Day 16

On Day 16 we were all packed and ready by nine and so we shimmied down to the lobby to catch up with a bit of the Olympics in Russian.  A friendly member of staff gave us a run down of the results.  How he knew the English for pole vault is a mystery to me.  So many people claim to have a little English but in reality have a level that I would describe as fluent.

We ambled round to the second day of training after breakfast carrying a giant backpack on our backs each, a rucksack on our fronts and between us some birthday cake (must keep upright), some balloons and our holdall full of resources.  One of Amy's balloons wriggled free of its restraints and made a break for freedom.  Quelle horreur!  The cake and I moved as one Guider and dashed after it bravely at a slow walk, dodging a stationary car and retrieving it in an act of heroism the like of which has scarce been seen before.

Sadly it popped before we arrived at training.  I can't prove that Amy did it on purpose but it brought my heriocs to naught.  Sad face.

Amy kicked off the day with a training of forms and safety.  This is quite a dry subject but and important one and Amy has created a session that's interactive and informative and all the participants got stuck in.  Our translators are brilliant and have been a godsend, but there are always things that don't come across.  First Aid has been redesignated First Help for instance.  And risk assessment definitely got lost in translation, so we have coined a new phrase: DANGER PLAN!!!!!

Amy can very properly say Danger Plan and Danger Form without sniggering.  Yours truly is somewhat less mature.  Next year's team note: in Armenia, we do Danger Plans.

In fact, risk assessors of the world unite!  Use a DANGER PLAN!!!!  It's much more exciting.  Maybe it will catch on.

The local telly popped in to interview Jade - you can see the clip a couple of posts below - and the trainings ran smoothly.  Tori encouraged teams to plan possible fundraising events and Rachael shared her expertise on the subject of resources and got everyone to create new games and ideas with very little to go on.  All the women at the session were lovely and there was so much enthusiasm.  They were particularly pleased to be able to attend as usually events like the training only run in Yerevan, the capital, so it was very important for the local community to benefit.  We handed out certificates and badges again, took lots of photos and said our goodbyes.

We loitered outside waiting for the bus to our next location: Ijevan.  We killed time entertaining the local populous by making a GOLD video with music and everything, and then disappointed them by quietly sitting and playing Uno.  

We arrived in Ijevan in the early evening and were glad to meet up with our new translators, Agnes and Lina, and to ditch our bags.  We had a stroll around in the evening and took in the town.  It's much smaller than our other two venues but quite pretty with trees lining the streets and a fountain in the square.  We went to the "best" cafe in the area.  There wasn't a menu but we were told they did sandwiches (cheese), pizza (ham, mushroom and olives) or lamajo.  Nope, no idea.  So we ordered some.  It turned out to be flatbread with minced beef and herbs inside.  Pretty good :D

We hopped into bed tired but looking forward to the next training. And we have been practising our new Armenian songs with actions very carefully.

Team Armenia living the dream,

GOLD love xxx