GWF - Day 1

Day One!!!

Girls World Forum - Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

It's here! It's here! It's here! That is what hundreds of girls across the United States and around the world were saying this morning in anticipation of the Girls World Forum. The girls planning team has spent about a year planning this lovely event and now all the delegates are slowly trickling in to the great city of Chicago. My journey started at about 5:30 this morning. The girls that I were chaperoning for the week were down in Central Illinois, so I boarded the 7:57 train from Chicago to go meet them and escort them back up to Chi-Town. It made the day long for me travel wise, but it's alright because we got some great bonding time on the train! On my train ride down to Central Illinois, I pretty much slept. I was EXHAUSTED! I had a few hours once I got there before I met my girls and we made the trek back up to Chicago. I warned my girls before we got on the train that I LOVE to take photos, and that they would probably get sick of me taking tons of pictures by the end of the week, but not to worry because these are memories in the making. That was our motto for the week, "Wait! One more photo! These are memories in the making!" Well, at least that was my motto... :)

Us waiting for our train to arrive! 

The train ride was very smooth. We only stopped a few times to wait for cows to cross the tracks. Ha! I'm only kidding. We did stop, but not for cows. It just sounded more interesting if we were stopping for cows instead of dumb construction. Our train finally reached Chicago a few hours later and we were greeted by some green shirt greeters who welcomed us to the city with big smiles! They then took us in a rather fancy SUV to our hotel. Upon arriving at the hotel, we went through the check in process, making sure we hit all the rooms and getting bags and bags of free goodies. It was getting more and more real with every minute that passed. Once we got our name lanyard it hit me, we are here and we are going to have a BLAST this week! Our hotel room wasn't ready yet so we stored our luggage in this holding room. According to my girls, the hotel bus boy was really creepy. He was having a lot of fun organizing all the luggage. Maybe he just wanted someone to talk to? I guess we will never know. 

Anna Marie Chavez & I

Next on our list was dinner! It was at dinner where we started meeting girls from all over the world! Mostly everyone was wearing their casual Guiding uniform, which was really cool to see. During dinner there were many people doing announcements and giving speeches. Connie Lindsey, who is the National President of the Girl Scouts of USA, was one of the women that spoke to us during dinner. She is a fabulous woman, great leader and wonderful role model! I have gotten the chance to know her over the past few years and it was great to see her interact with everyone at the Forum. Anna Marie Chavez also spoke to us. She is the CEO of the Girl Scouts of USA. She is truly a remarkable woman with the passion and drive to change the world by empowering girls across America. It was my first time hearing her speak and I feel so blessed to have had the chance to get to talk to her also. 

My delegates & I with the CEO of GSUSA. 

After dinner we mingled with everyone and traded SWAPS. If you do not know what SWAPS are, please let me explain. It stands for Special Whatchamacallits Affectionately Pinned Somewhere. Its a popular thing for Scouts to make and take part in. So you basically make a small little trinket that can be pinned on someone else. Over the course of the week everyone trades their SWAPS for ones from other people. It's really cool to see what others come up with and how they represent their country, state or region. 

We eventually got our hotel rooms and got settled in. The three of us didn't take much time to sit and relax because we wanted to go see the firework show at Navy Pier. There was a large group of us that went to go see the fireworks on the Pier. We had the delegates from Ireland, Georgia and Ohio along with us. After the fireworks were over we walked around the Pier a little bit. It was quite late, so we didn't stay for too long.

Enjoying the fireworks with delegates from Illinois, Ireland, Georgia and Ohio! 

When I got back into my hotel room I found that my roommate had arrived! I was super excited! Each American delegate was being paired up with an International delegate for the week. My roommate was from Bangladesh. She was the same age as me and we found that we had quite a few things in common. It was so interesting to hear about her culture and what her country was like. She wasn't used to the time change yet so she was very energetic until the wee hours of the morning. I, on the other hand, was super tired, so I went night-night.

My roommate & I. :)