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I almost clicked by the title "Pakistani Musicians Play Dave Brubeck's Take Five ", but then curiosity got the better of me -- and am I glad. Take a listen: Sitars? Tabla drums? Violins? What? The Guardian featured the group in a recent article saying, The Sachal Studios Orchestra was created by Izzat Majeed, a philanthropist based in London. When Pakistan fell under the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq during the 1980s, Pakistan’s classical music scene fell on hard times. Many musicians were forced into professions they had never imagined — selling clothes, electrical parts, vegetables, etc. Whatever was necessary to get by. Today, many of these musicians have come together in a 60-person orchestra that plays in a state-of-the-art studio, designed partly by Abbey Road sound engineers. So while we are all so busy trying to get through school, remember you have a long life ahead of you and you need to do something besides work...maybe playing music. What do ...

Mortenson encounters Zahir Shah (Afghanistan's former king) and tells the Shah about his hope to open girls' schools in Afghanistan. The Shah, in turn, refers Mortenson to Sadhar Khan. Mortenson hires a jeep, and after escaping a mine field and a shoot out between opium smugglers, finally finds Sadhar Khan. The " mujahadeen shouted with joy and wrapped the startled American in an embrace. "Yes! Yes! You're Dr. Greg! My comandhan Abdul Rashid has told me about you. This is incredible . . . The Khan catalogued a sea of schoolless girls, far more vast than anything Morteson had imagined" (Mortenson and Relin 329-330). From what you've read in Three Cups of Tea do you think Mortenson will be as successful in Afghanistan as he was in Pakistan? Why or Why not?

Greg Mortenson's focus for the CAI is empowering girls through education. On a trip to Korphe, the reporter who accompanies Mortenson is amazed by the pluck of Jahan, a young woman educated in Korphe's school. "Here comes this teenage girl, in the center of a conservative Islamic village, waltzing into a circle of men, breaking through about sixteen layers of traditions at once: She had graduated from school and was the first educated woman in a valley of three thousand people. She didn't defer to anyone, sat down right in front of Greg [Mortenson], and handed him the product of the revolutionary skills she'd acquired--a proposal, in English, to better herself, and improve the life of her village" (Mortenson and Relin 300). One of the themes of Three Cups of Tea is that education can solve the problem of terrorism. "[T]error doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens...

After 9/11 Greg Mortenson received a message from the American embassy ordering U.S. "civilians to immediately evacuate the country the embassy called ' the most dangerous place for American nationals on Earth'" (Mortenson and Relin 273). As Greg Mortenson noted earlier, the media circus descended on Pakistan, "a solid mass of caffeine and deadline-fueled humanity" (262) where "green reporters who know nothing about the region stand up on the roof in flak jackets and act like their backdrop of the Margala Hills is some kind of war zone instead of a place to take kids on the weekends" (264). When Mortenson met with reporters he "tried to talk about the root causes of the conflict--the lack of education in Pakistan, and the rise of the Wahhabi madrassas , and how that led to problems like terrorism" (266). Do you think the media helped draw attention to the root cause of terrorism, or the lack of education, as Mortenson describes it, or do...

When fighting breaks out between Pakistan and India the villagers of northern Pakistan are forced to flee to a refugee camp located in an unpleasant and inhospitable location. Before building the school in Korphe, Greg Mortenson had to build a bridge, and in this instance, Mortenson has to build "the first uplift water scheme in the history of northern Pakistan" (Mortenson and Relin 221). What do the cherry trees symbolize for the people of Gultori?

In Three Cups of Tea , Greg Mortenson goes to Pakistan intending to climb K2, "The Savage Peak", but as the title of chapter one suggests, he fails, or does he? How was Mortenson among the real heroes of the expedition to K2? Why would you make (or not make) the same kind of sacrifice, a sacrifice of a life goal?