Day 12 - some last minute resources shopping before camp!

Ahhhh camp tomorrow! We´re starting our 3 day workshop with leaders in Choluteca, south Honduras where apparently it is 43 degrees! 43! And they call this winter. Today we have been shopping in the supermarkets in Tegucigalpa to get some last minute resources for camp, including a banana, corguette, and 2 stumpy carrots to use as ´demonstrators´so that the leaders can see that you can use anything to demonstrate putting a condom on. Ooogo was looking on with mild interest at our purchases. Then we´ve spent the evening cutting, sticking, unpacking, writing, creating and repacking our resources to be ready to leave in the morning. We´ve found out that camp no longer means camp, as the minister of health has said it is not safe to be in tents due to mosquitos, so army barracks it is! Slightly concerned about tarantulas, but very VERY excited about tomorrow :)

Day 11 - 2 more workshops later!

Yesterday we drove from Tegucigalpa to out 3rd workshop with 20 leaders aged 14-19, in a local secondary school. We adapted our 2 day leader workshop and girl one day workshop to be relevant to these leaders, and also condense it to the time we had. We ran activities on leadership, STIs, HIV and AIDS and did condom demonstrators to give the leaders confidence to pass these skills onto their girls. The workshop was hard work, especially as we had limited time, but after another hilarous rendition of the ´here I am on my badger´song, we hope they went home having learnt a lot.
This morning we were lovingly awoken at 6 by some super keen tourists outside our window, before driving to our next workshop with girls aged 8-12 in another school in the Danli region of Honduras, close to Nicaragua. We ran this workshop outside much to the delight of some local builders as well as the boys in the school who watched on eagerly, every now and again saying things like ´I´m sorry´ and ´hello my friend´ which was always nice. The girls were an absolute delight and we all bounced off their enthusiasm and had a great workshop. You should have seen them scream when we blew up the condoms and played games with them, and they all worked really well in all the activities we ran about self esteem, teenage pregnancy and STIs. We convinced most of the girls that Hannah was actually Hannah Montana, as well as lots of girls coming up and asking ´do you like Justin Beiber?´to which the answer had to be yes.
The girls all asked us if we were coming back, and we had to let them down gently that we were doing this once only. The badger song/our now daily exercise dance of course went down a treat, and we all left on a high having completed half of our project now!

BIG update, our 2 worshops!

On Wednesday we delivered our first worshop to 55 girls aged 9-12 in a school near Tegucigalpa. It went really well, especially as it was our first workshop, and the girls had fun as well as learning a lot. The worshop for this age group covered self esteem, sex and relationships, STI´s and introduced the idea of condoms through some games. It was an amazing experience to see our hard work come together and be successful.
The next few days we were in the north west of Honduras, having endured the worlds most uncomfortable bus ride ever for the 8 hour journey to and from Copan! We were joined by 3 more translators and Marisol too. We were lucky to be able to visit the famous Copan ruins and reinact our Spice girls routine in a local karaoke bar before our two day workshop that ran over the weekend.
This worshop was for leaders, training them to be able to run worshops with the girls in their own units about self esteem, sex, STIs, HIV and AIDS and teenage pregnancy. We also did some leadership activities, giving the leaders the confidence and knowledge to be able to deliver these activities. We ran full condom demonstrations with the leaders, allowing them all to practice. Over the two days we really noticed the leaders´confidence grow and their knowledge of the topics covered increase, which demostrated the real impact our work our out here is having. Best of all, both the leaders and the GOLD team had great fun!

