GWF Day 2!

Day Two! 

Girls World Forum - Thursday, July 12, 2012

Today was the day for the Opening Ceremony! Girl Scouts always have very impressive ceremonies, so I was very excited. My girls and I got there early so we could get great seats. It is still very unreal how amazing this whole experience is. I'm meeting girls from ALL over the world. The flag ceremony started out with a grand procession of all 145 countries that are represented as a part of WAGGGS. They read off the names of the countries as the flag bearers carried the flag up on the stage and into it's spot. One of the coolest things about the flag ceremony was the fact that many of the countries flags were proudly carried by the girl delegate from that country. What an honor it must have been for those girls. During the opening ceremony, they had Sejal Hathi speak. She is a junior at Yale University and is an amazing young women. When she was 15 years old, she created an international organization called Girls Helping Girls. This program helped to train and mentor thousands of girls worldwide. It was very neat to listen to her speak and give advice to us all.

After the opening ceremony, we all went to our breakout session rooms. For the first session, all of the chaperones were together. The goal of this first session was to introduce us to WAGGGS and it's centenary's celebrations, and what the MDGs (Millennial Developmental Goals) are.

Some of the chaperones in our discussion.

So first were were introduced to WAGGGS. WAGGGS stands for the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. It is made up of 5 regions that cover the whole world. The 5 regions are the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Africa, Arab and Asia Pacific. Since I am from the United States, I am a part of the Western Hemisphere. There are 4 World Centers that are located across the different regions. There is Pax Lodge in London, Our Cabana in Mexico, Our Chalet in Switzerland and Sangam in India. WAGGGS is made up of more than 10 million girls. When you sit down and think about it, that's a LOT of girls. One of the chaperones said that she likes to think that 'We are the global sisterhood of the traveling scarves'. It's true. We are all united by our sisterhood. Together we form a great organization that is not only transforming lives in our own community, but worldwide too. WAGGGS focuses on education, leadership development and advocacy.

We then talked about the Millennial Developmental Goals that the UN has set. There are 8 MDGs that the UN have set and want to have good progress with by the year 2015. Here they are:

Taken from: [http://micahcentre.ca/about-us/the-mdgs/]

1. End Poverty and Hunger
2. Universal Education
3. Gender Equality
4. Child Health
5. Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS
7. Environmental Sustainability
8. Global Partnership

At the Forum we focused on MDGs #1, 3 & 7. I am mostly interested in Gender Equality and Universal Education, but it is still very good to learn more about the other ones. So during the week we will be doing activities that help illustrate each of the 3 very clearly. 

After a delicious lunch with some new friends, we had our afternoon sessions. The goal of the afternoon session was to talk about Global Girl Scouting/Guiding. We talked about how we can incorporate global ideas into the different age levels. I was in the discussion for the Daisy age group. We came up with pretty great ideas. 

Night time brought new adventures! All the participants, girls and chaperones, were treated to a night time bus tour! I am from Chicago and have seen most of the sights around the city, but I must say that this tour was pretty awesome. Our tour guide told us facts about everything and anything we saw. The sun was starting to go down, so everything was so pretty! Since there are about 500 of us, there literally was about 10 buses touring around the city at the same time! Talk about leaving our mark on the city of Chicago.

My new friends from Uganda! 

Amanda and her roomie! 

The Central Illinois & Bangladesh delegation :)

My roommate, Aurin, and I. 

 

Another awkward moment of my life...

Awkward moments make life interesting. Wouldn't you agree?
So today I was doing some back to school shopping, kind of boring I know, but I leave for school in literally 4 days! It's crazy! So today I was on a mission to find a step stool type thing to put in my room. I went to the local hardware store a few towns over. I wasn't sure where the small ladders were so I asked a nice young, good looking, lad. He was very eager to show me to the section that had what I was looking for. Once we got there, I started looking around and he asked me if this was what I was looking for. I nodded and thanked him. He then proceeded to say "if you need anything else, I'm Brandon", then without realizing it, I immediately introduced myself. It's something nice to do, right? When someone introduces themselves to you, you do the same. After I told him my name, there was an awkward pause where neither of us said anything. He broke the silence by saying if I ever need anything else, not to hesitate to call him or come find him. He then left and went about working around the store, but he stayed in the general vicinity that I was in by making himself look busy walking around the aisles that were on either side of the one that I was in. We kind of danced like that around the store the rest of the time that I was shopping there. When I was done checking out at the register, he called out before I left, "Bye Jenny!" with a smile. All I could do was blush and smile and give a small wave. While I was loading my car, I saw him again out of the corner of my eye taking the carts from a corral that was near my car in the parking lot.

