What lies ahead

It's half term, so just a few more weeks of Brownies now until the summer holidays.

Our plans:

1. An Olympics night, for Adventure 100 (22/24 girls have completed this now, but we still have a few things left to do)
2. Making dreamcatchers and necklaces, also Adventure 100
3. Hanging around - meeting at a local adventure playground, yes, you guessed it, for Adventure 100
4. Making puppets and putting on a show, oh yes, Adventure 100!
5. Campsite night, joint with the Guides, as we do to wrap up every year.

So we're outside 3/5 nights, out of our meeting place 2/5 nights, but no extra events this half term. There is a county family picnic in June, but you don't have to go as a unit, so we're going to send out a flyer and let girls go with their families if they wish, or skip it if they don't.

We're getting a bit of centenary fatigue really, will be glad to wrap it up in October though it has been the most amazing year. But since it launched in September, aside from our normal meeting, we have:

• attended Remembrance Sunday
• visited the local radio station
• been to the panto
• travelled across the region for World Thinking Day
• been to London for the weekend
• camped with the division
• taken over the local international airport

All that lies ahead now are normal meetings, the picnic for anyone who chooses to go with their family, and the centenary end at 20:10, 20/10, 2010. Time to relax a bit I think!

Brownies Takeover The Airport

Remember this? Well, if you were at Birmingham Airport on Saturday, you would not have been able to miss 50 visiting Brownies!

We ran a Brownies Takeover for the district, travelling by train and monorail to the airport. We visited the Aviation Experience; apparently it used to be packed with interactive screens, now not so much but there were rows of airplane seats to strap into and have fun - way more leg room than any plane I've ever been on! - and the best view of landing and taking off planes in the airport now that security has been stepped up so much.

After that, we walked down to Departures and looked at security, quite a few girls had never flown so we talked about what you can and can't take on planes, about the x-ray machines etc. After that, we headed down to check-in, there was a whole row of desks not being used so we had a good look at those, including weighing several Brownies on the luggage scales! We even had one teeny tiny Brownie who got into the frame they have for maximum hand luggage size, she fit perfectly!

Then it was back on the monorail and train home, the whole thing took a little over three hours and I think most of the girls enjoyed themselves, mixing with two other Brownie packs was fun. There were a couple of girls in one of the packs who were condemning the whole thing as R-U-B-B-I-S-H (they spelled it out so we wouldn't realise?), but I got the impression that there wasn't much those particular girls wouldn't think was rubbish.

It was a good trip to do in large numbers, there was definitely quite a dramatic effect having 50 girls in brown and yellow marching through the airport!

Water water everywhere

It cost all of £6, but tonight, as part of Adventure 100, we did water-tasting!

I was kind of surprised it went as well as it did.

But the girls really seemed to enjoy it!

They tried six different waters (you can see them all here); some fizzy, some not, some flavoured, some not.

They each picked a favourite and in each case, tried to guess the flavouring (or not) and the country of origin.

The waters I chose were from Wales, Scotland, England and France. The girls guessed the Caribbean, Africa, Canada and more! We had a wee talk about how much Africa needs water and how very wrong it would be to take their water!

We also talked about pumps (some of these waters involved fundraising for pumps in Africa) and how we can save water - and how we can't: as 90% of our girls live in houses under 10 years old, we already have low flush toilets so can't add water-saving devices, for example, as they use so little water already.

A success, and all for £5.42.

(Adventure 100 running total, highest score is now G with 270 across 9 of 10 areas, lowest is EG with 135 across of 10 areas)

Brownie camp

We took part in a division camp this weekend - more than 200 Brownies and Guides camping for two nights plus I think around another 100, 125 Rainbows, Brownies and Guides visiting for the day.

We were in sub-camps, there were 38 Brownies and Guides, and 10 adults in our sub-camp.

We had sun, drizzle, lashing rain, thunder, lightening, wind - pretty much par for the course! So far I have camped 3 times, 2 nights each; the first camp was sunshine so hot we had to pull our cars alongside our tents so we could sit in the shade, the second was lashing rain and close to abandonment, so at least I had already seen the extremes!

Surprisingly, nearly all my Brownies got very tearful during the weekend and wanted their mums. Many of these were girls who had been away plenty of times with me before, both under canvas and to London, a big thing for them! I think it was the proximity to home, they knew their mums were less than two miles away and that made the parting harder than if we were two hours away by train.

Still, it was a good weekend and I'd do it again. (What IS wrong with me?) Though I'd never been happier to have a hot bath then a dinner put in front of me when I got home!