GOLD...go to visit the Rock

Post by Sarah K

Thursday turned out to be our most random and therefore most 'GOLD' day yet!  It was an early start for us, as we had to get the train at 7.40am to a little village in Southern Latvia called Vabole.

After three and a half long hours on possibly the worlds most uncomfortable train (most of us did attempt to sleep all the way there!), we arrived in what can only be described as the middle of no where.  As we jumped off the train we were greeted by not only the leader of Vabole Guides (Ingrida) and our interpreter for the day (Olga), but also by the entire Guide unit who had been allowed to take the day off school to join us on an excursion.  The Guides were really excited and had their cameras at the ready to start taking pictures and selfies with all of us.....we sort of felt like celebrities for the day!

We were quickly whisked off into a waiting mini-bus with all the Guides and driven to a near-by nature park which contained lots of locally crafted wooden sculptures, a few massive stork nests (also locally crafted by the storks) and in typical team Latvia style we found the playground.  We enjoyed the playground and the Guides joined in which doubled our fun!  Sarah S also managed to rip a hole in her leggings while on the see-saw and only noticed on the train on the way home!!!

Following the nature park, we were back on the bus and taken to the local church where the Guides sang us a song they had been practising when they were at church.  As they sang it in Latvian, it took us a while to work out what is was, but once we got to the chorus we realised that it was Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, and we have all been humming this ever since!

Back on the bus we were told that we were being taken to the regions most popular tourist attraction - Latvia's largest Rock.  There was a great deal of debate (and there still is...) as to whether it was a rock, boulder, or stone.  When we arrived, it turned out that it was a large rock (~170m3), along with everyone else we jumped onto the rock and had many photos taken, then got back on the bus.

After a 20min bus ride we arrived at the local Kindergarten and primary school where we were given lunch of chicken, mashed potato, salad, melon and Kvass (which is a Latvian drink). We were then rushed off to the local secondary school which was where our meeting was to be held in the afternoon.

As we arrived and set ourselves up in the classroom, we started off by playing a name game.  We had already spent a bit of time with the Guides in the morning, and therefore it was easier to get to grips with their names (most of them anyway).  We decided that most of the activities today would be craft based and we had designed one for each of the World Centres again.  For Pax Lodge we made UK mobiles, for Our Chalet we made snowflakes, for Our Cabana we made God's Eyes, and for Sangam we did some Warli Art.  To finish off with for Kusifiri we played Elephant football, which as always got very competitive and was very funny.

For the final 30mins of our meeting the Guides had planned a couple of activities to show us what they like to do.  The first activity was matching pictures to their countries....in Latvian.  We were pretty good at it, with a bit of help from our teams of Guides.  The next activity was to make an origami windmill.  For the crafty amongst us this was great but Net and Sarah S, who are not fans of craft, required a tiny bit of help :)  The final activity involved a team member being blindfolded and having to find all the pegs placed on another team member.  Both the Sarah's were pegged, and Net, Laura and Katie had been blindfolded and had to find the pegs - this was very funny!

As we rounded off our meeting we gave everyone one of our badges, which the girls were really pleased with and they told us that they really enjoyed their day.  A few of them then walked us back to the train station in time to catch our train home, another three and a half hours back to Riga!!  We managed to fill our train time by writing diaries, postcards and doing puzzles, and by the time we got home we were all happy but shattered!!  Thankfully we've got a rest day on Friday to recuperate before our big training day on Saturday.