Day 3 - Resource shopping and the national park

Last night´s welcoming ceremony was really lovely, we were made to feel very welcome and met a lot of the commissioners of the Guias de Honduras. Some of the local Brownies did a dance for us, including to Poker Face, our team song! We were given gifts and the Honduran scarf and chatted a lot to the leaders there. The local newspaper took our photo, as did a lot of keen Brownies, before we went for dinner with the commissioners.
This morning we visited the Headquarters de Guias de Honduras, and had a look around their centre. There were lots of gifts from the previous GOLD projects there which was great, as well as a giant Rainbow Pinata! After deciding what resources we still needed to buy here we went to buy glue and card in the supermarket, driven by Hugo (pronounced Ooooooooogo!) our driver, who knew Emma from her 2008 trip.
In the afternoon we took a very windy and bumpy ride up to the national park, which is high up in a protected area of Tegucigalpa. We had a picnic and took a stroll up to the Mayan ruins before visiting the animal reserve, where they have captive native animals such as tapirs, leopards, monkeys and lots of crocodiles. After returning back to the hotel, we had a typical Honduran dinner with Marisol before sitting down and preparing for our first workshop tomorrow! We´ll be leaving at 6.30 tomorrow for a drive to Copan, where our workshop is, and will probably only be able to update the blog on Monday when we return back to Tegucigalpa. We´re all very very excited to see how our workshops pan out! :) Adios for a wee while ...

Bienvenidos a Honduras!

Yay we´ve made it to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras! We all woke up super early this morning because of the time difference here - 5am Miami time is 10am UK time. After a mammoth amount of rainfall that woke Emma up last night, we set off again at quarter to 8 in the already sweltering humidity for breakfast in the hostel before getting a taxi to the airport. Surprisingly we had no more hiccups at all, and the flight (althought a bit bumpy) was fine too and we even had all our bags waiting for us at the airport! Amazing. 1 litre of Febreeze has managed to spill all over our resource bag during the flight, but luckily nothing is too worse for wear and everything just smells nice now! Marisol, the International comissioner for the Guias de Honduras (Guides in Honduras) met us in Tegucigalpa and we drove to the hotel where we will be based at for our workshops in the area. Marisol is really nice and we´re sure she´ll look after us well here :) This afternoon we are going to a welcoming ceremony from the Guias here, where we´re not sure what to expect but hope that we´ll get to meet a lot of people who are involved in Guiding over here. We´re all so SO glad to finally have made it here, after 2 years of hard work and many many changes along the way, we managed to arrive! :)

We're in MIAMI!

We've made it to Miami! After an early start to get a 6.50 bus to Heathrow, we arrived to find that the flight had been overbooked. Another problem and we hadn't even left the UK! So after volunteering ourselves to take the next flight, we spent our free drinks vouchers in Cafe Nero and waited for the outcome. 45 minutes before departure we found out that we were actually going on the original flight, and after much running and sweating round the airport through security we arrived just in time to board, alas without any time to browse the duty free. The flight was fine, we spent the majority of it watching Glee and making playlists from the Glee soundtrack, and sleeping a LOT. We arrived in Miami around 2.30pm American time and walked outside into the swealtering heat to get a taxi to our hostel. We walked all the way to our (upgraded!) apartment looking disgustingly sweaty in our uniform and neckers, and after a lot more stares we arrived into our apartment. The afternoon was spent having a wee bit of an explore through the town, a trip to Starbucks (had to be done), paddling in the sea and admiring the amazing beaches before we're off again tomorrow. We met some keen travellers in the hostel over dinner who took photos and asked us about our trip, and after a very long day travelling, we're off to bed to get some much needed sleep before our trip properly begins tomorrow :)

Almost there...last night in the UK

It's the night before Honduras, and 5 very excited team members have assembled to pack, unpack and pack again and cram in any last minute resource creating! We've had a training by Linda from the Terrence Higgins Trust who gave us a condom demonstration and answered our last minute questions. Emma's flat in Gunnersbury is strewn with condoms and scissors and wasabi peas in preparation for our flight tomorrow where the adventure begins. In true GOLD style we've had a crazy week, with a major change from Honduras saying that our workshops are now for girls, not leaders, and after a late night emergency telephone conference, plans were changed once more! They never said it would be easy! Tomorrow we're leaving at 6.30 for our 9.40 flight to Miami...weeeee. After 2 years, we're finally going!