Days 21 and 22

It was a little strange to get up on the morning of Day 21 and prepare for leader camp as we’d said good-bye to lots of people the night before.  But we did it anyway and made sure we had all the resources we would need.  Which translates as giant holdall and giant Ikea bag.  Everything in the Ikea bag had originally been in our backpacks.  In fact, before we left for Armenia, Rachael had conducted a super-human flip-chart paper squishing operation to fit loads of extra bits pieces in her bag to bring with us.  It is now a mystery to us how it ever got in there in the first place.  Thank goodness we’re not bringing it back.  Next year’s team, knock yourselves out.

We’d been told that we were going to be having leader camp not as a camp but at a Summer House belonging to the family of one of the participants.  And that there would be beds!  Very exciting prospect for very tired GOLDies.

We packed everything up at the hostel, popped out for lunch and then returned to catch up with a bit of the Artistic Gymnastics.  We always seem to catch really bizarre sports and we spent some time debating whether a team 5 synchronised gymnasts dancing and doing acrobatics with a ball is really a sport.  But it was amazing and as they had 5 balls between them, I suppose it must be a sport.

We took taxis with all our stuff to meet the rest of the leader camp crew.  This was more complicated than it sounds and as we only knew our meeting place was near HSBC, we had a couple of issues.  A very kind (and patient) member of the hostel staff gave the driver some directions and then Anahit, the Armenian GOLD coordinator spoke to him on the phone.  This confused our poor driver and he went to fetch the hostel lady again and told her that the two sets of directions had been to different places.

The thing about GOLD though, is that little potential disasters happen all the time, but they all always work out in the end.  It’s uncanny.  And after living in perpetual confusion, apprehension and panic for an initial couple of days, you learn to let go and just accept that what will happen will happen.  And probably in its own time.  And that’s all good :D

Armenian taxi drivers are a menace though.  While they deign to drive on the road, the emphatically ignore lanes, other cars, seatbelts, traffic laws, passenger safety, common sense and most of the laws of physics.  They often chat on their mobiles with one hand, smoke with the other and somehow shimmy the car through the traffic.  We couldn't see how they did it with our hands over our eyes.  They are the only cars where the last person to call shotgun has to ride in the death seat.  I mean passenger seat.

We survived the journaet and we all piled onto a bus that came to pick us up. It was yellow and magic schoolbus style and we crawled and jolted 50m up the road before stopping to pick up food.  This was wedged in around us and once a watermelon was parked not-at-all securely under my seat, we set off.  We were warned that the journey would be very bumpy and indeed it was.  There were no seatbelts or barriers in fron of our bench at the back of the bus and much hand-eye-foot coordination was required to keep self, stuff, pot bag and watermelon in place.  Much as it pains me to offer you substandard photography, this picture shows you exactly how still I was able to hold the camera.

It did make us laugh though and we were cheerfully bouncing around when Anahit staggered down the bus to inform us that the bumpy bit would start now as the road wasn’t very good and the summer house was remote.

Oh.

We formed a quick danger plan, the basis of which seemed to be that if I fell off the seat first into the stairwell, that the others would try and fall on me, or at a pinch, on the watermelon.

We eventually arrived at a little after nine, unloaded and were taken on a tour of the house.  The place was enormous with a huge garden for us to do trainings in and with five bedrooms for us all to crash in.  Luxury :D  Once we’d settled in, dinner was laid on in the form of barbequed pork and veg and potatoes and piles of salad and bread.  Once we’d stuffed in as much as we could, we conducted operation washing up and retired to the world’s most enormous sofa for tea and cake.

We spent a lovely evening getting to know all the leaders and asking lots of questions about Armenian culture and history.  Particularly interesting is the Armenian language which is quite unique and has its own rather beautiful alphabet.  The alphabet invented in the 5^th century to unite the country’s language and dialects and Armenians celebrate its creation every year.

As the wee-small hours started to become not-so-wee-small, we headed for bed amid much yawning.  We debated with the Armenians what time they wanted training to start on the morrow.  They suggested getting up at nine and breakfast at ten and this was met with disbelief.  We agreed that it would mean starting training quite late.

As it turned out, that wasn’t the problem.  They thought that was far too early to get up.

Oh.

We think nine is a nice lie-in so we were all ready and downstairs on Day 22 for breakfast by ten.  However, Armenian time doesn’t run like normal time and you have to add on anything between one and four hours which we’d forgotten to do. So half eleven found us sitting down to a lovely breakfast of eggs, sausage, bread, salad, yoghurt, cereal, cheese and olives.  Every meal was like a feast and we were all very full when we sat down to begin the days training.

We did this outside all seated in a circle on various forms of garden furniture.  A brief skirmish granted Jade and I the swinging chair.  Excellent.  The weather at the summer house is much cooler and it’s very pleasant outside in the shade.  There was a bit of a breeze and the altitude we’d climbed to meant that the airless quality of the capital was missing.

The purpose of the weekend was to share ideas with the Armenian leaders and we based our sessions around the nine points of the Armenian programme.  In the morning we took on the points entitled Learn Yourself, Homemaker and Healthy Lifestyle.  We also asked each participant to decorate a balloon baby and look after it for the weekend.  The session continued amidst much saddening popping of children.  Apart from babies belonging to myself(baby Carrie, since you ask), Rachael and Rachel, all of whom were safely tucked up in bed.  Win!

A wonderful lunch was dished up to us and we sampled some more Armenian delights before moving onto a session of crafting ideas for the afternoon.  Amy and Rachael shared a variety of projects based on the Armenian Guiding point World of Art and everyone got stuck in with the paint, scissors, glue and sequins.

In the evening, we split ourselves up to share a variety of songs and games with the leaders while Jade, Rachael and Amy pulled off a Great British Bake-Off in the kitchen and rustled up Cottage pie for everyone.  How did Armenians like our signature dish?  Well, there was no bread and it didn’t actually go down all that well.  But a cheerful evening was had by all and by 4:00am, everyone had gone to bed.