district exec

well, what a palaver.
semantic arguements about the exact age kids should be made to go into explorer scouts, and if they dont like it they can leave scouting.
Seems a tad harsh to me, though thats apparently the party line these days.

D of E assessors are going to change as well, as of april 2010 there will only be 27 people who can assess people in the nation- for scouting, and we have to be trained by them, and have a supervised assessment with them before we can assess our own people.
not that we can assess our own people, we're not allowed.

whatever happened to just going out there and having fun?!

Wierd

Never really thought about it before, but haven't slept well recently.
Not because of work, but because of constant stress about explorers.

It may be self imposed stress, (or it might not), but its beginning to get me down.
Odd.
I'm meant to be really enjoying it, but all I can think about is everything I've got to do- its like having an unpaid second job with more stress and less reward.

tents

Spent the afternoon at the hut, sorting out the tents, counting pegs, fixing poles, and generally cataloguing what was and what wasnt there.
seems like there are a lot of pegs missing, though we do have a number of tents which seem to be in 1 piece.

Also made some records as to how long gas and gas cookers will last.
seems that a full 4.5kg gas canister weighs 10.8kg and uses 350g per hour.

Planning

Yep- a planning evening ensued yesterday, it being half term and all that. 

5 of us descended on an empty hut, me being 10 mins late as I took the bus. (I HATE buses, I could have got there faster had I walked)

The most useful thing of the whole evening was the year planner which is now ensconced in the hall, with all the relavent dates marked out with sticky colours and felt tip. Excellent. 

Camps sorted,

evenings sorted.

Extra hiking and expedition planning evenings sorted.

Outs are also sorted all the way down to the Summer, Nice. 

A very productive evening- now all I need to do is actually plan the flipping camps. 

International Night

In a big push to get badge work out the way, this Monday was International Night. Each patrol was given a country just before Christmas that they had to research

The countries we gave them were:
Sweden
Slovakia
Sri Lanka
The Seychelles

The information each patrol had to research on their county was:
Flag
Population
Religion
Scout uniform
A main meal (to be cooked on the night)
3 random facts about the country the leaders did not already know
Language (Hello, Goodbye and 1 to 10)
A game

The evening went off really well.

After a few quick active games (Ladders followed by Crust, Crumble and crumb). We started the cooking.

After our last cooking evening we realised that washing up was the big problem, so each patrol had two tables. One for cooking on and one for washing up on. This worked very well as long as we reminded them what the washing up table was there for.

Once the cooking was complete each patrol gave a report on the country they had been given to research to the rest of the unit and then invited everyone to try their food.

The leaders were all very pleased with the amount of work the explorers did (See Tim's post on the evening), and even with the added pressure of our guests the explorers excelled themselves.

Sri Lankan Tamarind Fish (Mackerel) Curry being prepared

Slovakian Dumplings with cheese sauce

Tandoori Chicken and Tamarind Fish (Mackerel) Curry with yellow rice

Roti Bread being prepared

Once all the food had been eaten and the remaining washing up finished, every one changed back into uniform. One of our guests, Andy Maxted (GLS County Commissioner for Network Scouts) presented three Jack Petchty Achievement Awards and one Queen Scout Award.

Me receiving my Queen Scout Award

The Badge and Certificate

That went as well as could be expected

Last night was the greatly amticipated international night.

Greatly anticipated by me, as there were a number of people from Rotary coming along to see what we are doing for the young community, and the fact that we are currently in a place that really isnt big enough to accommodate us all. 

Evidently not greatly anticipated by the Explorers by the fact I txted the lead protagonists halfway through last week to ask how their research was going, to be met with the unanimous response, "what?" 

Great. 

So last week was a study in getting peoples numbers, asking them what they would be doing, writing posts on facebook, prodding, pushing, suggesting and cajoling them into getting information, and working out quite what they were going to be doing on monday evening. 

At least I had a list of things to buy over the weekend in terms of the food... which I dutifully brought along. Only to have a txt as soon as I got there, to say I wouldnt be entirely happy with at least one of the explorers as they had forgotten EVERYTHING. 

Panic was averted as someone else had some information. 

The evening started 15 mins late, most people in uniform, with 2 games, ladders- a nice space taking up game, and crows/cranes. Then we launched straight into cooking. 

Kind of. 

with 2 tables to each patrol, one for cooking and one for washing up, we made them wash all utensils before starting, and then generally helped out with bits and pieces as the evening went on. just over 20 kids, 5 leaders and 5 people from Rotart meant that organised chaos reigned- and there wasnt much space to go around either, which was precisely what we were planning. 

The Seychelles team cooked up a lovely fish curry- with an amazingly smelling mix of spices, kindly provided by Braddles, it somehow tasted of lemon, even though none was put in it. Sri Lanka sorted out 2 curry's, Slovakia, a very good dumplings in cheese sauce (though it didnt look appetising, it tasted excellent), and a Swedish something or other, that I cant remember what it was called. 

All equally delicious. 

in the last half hour we had a presentation of each country, and then we all tucked in. 

The result was an excellent evening, full of activity, colour, constructive youth work, bustle and information. 

To cap it all off, we had 3 Jack Petcheys and a Queen Scout Award given out. 

Cushty. As Im sure the Explorers would say. 

communication issues

Seems I havent been communicating correctly with everyone.

This was brought up today as we cancelled explorers because of the weather, and the message didnt get around to everyone.

From now on I shall endeavour to keep all people in the loop as far as possible.

Actually feel quite bad about that. pretty bummed out.

Tidying up

Braddles and I went up to the hut over the weekend with the intention of clearing up the back room.

Cue music and tea, and off we go.

Started out taking pretty much everything out of it, attempting to catalogue some of it and putting it back.

wow. there was a LOT of stuff in theere, Im not going to write it all down, but suffice to say that there were 9 opened HP sauce bottles in there.

So its a bit tidier in there now, and there is a shed load of gumpf to throw away, but it is more organised. 

Part II of this is to go back of a weekend, with a BBQ or something, and really get it sorted out shelf by shelf, audit the tents, and make sure we know whats there.