Well, Brandon, wherever you are out there, thank you for making me smile and brightening up my afternoon. :)

{Peace&Love} Jenny 

#14. Go to SONIC!

#14. Go to SOINC!

I love Sonic. I’m not in love with their food, although the burgers are pretty good and I do like their ice cream. I think the thing that just makes me love Sonic so much is the fact that I don’t have one that is close to my house (the closest is like 30 or 40 minutes away) so whenever I see one, I get excited and have to go there! I lived in Missouri for a few summers and my host family lived near a Sonic, so they would take my host sisters and I to Sonic every so often. There is a Sonic near the university that I go to.

So this summer I was determined to make it to a Sonic. My parents and I were doing a test run in the car to make sure we had the directions right to a place we were going to later on in the week. On our way home, we zipped right past a Sonic. Both my mom and I were like, ‘Stop! There’s a Sonic, let’s go to it!’ My dad caved in and turned the car around and we made an ice cream pit stop. It was quite yummy. The server even came out on roller skates! Best day ever! 

{Peace&Love} Jenny

#11. Go to a drive-in movie.

#11. Go to a drive-in movie.

Drive in movies are kind of an old school type thing, but do not fear, there are some still out there in the world!! I went to one last summer, so I wanted to continue the tradition. Instead of going to an actual drive in movie theater with a car and such, I actually had the chance to go to a beach drive in movie. I went camping and kayaking with some friends and the company that helped us kayak set up a little movie theater for us on the beach where we stayed the night. They found the 2 best trees in the area and hung up a white sheet between them. They had a mini projector and an iPhone with the movie, The Goonies, for us to watch. It was so fun to just sit on our little private beach and watch the movie. I’ve never seen The Goonies before, so that was exciting. As the sun set and it got darker outside, it was just more and more fun. Being surrounded by great friends, on a cool night, watching a funny movie, what more could a girl ask for?

{Peace&Love} Jenny

#4. Buy lemonade from a lemonade stand.

Lemonade is an iconic symbol of summer. It’s yummy in your tummy, and is very refreshing on hot summer days. Usually you see little kids on the side of the road selling lemonade. In most cases I would buy some from them, but there weren’t many kids out this summer being little entrepreneurs. I think it’s because it was so dang hot outside, but that’s okay. When I was at the farmers market one weekend with my dad I saw a big sign that said “Fresh Squeezed Lemonade”. It was hot outside so I was very eager to get a cool glass. There was a young girl making it and I guess her family always set up a booth at the Farmers Market. Her family sold produce and such, while her job was to make the delicious lemonade. When she was done making the lemonade, I asked her if I could take a picture with her and the sign for my bucket list project. She was very excited to take the picture and loved the idea of having a bucket list, so that was good. 

{Peace&Love} Jenny 

#1. Take a jumping picture on a trampoline!

#1. Take a jumping picture on a trampoline.

Trampolines usually foster an environment of fun and pure joy. I personally don’t have a trampoline in my backyard, so I was kind of worried about how I would do this item on my list for the summer. One day I was searching on Groupon and I found a coupon for, get ready for it… EXTREME TRAMPOLINING!!! Yeah buddy! I called up a bunch of my friends and we all agreed that this would be freaking awesome! This isn’t just any kind of trampoline. It’s a room FULL of trampolines!!!! Awesome, right? There were a total of 7 of us that went on this adventure. It literally was the coolest thing ever. The place was located in a big warehouse and they had trampolines everywhere! They had a big area with wall-to-wall trampolines. They had another area like that, but it was used for dodge ball. They also had a foam pit that you could jump in. It wasn’t scary until you are in the foam pit and are wondering, ‘how the heck am I going to get out?’ It is quite a challenge to jump in the pit of doom and then get out while the small child waiting in line next is standing there impatiently. One of my friends was on a mission to be able to do a perfect flip. By the time we left she was pretty darn good at flipping all over the place. By the end of the night we were extremely exhausted and sweaty. But it was so much fun! I became more confident in my jumping abilities as the night went on. To finish the night off we went and got some yummy ice cream. 

{Peace&Love} Jenny