Days 12 and 13

Day 12 was the day we headed off to pastures new and slightly further afield to train new leaders.  We grabbed a minibus at six and piled on with some friends from camp who were coming along to translate.  And off we went to Gyumri.  The journey passed quite quickly and we admired the sunset over the Armenian mountains, and swerved round the cows in the road.

We arrived a little after nine and checked into our quite lovely rooms.  Jade, Rachael and I shared and we quickly grabbed the food back and dived into the others' room to make crumbs there.  Guiders are always practical like this.

Jade commented that we were having a very civilised moment.  Only on GOLD would 6 girls perched on various articles of furniture around a little table in a room meant for three scoffing crisps sandwiches be civilised.  We had bought the bread by pointing at random and discovered that one of the them was filled with a layer of fresh herbs which were lovely and fragrant.  We also put paid to the daily jar of nutella.  But we chased the sandwiches with apricots (standard) and milky ways and being posessed of no cutlery we piled the crumbs on the table.

We reviewed our trainings and fell into bed, conscious of a job well done.

Day 13 was quite exciting as it was to be our first day training new leaders.  However, this was slightly less important than sampling the breakfast first thing and so we skipped along to the dining area to discover what delights awaited us.  Well, we uncovered salami and ham, cheese, apricots, nectarines, plums and three kinds of bread.  Also TEA WITH MILK!!!! Semi-colon capital d.

Then we collected all our resources and walked a circuitous route through Gyumri to our training.  Our trainings over the next 6 days all follow a similar pattern.  In each city we do a 2-day training with a variety of sessions devoted to different aspects of Guiding.  We will be working with women from different regions of Armenia who don't have any experience of Guiding but who expressed an interest in leading a Scout group.  Our job is to convince them that with a bit if training, that's one of the best decisions they could possibly make!

We began with a quick introduction and then a session on general Guiding.  The first day of each training has sessions on the role of the leader (me), learning and development (Jade) and programme planning (Rachel).  Then the second day picks up with forms and safety (Amy), finance and fundraising (Tori) and is rounded off with resources (Rachael).  We hope this will give new leaders a good insight into both the practical side of Guiding as well as the values of the movement and how much fun it is!

We learned something as well.  I know you will have been following the milk saga with bated breath and our inability to correctly buy milk in Armenia is the cause of much consternation and distress to both Rachael and myself.  During a break in the training - during which there was TEA WITH MILK - we copied down the Armenian for milk and hope to apply this info to our future expeditions.

After training we headed out for lunch at the Tashir pizza restaurant and wolfed down pizza by the slice.  Then we headed back to our rooms, evaluated our sessions and looked through the (mostly positive) feedback.  We took in a bit of the Olympic gymnastics in German and then ankled out to enjoy Gyumri.  Our enjoyment took the form of a slightly melted ice cream at around 16p each.  Can't whack that.

We went to the main square which was full of people in the evening and we met up with the Armenians who were showing us around.  We admired the fountains and the local park and we learned to play Pantomime which is like Charades but sillier.  We had a lovely night and a lovely sleep to follow.

Kisses from Team Armenia

P.S. When we return to Yerevan, there will be pictures.  Just imagine how exciting your life will become then!  You will be able to see what we see!