The day of hotness

Last night we really enjoyed watching Little Miss Sunshine on Bec's laptop.  We also had popcorn and orange juice- a real treat! Unfortunately the bowl that we put the salty popcorn in had a hole in the bottom that we did not know about and at the end of the evening Jess had a lap full of salt.

This morning Miriam made everyone toast using some slightly old bread and Mrs Ps roti late on the gas hob. Everyone agreed it was a success and toast might be on the menu when we get back from camp. When the washing up was done we walked to Guiding HQ so that we could have a chat to Berle about the final details of camp and get measured by her seamstress for our Guyanese dresses. We had to wait for a little while for Berle and the seamstress to arrive, but in the meantime we chatted to Oshelle- one of the girls that works in the office. The seamstress arrived first- we were all very excited that she was called Miriam too. She was very lovely and chatted to us about what kind of style we wanted. After a few quick sketches we finally agreed on the design and then she got busy measuring us. We are all really excited about the prospect of our dresses being ready on Saturday- we think they are going to look really good!

Berle arrived but was not around for very long because a new Guide group was having its first meeting today somewhere in Georgetown. This is a very positive sign for the Guyana Girl Guides Association :D We quickly asked all of our important questions; these were mainly about timings, resources and how many girls might turn up. The answers were fairly vague but we are very flexible and (hopefully) ready for most situations!

After all of this we split into two groups. Bec, Jess and Miriam went to Nigel's to pick up extra food for camp so that we won't get hungry if the meals end up being very far apart. On their way to meet the other group they picked up juice from the fruit man because it is extremely hot in Georgetown today- the hottest it has been so far. The juice was very tasty and cooled them down a little on their long walk.

Deborah, Clare and Amelia waited back at HQ for Erin to arrive and take them resources shopping at the market. Erin was a little bit late and so they had fun reading some of the very old books in HQ and sleeping. When Erin arrived, they got on a bus to the town centre, namely the fabric shops. The bus coincidently passed Miriam, Bec and Jess on the way and so they jumped in to and enjoyed the crazy loud bus music.

We went into several fabric shops and looked at lots of beautiful African prints before we decided on two different patterns. Half of the team will have the red coloured fabric and the other half will have the blue and orange. We are all very happy with our purchases :).

Next, we split again so that Jess, Amelia and Miriam went off to the bank to sort out the finances and get some money out to pay for rent and camp etc, and Deborah, Clare and Bec went with Erin to change personal money and buy all of the resources that we need for the next week of camp. Both experiences were fairly stressful. The bank group went into the first bank and joined a very long queue. We waited and waited and waited- in the end we were there for slightly more than an hour and when we got to the end of the queue we were told that we could not take any money out. It was incredibly frustrating but at least the bank had air conditioning. We then walked to another bank and were nearly denied access because we arrived after closing time (2 o'clock). Thankfully, our pleading worked and we were able to join another long queue. Finally we reached the end and the cashier was very helpful and let us have our money- phew!

Meanwhile, the other team were braving the heat on a resources shopping mission. They went to Mr Phagoo's shop which was a very bizarre experience- a bit like going back in time. You have to ask for each item one at a time and then Mr Phagoo goes and finds it for you. This sounds like good service but is in fact an incredibly slow way of shopping. They then went on a bit of a wild goose chase around the city centre in an attempt to find white pillow cases so that we can make plate bags on camp. This was a very difficult task and any that they found were very expensive. But this is GOLD and we quickly changed our plans and bought white fabric instead. We just have more sewing to do!

After two hours of intense shopping and standing in queues we all met up at the Guyana store; a massive shop full of random items to buy. We did a bit of souvenir shopping and then moved on to some other local shops where they sell locally made craft items. There were so many lovely things and we had lots of fun choosing things to buy; jewellery, hammocks, bags, sandals and purple hard wood bowls and boxes. However, very quickly we became too hot and decided that we had had enough of shopping so we got taxis home via HQ so that we could pay for camp and drop the fabric off.

Once back we had a very late lunch- at about 5 o'clock- and went and got more juice from the fruit man. We are all feeling a lot cooler now and we enjoyed eating watermelon and mango whilst sitting in the garden.

Tonight we have to pack (could be quite stressful) and generally prepare for camp. It may be an early start tomorrow morning...

LOGL

Team Guyana
xxxxxx


Ps. As you have probably already realised we will not be able to blog in the next 3 days because we are camping in a field somewhere (we don't quite know yet but all will become clear soon). We will be back on Friday.