So, it’s two weeks to the day until we fly to Cambodia. Recent weeks have been spent finalising
training and teaching plans as well as talking kit and travel - the culmination
of months of preparation and anticipation for GOLD. Here’s a brief overview of our journey so
far.
Selection took place in September at INTOPS, a weekend
designed to open up international opportunities to guiding members. Having received our selection letters
sometime in November, we didn’t meet as a team until January at first briefing,
alongside the other seven GOLD teams for 2013.
The weekend provided an intro to both international travel
and the aims of GOLD, and served as a good opportunity for team mates to get to
know each other. We picked out team kit,
settled on a design for our fundraising challenge badge and established our
roles within the group. In keeping with
guiding custom there was plenty of nonsensical entertainment to accompany the
business at hand. Sadly, despite a valiant effort, team Cambodia, resplendent
in green, finished a sorry 7th in the Saturday evening quiz.
Intermittent phone conferences and Facebook planning tided
us over until second briefing in late April.
The focus of this weekend was more project-specific, with sessions
delivered on teaching English as a foreign language, running effective
leadership trainings and in-country practicalities including working with an
interpreter. This was a useful insight for Cambodia where we will be working
with interpreters throughout.
Events took an interesting turn on Saturday evening when
costumes were donned and team Cambodia transformed into the Spice Girls
reincarnated, enhanced by the addition of ‘GOLD Spice’. We soon had everyone on
their feet learning our moves. We
might yet have a future as a '90s tribute act.
The third and final team meeting before embarking was in
mid-June, this time at Rebecca’s in Leeds. Unlike previous briefings we were
flying solo as team Cambodia, granting us more time to focus on specific
session planning for the project. We
planned English language lessons, brainstormed leadership trainings for the
first week in Phnom Penh, drew together a resource list, and Jenny and Kirsty succeeded
in opening a team bank account...if that isn’t a success in itself we don’t
know what is!
Three successful weekends, several (sometimes trans-Atlantic)
phone conferences, countless e-mails and one Facebook page later and the team
are pretty much good to go. It’s hard to believe we fly out within a matter of weeks;
the journey has rocketed so far and no doubt our three weeks in Cambodia will
whizz by even quicker! What can we
say? Cambodia 2013, bring it on!
