Thinking Day 2007

First off, I was sick & didn't go. However, I'd gone ahead and made a display about the Brownie Girl Scout Travel Bug to share, and I thought it would be a good place to introduce the girl scouts to geocaching. So... I sent my girls on without me!

Now, if they hadn't all been trained Program Assistants with 10+ years each under their belts as girl scouts, I wouldn't have let them go solo. But, because are - I figured it wouldn't come back to haunt me. It probably would have been a good idea to tell the girls that I hadn't actually registered for the event though. They showed up expecting a table for our display, and because I'd spaced it, they had to explain who they were, why I wasn't there, etc. etc. I apologized to the Event gal later (she forgave me).

Typically, Thinking Day is an event to teach our girls that there are other girl scouts all around the world just like them, doing the girl scout program. Our usual way to do this in our area is to have an event where each troop decides on a country to present. They learn about the country, dress up in traditional (or close to it) clothing, and offer some kind of food that's supposed to be popular there. In the past, we've presented on Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Germany again, etc. We invite various exchange students that are attending our local high schools (through AFS), and we usually have somewhere like 150 girls attend. It's a fun thing. In fact, my girls like it so well, they never even considered not going, even though I was sick!

With Diana's new job, we haven't been able to meet as a troop lately. We still are trying to work out a meeting time that works with sports, jobs, school, blah blah. So because we're not meeting, my troop wasn't actually involved in choosing a country. I thought the geocaching display would still work for the event. People had a lot of questions about it, and we will probably have a geocaching event coming up in June or something ;) The council has awarded us a grant to purchase GPS's, and I think they're getting four of them (yay!) Plus, it would be okay if I put it together. It's really the troop's responsibility to do the display when we do a country.

Everyone had a good time, and the travel bug girl scout doll was handed over to Katelyn, who is going to Pax Lodge in London, a Girl Scout World Center, later this month. She will drop her in a cache somewhere at Pax Lodge, and hopefully, another troop will grab her soon & get her over to Switzerland, where she's trying to go! Whoo Hoo!