It's not planning unless there's cake!

Post by Sarah K

Tuesday started off at a fairly leisurely pace, as we rested in the apartment and Net cooked us lunch :) We wandered down to Riga train station and got a train to Lielupe, which is at the Eastern end of Jurmala, and headed to the beach.  It was a bit colder today than it was last week so Laura and I decided not to go for a swim, but we had an hour or so relaxing as a team on the beach, running, doing yoga, playing frisbee and eating our sandwiches.

Sarah S, Laura and Sarah K doing some beach yoga

We left the beach and aimed to take the most direct route to the school to meet the Sea Scouts.  Laura decided that the best way to get there was to walk straight through the forest (without using a map!), but thankfully we arrived in plenty of time and didn't get lost!

We started the meeting by playing Granny Tag, while narrowly avoiding running into trees, and then went inside for woggle making.  We had only managed to figure this out this morning, and therefore it was a bit of a challenge trying to teach them!  Valdis (the Sea Scouts leader) supplied us with some leather to use for the woggles, and Laura and myself set about trying to explain what to do.  We found that it was actually easier doing a practical demonstration in smaller groups and therefore split the group, so there was one of us to 3 or 4 scouts.  They all eventually managed to make a woggle (some more successful than others), but they seemed to enjoy the activity and will be trying it again!

Once again, our trek back to the train station was through the pitch black forest....but this time we managed to actually find a lit path and was not as scary as last week!

Wednesday was a day filled with planning....and planning we only do when there is cake.  So after lunch with Laura's friend Karlis, we found a new coffee shop called Kuu'ka which does amazing cheesecake and gluten free chocolate cake (which made me really happy!!!!!) and settled down to plan our meeting for Vabole on Thursday.  We were told by the leader that we could do anything we liked, and therefore threw a few ideas around before agreeing that it should be all about international Guiding.  We settled on doing a craft to represent each of the WAGGGS World Centres (more on those in tomorrows blog!), and decided that we would need to spend the evening making prototypes in order to be prepared - think Blue Peter with 'here's one I made earlier'.  Once planning was complete we jumped on a tram and headed back to Riga Unit 66.  However, this evening we were meeting with the Cubs and Brownies, rather than the Scouts and Guides as we did last Thursday.

Planning in Kuu'Ka cafe

We had decided on a bit of an international Guiding and Scouting theme for the meeting this evening.  We began by playing a zombie name game, followed by a sitting down game which caused much laughter as it involved sitting on other people.  Then we played an international version of Connect.  We then moved on to complete a couple of crafts to represent two of the World Centres.  We made St George's cross flag badges for Pax Lodge in the UK, and Festival Snowflakes for Our Cabana in Mexico.  For all the other World Centres we played some games - for Our Chalet (Switzerland) we played the Moo game, for Sangam (India) we played Gecko (fast becoming the teams favourite game!), and for Kusifiri (Africa) we played Elephant football.  We rounded off our evening of fun playing Kung Fu jungle, which the Cubs and Brownies were very good at :)

The Moo game...

Once we made it back home we started prepping our crafts for our day with the Guides in Vabole - but more on that in the next blog post!

Apartment of the rising sun (or not)

Post by Katie and Net

On Friday we ventured over the river to explore the other side of Riga, visiting a Russian monument, the National Library, which is quite an impressive piece of architecture, and a cat cafe.

We also planned our session for the next day, where we would be visiting a unit in Valmiera. To get there in time, we set off in darkness to catch the 7.30am coach for our 2 hour journey.

This was our biggest group yet, with around 40 Scouts and Guides for the 1st session. We started off with the inflatable globe throwing name game and then played zip zap being, where you send the 'zip' around the circle in various directions. We had planned to have 4 activities that groups could rotate around, and were able to quickly adapt this to 5 activities with so many participants. I ran an activity where the group has to balance a stick on their fingers, and then lower it to the ground without anyone letting go. It's deceptively tricky. Net played Robot, where one person is blindfolded, one person can't speak and another can't hear, and they then have to guide the blindfolded person to a destination. Sarah K ran Paper Islands, challenging groups to get from one side of the room to the other using a few pieces of paper to avoid touching the floor. Sarah S's groups had to work together to move a string hoop round while they were all holding hands. For Laura's activity, each member of the group acted as a different part of a body, and worked together to blow up a balloon and walk together before popping the balloon.

 About 30 Cubs and Brownies showed up for our 2nd session. We started with the globe name game again and followed with Make me a...shape. This time one group made a fully moving bus and almost disappeared down the corridor entirely. Our next activity was the True or False WAGGGS and WOSM game to learn facts about the two World Organisations that the Latvian Scouts and Guides are a part of, and the World Centres corners game. We finally sang Get Loose and Alice The Camel and exchanged badges.

Afterwards we went out to lunch with two of the Scout leaders, Martins and Artis, who also showed us around Valmiera including a great view of the surrounding countryside from the top of a church spire, a BMX track and a forest with a treehouse and playground! 

We eventually got back to our apartment 14 hours after leaving, having travelled 210km, and had a very busy day! Our next couple of days are relatively relaxed so we've got some well earnt recovery time...