Friday at a Hotel

This past weekend was the annual conference and training days for members of Manitoba's Girl Guides of Canada.  I debated a bit if I wanted to go, but what if I missed something exciting? I just needed to see what was going on with Guiding around our province, and it is also a great opportunity to meet up with Guiding friends that I do not see very often.

My 26 year old daughter was going too and we decided to rent a room and stay at the hotel. It gave me a place to rest, and leave our belongings. Running back and forth to the hotel would not have been a long distance and it sure would have been cheaper, but it would have added to the confusion and stress especially with neither of us driving. (I want my drivers license back so badly!) Besides the hotel has a pool and a hot tub! There was an exercise room but I never checked it out. I was tired enough from walking all around the hotel!


Alicia had 3 Rangers who wanted to attend the conference too, so we arranged to have 2 adjoining rooms. Rangers are  high school aged members who are involved in Girl Guides. I loved that the girls could attend and it was the right thing for them to be there, but being responsible for them definitely added to the exhaustion level of the weekend.

We checked in on Friday and then went to a banquet room that was set up with soft drinks, tea and coffee and snack foods. Our Guiding people set up several stations with information and displays and a variety of activities. The theme was "Thanks for the Memories".  You could make a picture frame, do a beaded key chain using letters that spell out the word memories and there was a card making station where you could use scrap booking supplies to make a nice card.
We had a wall where we to put up older photos (photocopies) about past Guiding friends or activities and it was a lot of fun to be seeing the pictures people brought to share. We have an award wining archive for Girl Guides of Manitoba and they shared some of their resources too.

There was a display about travel opportunities to the International Guiding Center in Mexico. I had a long talk with a couple of ladies who had been at "Our Cabana". I desperately want to go there and it is  high up on my "bucket list". They do one session where you can go to an amazing location where the Monarch Butterflies Migrate to in the winter and I think that would be so cool. There are monarchs coming out of their cocoons at our cottage and it would be so great to have an opportunity to follow them to their winter home. Getting to the location, according to these ladies is a pretty difficult hiking trail, but they assured me that it was not a long trail and there was lots of extra time so I could go slow. One more big reason for working hard at my physiotherapy! This prairie girl wants to go hiking uphill in Mexican rain forests! (grin) 

Many of my close Guiding friends are leaving in just a few days to go to Switzerland to tour and visit  the International Guiding Center there. If I had not had a stroke I am sure I would have been going with them. I have lost out on a lot of opportunities since I got sick and I have had to be content with hearing the stories of other travelers. It helps to plan for my own Guiding adventures in the coming years.

We also got to learn about the Scholarships and Bursaries available to youth members. I am hopefully that a couple of our girls will apply sometime in the future. There was a giant jar of candy where you could buy a ticket and guess the number of candies in the jar. They made a bit of money from the contest but mainly it was a way to draw attention to the scholarship opportunities we offer.

I will write about  Saturday and some of the interesting trainings and speakers in my next post.