Elisabeth is Morocco Bound!

Yes, just like those classic funny guys, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, our own Elisabeth is Morocco bound at the end of February. She'll spend leap day in Rabat having arrived the Wednesday before and leaving March 1.

Why, you may ask? Well.... she made AMIS International European Middle School Honor Band. (AMIS stands for The Association for Music in International Schools.) The Middle School Honor band rotates different locales each year and this year it is Morocco. She'll stay with a host family. Adults accompanying the students will stay at the Ibis Hotel (the same chain where we stayed in Paris.)

The audition is recorded by the music teacher and sent to a judging panel. She's been working on the piece since September with her music teacher, Femke. Femke suggested that she see each piece as a story to help play it with expression. She only had one mistake in her audition.

The High School Honor Band is going to London. We'll know November 7 if Julia-Anne has made it. Flutes are more competitive then trumpet. Our fingers are crossed!

Girl Scout Training Where? In Heidelberg!! - Part 2

While back in Virginia, I explored the GS Overseas website and saw the notice for the Keys to Leadership Workshop in Heidelberg, Germany. It looked like an annual event for teen girls where they could take workshops such as Program Aide (PA), Leader-In-Training (LIT), or Counselor-in-Training (CIT). I sighed because it looked to me as if JA was not going to be able to do any training. With no car and still new to Europe, I had no idea of how we would make it. JA is the only Senior GS in The Hague Neighborhood so she was feeling a little lonesome and really needed to connect with other overseas Seniors.

This is where networking comes in.

The Hague Neighborhood OCC, Susan, emailed info on the workshop to the leaders to see if any of they or any Cadettes would be interested. I emailed back that JA was but would need a ride. Through conversations, we worked out that Susan was going, JA was going and I was going too. Susan and I signed up for the "Bully-Free Zone" training workshop for adults. JA and I would be riding up with Susan and her family. They had brought over a Toyota van from the States so had room for us.

To make sure I was good to go, I filled out the volunteer paperwork, went through Orientation and did Basic Training Online.

During the car ride, I learned the value of TomTom (GPS navigational systems), packing food for the road, patience and a sense of humor as part of the equipment to pack for a trip.

The program took place at Heidelberg Middle School in Patrick Henry Village, an army post, on a weekend Friday to Sunday. We borrowed sleeping bags since we'd be sleeping on gym floors. JA left a little early from school. Us, Susan and her husband, Chris, and their 3 children were on the road around 3;30 pm. Guess what? There's Friday night traffic here too. Of course, it could have been daily traffic and not driving, I wouldn't know. We packed sack lunches for the road so as not to have to stop for a meal.

We had our first experience of driving on the autobahn. There are no posted speed limits in long stretches. JA enjoyed taking pictures out the window. It was also nice to have hills in the scenery once we entered Germany from the mostly flat Netherlands.

We arrived at the post about 10:30 pm, after a 7 hour drive. We had missed the evening events but it was good to be there. We turned in our paperwork, found a corner of the gym to sleep and did the best we could. If we had been one of the first to arrive, we could have used a tumbling mat under our sleeping bags. Some girls had air mattresses that seemed the size of a full bed. Lights were out at 11 pm. Those wanting to talk when to the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR). All was quiet at midnight.

The sun rose with the gym lights being turned on at 7 am. We were a little stiff but had made it through the night. Breakfast was catered and we had deli meat, cheese, scrambled eggs, potatoes, sausage, bacon, fruit, sweet rolls, coffee, tea and milk. There was real dishes, silverware and cups that were scraped into plastic trash bags same as if we had been on a camping trip. Only, we didn't have to do the dishes, just stack them.

JA is good about making acquaintances and starting up conversations. She had already met a few girls stationed in Germany who were working on their Gold Award and getting tips from them. She went off to LIT training. Susan and I were next door at Bully Free Zone.

The premise of the workshop was to train teams of leaders and teen scouts to put on workshops for girls K-8 to help them recognize, refuse and report bullying. USAGSOS-NA had received a Department of Justice and GSUSA grant to develop Project Anti-Violence Education programs with the focus on bullying. The teens would run the workshops with the younger girls and the adults acted as advisors. The goal is to make girls able to recognize bullying, refuse the bully or refuse being a bystander to the bullying, and if that doesn't work, to be able to report it. Because it was a grant, we had agreed by taking the class that we would run one workshop this Fall and submit the followup paperwork by Dec 15. The workshop should be offered to both Girl Scouts and non-Girl Scouts in our neighborhoods. After Dec 31, the workshop would be made available to other communities to use.

