So today, Jen and I attended part of a State-level training for Guider Trainers here in Victoria, as special guests! We'd met Lynne Emblin, the State's Training Advisor, when we were up at the camp in Chiltern in the spring. She invited us to come along to today's training and give a talk about Guiding in Canada. So we did!I am embarrassed to say that I actually had to do some RESEARCH into Canadian Guiding in order to feel confident at the training. I've been a Guider "in the trenches", as it were, for a long time, but for one reason or another, my grasp on Guiding history has been fuzzier than I would like. Add to that all the programming changes that have happened in the past few years, and the restructuring of our administration in Ontario this past year, and it was quite a challenge for me to ensure we were giving accurate information.
It was a blast, though. I put together a powerpoint presentation about the different branches of Guiding. I borrowed (acquired? stole?) a whole lot of images off the National website - the online store was a treasure trove for graphics of badges and pins and uniforms! Jen and I came up with a song, game or activity typical to each level of Guiding, so as we went through the presentation, we broke up all the talk with fun stuff. And at the end we taught some Canadian songs and games, and it was great.
As a thank you, we received our very own, certified, limited-edition "Tori" bears, the official mascot of Guiding here in Victoria. They're so cute! I like that they're wearing the Australian Guide uniform - what a great thing for us to be able to share with our own units when we return to Canada. And did I mention that they're cute??
The other great thing is that we made contacts with a number of leaders who would like us to come and play with their units. We're thrilled. Since we've been in summer holidays for the last two months or so, the number of Guiding activities has been limited. Looks like things are about to pick up!
PS - once again, Metlink was conspiring against us. We got to the train platform this morning to discover that, once again, our train wasn't going to be running. Gah. And then at another point on our journey when we had to switch trains at an unfamiliar station, we almost missed our outgoing train because we couldn't figure out how to get to that side of the platform! Thank goodness that Kathy, one of the Guiders at the training, was kind enough to drive us home. The trip out to get to the training was stressful enough.
