Meet Team Latvia

Blog post by Ellen

Net - Team Leader

Age: 25

Job: activity instructor / professional child annoyer

Favourite food: anything with chicken in it!

Travel: yes please!! I've been to America, Australia, Spain and France. With Girlguiding I have visited India (twice!!0, Finland and Latvia.

What are you looking forward to most in Latvia...? meeting friends from last year and continuing the hard work we did with a new team.

Sarah K- Treasurer

Age: 28

Job: Physiologist

Favourite food: Chicken nuggets

Travel:  Within Guiding I've visited Our Chalet twice and been to a few international camps in the UK too. I also had the opportunity to travel during my gap year. Whilst volunteering in a community in Kenya, I learnt to scuba dive. I also visited Tanzania, where I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I have also traveled to the United States and Thailand.

What are you looking forward to most in Latvia...? I am most looking forward to working with the Guides and Scouts and seeing how everything works in a different country. Also camping in the forest will be a definite highlight!

Sarah S- First-aid

Age: 25

Job: Patent Secretary

Favourite food: Cheese

Travel: Australia (twice), Hong Kong, Fiji, Kenya, Belgium France, Spain, Hawaii, America- but this will be my first international trip with Girlguiding

What are you looking forward to most in Latvia...? making new friends, exploring the Baltic and camping in a forest!!

Laura- Resources Coordinator

Age: 28

Job: Engineering Geologist

Favourite food: Lasagne

Travel: I've been to France, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Israel, Oman, Jordan, Japan, Iceland, UAE and Australia. With Girlguiding I have attended and international camp in Norway which probably inspired many of the other trips as well as geology of course.

What are you looking forward to most in Latvia...? making new friends and embracing the challenges that no doubt will occur, not to mention camping in the forest in autumn!!! :)

Ellen- Secretary and Social Media

Age: 21

Job: Doctoral student at the University of Nottingham

Favourite food: Mac n' cheese

Travel: I was lucky enough to be selected for LaSER volunteering trip to Costa Rica  in 2011. I have also had the opportunity to visit the United States, the Caribbean as well as lots of European countries.

What are you looking forward to most in Latvia...? Camping and wearing lots of layers!!

Katie- Photo and Video Coordinator

Age: 24 

Job: Project Assistant for a heritage project

Favourite food: Hot chocolate fudge cake with ice-cream

Travel: Outside of Girlguiding I've visited America, France, Spain and Monaco. With Girlguiding I've visited Iceland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Finland and Canada.

What are you looking forward to most in Latvia...? Discovering the Latvian culture, and meeting and working with the Latvian Guides and Scouts.

INTOPS - International Opportunities Selection Weekend 26th-28th September 2014

Blog post by Laura 

Basically, don't get too comfortable and expect the unexpected. Not too much can be disclosed about what happened on this weekend but the first challenge that faced the majority was finding your new tent buddies and pitching a tent in the dark. The rest of the weekend followed in this manner with the situation constantly changing to assess how you might cope on a trip where you don't know the language and things change suddenly meaning you have to work together to come up with a new solution, activity to do etc. 

Sarah chatting with another INTOPS participant.

It was very challenging and tiring but you got to meet almost everyone at the weekend and at the end there was a real feeling of comradeship that we'd all survived. Several International Opportunities within Guiding were explained to us including volunteering at a World Centre, next years Roverway Camp in France and of course GOLD with everyone encouraged to apply. 

The Latvia team members all met at INTOPS except for our leader Net who was already Latvia bound once again. So we were hand picked with her in mind!! Sarah K and I (Laura) were actually tent buddies too. Katie attended as she really wanted to do GOLD and Latvia was actually her first choice. Sarah K also really wanted to do GOLD and like me had to do it this year before sadly becoming too old, it was now or never. Sarah S attended INTOPS for use as the residential experience for her Queen's Guide Award and while she was there she thought, why not apply for GOLD. 

Katie, Ellen, Laura & Sarah completing a challenge.

I for one thoroughly enjoyed the INTOPS weekend, especially meeting like minded and inspiring young woman from across the country, many of whom I've been lucky enough to get know a bit better through GOLD. So far the GOLD journey has been amazing and it just keeps getting better.