The workshop was presented mainly by two Senior scouts from Britain and their leader who had put on this workshop back home. Susan and I were two adults who would subsequently be responsible for training Teens to run the program. there were other teens in the room who were being trained to put on the workshop. It was wonderful to see them participate. The facilitator used the "2:1" rule which meant that two girls had to say something to one adult. The goal was to empower the girls to take the lead. The girls there had either experienced bullying or had seen it done in their school setting so it was very personal to them.

After the day's training, we went to downtown Heidelberg for some sightseeing and dinner. We saw the Neckar River and some of the downtown area. Because the streets in European towns are so small (remember most of these cities were built before cars), most parking is underground. We did a quick shuffle to take the pod off the top of the car to be able to park and then put it back on again for the trip back to the Village. Dinner was out on the patio and delicious.

We got back in time to participate in the "luau" on Saturday night. Many of the girls were wearing plastic grass skirts. Flower leis were everywhere. Girls were dancing, eating snacks, playing card games, hanging out and having fun. The adults were talking or dancing or eating, though talking was sometimes hard with the loudness of the music. Probably a third of the girls were first year cadettes and they were so happy to be one of the big girls now. Lots of them got their program aide training this weekend. I could see acted out in front of me the theme, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."

Every troop had to do kapers. JA was assigned on Saturday night to help clean a bathroom and then on Sunday to help clean up after breakfast and the to do a bathroom. Each troop did 3 kapers and since we weren't sure to be in on Friday, she was doubled up on Sunday. It gave her another way of meeting girls. It was wonderful to see how well all the girls worked together and got the job done - the advisors really did just advise.

Sunday morning was a quiet time of eating breakfast, packing up and one more workshop. Susan signed JA up for "College 101." Susan and I went to the Advisor's Lounge where we heard a delightful presentation by a leader about dealing with stress. Her life was one of super involvement along with health issues. We couldn't eliminate stress from our lives. But what we could do is deal with them with humor and laughter and learn to give 100% of ourselves to the person or task at hand.

Upon leaving, there were all the hugs and laughter and best wishes that you would expect at the end of a gathering like this. The girls and leaders go back to their own neighborhoods richer for the experience. The picture at the beginning of this post is the Heidelberg patch that JA bought along with a t-shirt that read "Not a damsel in distress - a Girl Scout in Heidelberg."

GS leaders and trainers are the same the world over. They love GS. They love the girls. They have so much knowledge and enthusiasm to share with other adults who also love GS and girls. The assistant CEO of USAGSO-NA who participated in the workshops and at the luau is just as enthusiastic and inspiring as Jan Verhage of GSCNC.

JA and I went to Noon Mass at the chapel on the post which was a lovely taste of home. We took off around 2:30 pm and made it back home in 6 hours - less traffic. Autobahn was just as fast which made slowing down when entering the Netherlands feel even slower.

The next girl's event is "Hanging in Heidelberg" in February 2008.

1600 Kilometers or 1000 Miles

7 October is a day that I (Terry) will remember as one of the more memorable days of our stay here in the Netherlands. It is on that day that I reached the milestone of 1600 kilometers on my bike. 1600 kilometers translates into 1000 miles!

On the right is a picture of my bike.

This is just a plain bike...no gears (meanng that it is in second gear - even on inclines) and handbrakes (to stop you backpedal). I bought it on a cold rainy Saturday in February and about 2 weeks later I attached a bike computer to keep track of the distance and time) and soon the bike my main means of getting around and about.

Now I have biked in the worst and best weather that the Netherlands has to offer. When I rode it to work for the first time it was the coldest - and wettest - day of the new year and I ended up at work throughly exhausted and soaked from the waist down. The total trip that day was around 15 kilometers (9.5 miles) but it seemed a lot longer. When the sun is out and the days long, the pleasure of riding a bicycle and missing all the traffic is a wonderful feeling. Now a days my commute to work is around 4 kilometers (depending on the route because there are a couple of options) and takes at the most 15 minutes. What a contrast from Virginia when it would take me upwards of an hour to go 12.5 kilometers (8 miles).

Since it has been nearly 35 years since I last sat on a bicycle seat, getting used to the idea that my legs had to be in constant motion as well as totally aware of what is going around me was a whole new learning experience. Fortunately here in the Netherlands riding a bicycle is a very civilized idea. There are bicycle paths or lanes on all major streets. Other paths allow you to travel between cities; Amsterdam, for example, can be reached by bicycle, but could take a long time (may be 5 or 6 of steady pedaling).

It may turn out that I may get another bike before the next 1,600 kilometers comes on this bike. But the fact that I have managed to get this far is just too hard to believe at times.