I walked through stinging nettles two hours ago and my legs are still tingling...

Here's a little game that Peace Corps likes to play with new volunteers.  First, they tell them to plan and implement a community project by their fourth week in country.  The new volunteers will be given no financial resources, except for a lesson on Community Organizing tools like, "find out when everyone's schedule is, so that you won't be weeding fields in the middle of the winter" and "Make a map of your community so you'll know where things should go" and "figure out what your communities highest priorities are by making a neat little matrix."  They'll tell the volunteers to make sure that our projects meet the community's wants and needs and have a sustainable impact.  The volunteers will be encouraged to meet the mayor and plenty of other strangers and to ask their help in designing and implementing a project.  Because they've only been studying the language for a month, they're not going to be able to say much, but some major points will get across. Some mayors will ask the Americans to repair the roads, others will ask for a new irrigation system.  Ours encouraged us to teach the children English and said that she really loved sports, so maybe we could do something with that.
So we planned a sports day, and put up a sign at the school inviting the children of the town to the football field, where we'd repainted the goalposts a brilliant white, the sustainable part of our project.  We painted a map of town on the sheet, and had the kids sign it and mark the locations of their home as a gift to the town.  Some of us played football with the kids, always a winner, and some of us taught Yoga, which was a surprise hit, even with the 14-year old boys.  I got ambitious and set up an orienteering course, drew a map, translated "Orienteering" into "Depee" which literally means "Towards," gave a quick lesson on English words for cardinal directions, gave them some compasses to use and pointed out the first flag, at the top of a hill.  The kids were superexcited to find a flag, but had no idea how to use a compass or find the next flag.  So I ran up to the top of the hill, and yelled for them to go West.  They had completely forgotten the lesson on directions.  "Aravmooq!" I yelled, and pointed to the west.  They ran west, and found the next flag.  I led them around the course, and they had a great time.  Three more times, with three groups of kids, I ran up the hill, pointed them towards flags, then ran them down.  At the end of the day, we played a 30-person football match with all the kids in town that remained.  With no language skills and only a few dollars out of our pocket, we had a pretty good community project.  By the time it was presented in Powerpoint to the other volunteers, it was a pretty great community project. 
Peace Corps will then play the second round in the game.  They'll tell the volunteers to host a July 4th party for their families.  They'll tell them to share their American culture.  The volunteers will get excited.  Burgers! Hot Dogs! Fireworks! They'll think of all the things they love from home.  They'll think of beers by the grill, watermelon seeds and water balloon fights.  Here, Peace Corps will say, is all the money you need to make this happen.  Don't buy booze with it, but spend it however you see fit.  Go for it, have a blast.
But here the difficulties will start.  Where to have the party?  50 people is a big crowd.  There's no public space in a small village to accomadate that many people.  One of the families agrees to let us use their storage room on the 1st floor.  A little carpentry on some tables, and appropriation of furniture, and there is enough space for everyone.  We hunt around the main town for food and supplies.  The butcher provides ground beef for the burger.  We find watermelon, we find Cokes and ice cream for floats, we find water balloons and sparklers.
The 4th finds us missing a few essential resources.  There's no grill to be had, so we put the patties on a chickenwire fence laid over wood that has been burned down to coals.  The water's off in most of town, so Kathryn and I walk to the other end of town to a house with water to fill the waterballoons, then carefully lug the bucket back.  The grills not quite ready yet, so we play waterballoon toss with the kids, a big but quick succcess.  We notice that mostly women and children have come, and few men.  The ones that have come seem to be searching around for something.  One of them finds a bottle of beer someone has brought.  Aha! He says, and cracks it, pouring a round.  But it is just one bottle of beer, and it's not a drinking kind of party.  Dissapointed, they retreat upstairs to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.  We cut the burgers into sliders, because Armenians are usually wary of new foods.  They politely try them, then eagerly devour the Chicken Khorovats in an American Glaze that we've also made.  We've made a few side dishes, but nothing like the decadent spread of yogurts, salads, breads, and cakes at a typical Khorovats.  There's little time for us to sit and enjoy the meal.  We're running around bringing in different foods and shooing the chickens away from our grill.  At the end of the feast, we wash 50 sets of dishes in a bucket-assembly line.  By the end of it, we're exhausted, our host families have tried a bit of hamburger, listened to American music (we dance with the kids to Elvis and the Beach Boys) and watched their kids run around with sparklers.  They politely thank us and head home.
Here's the lesson Peace Corps likes to teach with this little game.  If you come into the country, listen to their needs and give them what they want and what you can offer, things will be surprisingly easy for you and they'll appreciate it.  If you come into the country with plenty of money and give them what you want, with resources they don't have, you'll end up stressed and exhausted and they'll politely thank you and head home.