#27. Go to the beach.

#27. Go to the beach.

One of the definitions of summer is to spend endless amount of time at the beach. It may not be in the Webster dictionary, but it is in mine. J My adventure to the beach was paired up with an amazing weekend of fun. During one of the last weekends of the summer, I spent it camping with some of my friends. During the day we went kayaking and at one point we found a little alcove that had a beach. All of us had sore arms and were ready to dive into the water for an afternoon swim. I parallel parked my kayak on the shore and ran into the cool water. It felt great! We had a tour guide from the company that we went kayaking with, so we were required to wear our life vests. The water was only as deep as a bathtub (okay, that might be an exaggeration, but you know what I mean). Being the crazy college girls that we are, we did discover that life jackets don’t like it when you lay on your tummy. They always insist that you are floating on your back. We all spent some time trying to fight the force and float on our tummies. It was quite hysterical. 

Us being our silly selves.

Our tour guide also told us that there were muscles that liked to burrow in the bottom of the lake and that we could look for them if we wanted to. I thought it might be fun, so I tried it out and started looking for the creatures of the sea! I will be honest with you and say that it was a bit creepy at first. The water is dark and your just supposed to run your hands or feet along the bottom of the lake and stop when you feel something poking out of the bottom. I don’t know what the heck is down there or what could possibly eat my hands or feet! It was still fun to find the muscles and then throw them back into the water. My friend made the mistake of trying to pry open one that was still alive. The muscle was kind of upset and started to close on her finger. It freaked her out and needless to say, she didn’t help us look for any more. It was a great refreshing time at the beach. The best part was that it was a private beach just for us. We were one of the only people that was chilling out, enjoying the water, and soaking up the sun. It was great fun to spend the day with awesome friends. 

The group of gals at the beach! 

{Peace&Love} Jenny 

#22. Go to the farmers market.

#22. Go to the farmers market.

Every summer my town has a farmers market. It is a very popular event and a lot of people go on Saturday mornings. I personally love going to my town’s farmers market with my dad. It is so fun to walk up and down the aisles of the market and look at all the fresh food from the local farmers. Sometimes there are local crafters that come and sell their homemade goods. On this particular day, my dad and I were on a mission to find some good fruits and veggies. I knew the mission shouldn’t be too hard because there were so many different options! So my dad and I walked up and down each aisle and tried free samples until we found what we were looking for. At the end of the morning, we ended up getting some ears of corn, green beans and a whole TON of raspberries. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a ton of raspberries, but we did get enough to last us for a while.

{Peace&Love} Jenny 

#19. Stargaze.

#19. Stargaze.

I come from a town where the stars can’t always be seen fully and clearly. I can recall those times when I was a kid where I’ve seen all the stars in the sky. One time was when I was with my parents on vacation. I remember sitting under the stars on one of the late nights with my dad, just staring up into the sky. As a kid, I wondered how there could be so many stars in the sky! It still does come in my mind and when I have the opportunity to be surrounded by mass amounts of stars, all I can do is smile.

There were two times this summer where I found myself standing in awe of the great picturesque sky filled with stars. One instance was at Girl Scout camp. I was walking the girls in my unit back to our cabin and everyone had their flashlights paving the way ahead of us. About half way back, I had everyone stop and turn off their flashlights. Some of the girls were a little bitter because they were tired and just wanted to go back to the cabin. Other girls were convinced the bears were going to come and eat them if I had them turn their flashlights off. Nonetheless, I had all the flashlights turned off and we all gazed up into the sky. You could literally see every star in the sky, and it was truly amazing! We stood there in silence, taking in our surroundings, for several minutes. The quiet, peaceful time was short-lived, but it was great while it lasted.

As I am writing this, thinking about the night sky, it made me think of a line from a song. The lyric goes like this: “The same God who put the stars in place, gave each one of us a place in the kingdom of God.” This comes from a song sung by the Mwangaza Children’s choir. I think it does illustrate how amazing the Lord truly is.

{Peace&Love} Jenny 

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