Well, it's been a fun few days since I last updated my blog!! ( I apologise for the number of exclamation marks in this blog post, I have been having a lot of fun, and so they just appear in my writing... I had written most of the post before I realised this and now I can't be bothered to go through everything and change it! - whoops, there's another.)
On Saturday, we started our 45th Birthday Event!! We have participants here from New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA and Sri Lanka, which is awesome! There are 11 Sri Lankans, 1 leader, and 10 girls, ranging from 12-15, so they're really young!! It's really good having them here though, and their English is very good. They're slowly starting to come out of their shells, and start talking a bit more - I'm sure by the end of the week, they'll be chattering away to us like anything.
Saturday was a fairly standard first day of an event, with all the usual activities - Sangam Tour, Neighbourhood Walk, House Rules, Event Briefing... blah blah blah and the WELCOME CEREMONY of course! Which was lovely as always - I nearly dropped the flower garlands, but ssh no one noticed apart from Hayley! After the welcome ceremony I jumped on skype to chat to Jennie and Jess which was awesome to speak to them again :D and I also managed to catch my mum! I haven't spoken to mum for a while (sorry Mum!) so it was good to catch up, even if it did mean I didn't go to sleep until around 12.30...
AND on Sunday, I had an early start - we climbed the water tower to watch the sun rise over Sangam, which is gorgeous! A lot of participants came up this time, maybe 15 of them... The Sri Lankan girls all chose to jump in the pool instead, and watching them splash around and having so much fun whilst I was on top of the water tower was just gorgeous. Seeing girls have fun like that is kind of the reason I'm in Guiding!
After this, we had a tour of Laxmi Road, where the participants get a chance to buy saris, punjabis, bangles and bindis. A lot of the Sri Lankan girls bought saris for their mums, which is very sweet. A lot of the other participants bought saris for their friends :P
Sunday afternoon was the first stop in the History Journey that I'm running, I gave them all an event that happened between 1909 - 1960, from WAGGGS history, and from general history, and they had to get into order. WWII starting caused some confusion - the Americans only really get taught when they joined the war in 1941! And Sophie just got it wrong.. 1932 indeed! After this, we had our international fair, which basically means we all eat lots of different sweets from around the world! What a fantastic night :P
I had Monday morning off, and I chose the fantastic activity of doing nothing! I really needed to just chill out and do not a lot, so it was fantastic!! I started at 1, with lunch. After lunch, Philippa was shadowing me, (the new SVs Jessica and Philippa don't have to run anything this time, but they follow us around, help us plan our activities, and we teach them as we're going, the same way that the previous SVs did for me) and we were VERY productive. We planned a whole session in around an hour and a half, and I thought it was going to take me allll afternoon! I was highly impressed! After that, we had the second installment of the History Journey, where we looked at some things that happened between 1960-2010, looking at guiding uniforms, guiding section names, badges, and some Lady BP quotes... I think it went well! After this, the tailors arrived to measure them all for their saris and punjabis, and then we set up for the pool movie! We had a big screen made, and we have an outdoor projector now, so we filled the pools with inflatables (which Aarti, our volunteer in training, and Philippa, had done a stunning job blowing most of them up!). They watched Surfs Up, but I hid out in my room and enjoyed the chance to just relax. It was a really good day for me, possibly my best day since I've arrived!
This morning (Tuesday), I also had the morning off! Today I chose to go shopping :D I bought some awesome pants, which are just indescribable - I will find a camera at some point and get some photos on this blog! I also bought a scarf, and a present for my secret friend!! This event, because it's a birthday event, we're doing secret friend, a bit like secret santa, but the idea is that you do something nice for your friend each day. It can be emotionally nice - a hug, or physically nice - a chocolate bar, whatever! and at the end of the event, we're going to reveal ourselves to our friend :D
I start work again in half an hour, and I can't wait for today - I'm running the next History Journey session this afternoon, and today it's Sangam history, and they're doing a giant treasure hunt basically :D Looking forward to it! This is the session that Philippa and I planned yesterday, and I'm really proud of it, so I hope they like it too! For my last half an hour off though, I will be checking my e-mails and listening to music, generally relaxing! I also need to get a new video out today... wooooo! 5 days to go!
That was a super long blog post considering it was only about four days! I hope you all enjoyed the information :P
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