgery. His father showed me his infant pictures and he had a severe cleft lip and palate (as well as other cranio facial issues involving ears and so forth).
The interesting thing about him is that he is kurdish so he didn't speak any Arabic. His father spoke limited arabic (enough to communicate with us... which was a bit difficult with everyone anyway as the Iraqi accent varies from the jordanian one... imagine if English were a foreign language and you had only learned in Texas and knew a southern drawl and then were talking to someone from Boston! A bit difficult to say the least) and would translate for him but his son was just so cute. At the time I left this morning his son hadn't gone in for his surgery (they do 12-15 a day) so hopefully all will go well.
Anyway, just wanted you to know pics were there and I was back and enjoying life.

Miss you all,
Ry