The story so far

Apologies for not blogging for a few days; we have been very busy and have had no internet connection.

Anyway, a lot has happened in the last three days!

After a lovely nights sleep in the air conditioned hotel room we had a quick breakfast- which involved an awful lot of carbs as well as hash browns (Jess's favourite!) before setting off to the airport for the second time. When we arrived we were a bit concerned about the very lengthy queue, so we quickly joined and began the wait...

We soon discovered that we were on "Island Time" and so everything happened very slowly. The man at the check in desk was exceptionally slow and so we were all a little stressed because we only had about half an hour to check in all of our bags (we have a lot). However, this went surprisingly well and so we ran to Gate 9 very quickly. Here we sat down and waited, and waited, and waited without little knowledge of why we were waiting so long. This went on for about an hour before we were called up to speak to one of the airport staff. They told us that the plane was delayed and that we would have to wait until approximately 12 o clock. We thought this wasn't too bad and so we sat down and read and wrote our diaries. Then at 12 we were told that we would have to wait another 5 hours!!!! This made us very sad :(

We were given food vouchers and told to wait- more fun times in the airport! Finally we were able to board at 6 after a whole day at the airport. But, we were all just really happy and excited to get on our way to Guyana!

The plane was very small and a little bit shaky but it was only a short flight. As soon as we landed the heat hit us. Guyana is HOT!

It was lovely to meet Erin at the airport- a young leader who met Jess last year. She was so friendly and welcoming and we immediately felt at home. We jumped into a bus and were soon on our way to 253 Foreshaw Street- our home for the next three weeks. We were not able to see much of Guyana because it was very dark but we were still very excited.

We arrived and discovered that we were not staying where we thought we were going to. So now we are staying in Mrs Ps house- a lovely old lady. Because of the amount of rain that Guyana has had recently, the downstairs of Mrs Ps house is flooded at the moment so we had a small bed situation- 4 places to sleep and 6 of us. This was soon resolved by the creative use of some coat hangers, two blow up mattresses and some shoes.

We were very tired when we arrived and so just went straight to bed.

Sunday morning brought Deborah's birthday! We had cards, presents and candles and went on a trip to the swimming pool at a hotel. The taxi journey there gave us the opportunity to see some of the sights of Guyana. It was good to see some of the cultural differences between here and the UK. The swimming pool was really lovely because we were all feeling hot. We also had a nice meal together and learnt how to play Monopoly Deal. I feel we will be playing this a lot over the next three weeks!

We went shopping twice to pick up supplies, including cake for Deborah and lots and lots of water. We cooked a pasta dish and shared a meal with Mrs P. It was really lovely :D

This morning we were all excited to actually get stuck into our project. We walked to head quarters- it is just a short way. On the way we experienced some horse drawn carts careering down the road and a lot of honking taxis/buses. It was quite an experience!

Once at head quarters we met with the Guyanese GOLD team and discussed all of the plans for project. There was some confusion over some of the timetabled activities but we managed to sort most things out. The girls on the other GOLD team were really helpful and had a lot of really good ideas to help with the planning.

After a pizza lunch, we then got into a bus and travelled to one of the local schools. This was all a bit bizarre because it was unclear what the purpose of the visit was. We met with a teacher, who is also a Guide leader, and with her guidance and the Guyanese GOLD team we re-negotiated achievable objects specifically related to the environmental aspect of our project. We are very happy with the new plan and cannot wait to put it into action :D

In the way home we stopped off to buy more food for dinner and visited the fruit stall. We are now sat in Mrs Ps garden eating mango and planning for tomorrow. We are going to be training young leaders in leadership skills- this will involve lots of Games and brainstorming. It is going to be really fun and we hope lots of girls can come!

LOGL

Team Guyana
xxxxxx