The bad news: I didn't get any pictures!
The good news: We successfully spent over 24 hours together.
The weekend began with the first roadblock we encountered as a team. I'm sure we'll see many more (and worse). Our team leader changed his coat in Springfield at the last minute (due to the weather forecast of ice and rain) and left the condo keys in his other coat pocket.
Luckily, we're adaptable and he's quick on his feet. So we met at a local breakfast joint with our Mark Pierce, Rotary District Governor who is from Warrensburg and Brad Bodenhausen the coordinator of our program and our lifeline who is from the Springfield Chamber of Commerce. He has also participated in a GSE exchange.
After breakfast, our condos were unlocked, and we were able to finalize a lot of planning. We worked on our team gifts for our host families and Rotaries, vocational visits, our presentation and finally (maybe most importantly) our team uniforms. For some reason, the clothing portion of our discussion was the most animated.
After deciding on the final looks we would have, we decided, 'Hey, we're near the outlet malls, let's just go shopping.' Much to my delight.
Christie and I sent the boys off and set out to look for our blazers, shirts and pants/skirts.
You know how when you go shopping with a friend and you like something or not? Or know you wouldn't wear it but it is so your friend's style? Well, it's a little more difficult when you are buying essentially matching outfits. Thankfully, we both like similar styles, and often found ourselves eyeing the exact same thing.
Oh, I lied. I did snap one photo of this gorgeous blazer we thought we were going to have to leave behind. Yes. I took a photo of a jacket because I was sad I would miss it.
We saw it and melted. However, we thought it was out of our budget. So we left it. As we met the guys in the car, they noticed our sadness. (Hey, we're girls. We get sad over clothes!) We made our way to Kohl's where the guys found almost identical blazers to our previous find and a 20% off coupon. And well, we found okay-blue blazers, just not as pretty as the ones before. So our team leader so generously said, we're going back. And you have never seen two girls be happier.
After many high-fives for being the best dressed GSE team ever, it was back to the condo to decompress and get ready for dinner.
We went to a local Mexican restaurant and luck would have it, our waiter spoke essentially no English. A great way to practice. At one point he asked if we needed another minute, to which I replied yes, thinking he had asked if we had had enough time, so, there is still so much to learn and prepare for!
As we were at dinner it started to ice so we made the trek back to our condo to watch a little football and ended up introducing Parker to Scattergories.
All day, Parker had been trying to think of nicknames for all of us. Christie was easy. She gets really, really excited about all things Missouri agriculture. So much so that you find yourself super engaged in a discussion of elderberries and grapes. So Uva (grape) was born.
During the game of Scattergories, Parker made a fatal mistake. He made his list with the wrong letter. We all have done this before. As soon as he realized it, he said, 'Oh, no. I took a wrong turn.' And thus, Wrong Turn was christened as his name. After 12 hours together, this probably seemed funnier to us than you. That's a good sign. We are already stupid together. Which to me, is the best team-building experience there is.
Sadly, I do not believe I came away with a nickname and I can not remember Jimmy's?? (Edit: Jimmy was christened with Poncho.)
On Sunday, we woke up to coffee (some of us might have a caffeine problem) and breakfast (some of us might have a hunger problem). We then discussed our presentations in depth so we could finish those.
Mid-morning, a former GSE team leader and past-district governor of Rotary came to talk to us. Raymond Plue led his group to India in 2004. He had some great advice on what to prepare for and ideas for us as a team. He also told us a ton of history on the GSE, which is pretty awesome because we are the last GSE team (as it is now).
Raymond is one of the best story tellers I have ever met. His stories come to life. He often had us laughing and occasionally had us near tears. He created such a vivid picture of what this GSE experience will mean to us professionally and personally. He has had so many experiences traveling the world as a Rotarian (often on motorcycle). It's just unreal we are getting this opportunity.
I came away with so much from Raymond, but I'll reserve that for another post.
After meeting with Raymond, we moved on to Tan-Tar-A for group and individual pictures. Paul had traveled to Ecuador with our photographer Linda Nichols, another Rotarian. She also had many stories to share of foreign travel to keep us laughing during our quick photo shoot.
We have one more face-to-face meeting scheduled in February and might squeeze one more in March. And then we're off.
It's starting to get more real.
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