You know you’re important when you’re provided with your own personal English/Spanish Translator

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****WARNING: Ridiculously long blog entry. Please feel free to skim/skip this one. Wow, this is why it’s good to be limited to pay-per-hour internet café time and not have unlimited computer access. ****

Gasp! The internet is out! Ohh horror of horrors. I can only hope it’s working again by the time I get back from today’s sessions. In the meantime, I’m writing this in Word and I’ll have to upload it when I finally get an internet connection again. It’s Sunday morning now, I was wayyyy to tired when I got home last night to write an entry, but I’m going to write this as if it *was* Saturday night. So, here goes!

What an incredible day! I’m now officially SO glad that I came on this trip, despite all the headaches I had to endure pre-departure. I met the other Canadians (there are 6 of us) in the lobby of our lovely hotel, and we went next door for a breakfast of delicious fresh fruit and fresh blended fruit juices. Mmmm. Then it was off to the Hilton to begin our day of meetings.

Upon getting there, I was a wee bit overwhelmed. There were Scout-types everywhere, and all were speaking Spanish. Since I got in late the night before I still had to register, but when we finally found the room and made our way through the line we discovered that there had been some error in the accounting and they had not received my registration payment from Scouts Canada. To make matters worse, none of the registration people dealing with the money spoke English (if I had a problem with my nametag, I was all set, but not with the money stuff!) So, after translations through multiple people it was decided that I needed to go get cash out of a bank machine (I would have had to pay at 10% fee on $319US if I wanted to use a credit card) and come back at lunch to register. OK, whatever. Now I needed to find my session.

After more confused wandering, I finally ended up at the correct room for the Youth Network meetings. These were meetings with other youth who hold similar youth leadership positions to myself in other countries, who made up this Interamericas Youth Network (which I had no idea even existed until today). Again, completely overwhelmed, I was hurriedly introduced to two friendly people who shook my hands and quickly introduced themselves in rapid Spanish-English, I found a seat at the big rectangular table, and BAM the meeting was off and running (I was a bit late because of the registration mix-up). One problem—it was being run in rapid-fire Spanish. Ahh! But wait! In front of me was a little headset/radio thing, so I quickly got that going and, miraculously, perfect English was being pumped out and I could easily understand everything that was happening in real-time. It was incredible! I felt like I was a delegate in the UN or something. What was more incredible was that they had this very professional translation service running, with two professional translators who switched on and off, and I was the only one in the whole room that was using it! Although not many of the delegates spoke Spanish as their first language, I was the only one that didn’t speak it at all. Damn. So much for my attempt to learn a second language so I would feel less embarrassed as a stupid North American in these situations—French didn’t help me out here (although many of them ALSO spoke a bit of French, in addition to the billion other languages that everyone outside of Canada and the US seems to speak).

Oh well, once I got over the language barrier the meetings were actually really great—totally applicable to my current position on the National Operations Advisory Committee. I can’t believe I never had any exposure to this Interamericas Youth Network before. It’s actually quite ridiculous because we are all facing the same challenges and can really work to help each other out. I’ll definitely make it a priority to foster further networking with these guys in the future.

The hardest part of the day came when we had to do SWOT analysis brainstorming in small groups. Unfortunately, I ended up in a group with pretty much the only guy in the session who didn’t speak English at all, so they just said everything in Spanish and occasionally I would have instructions translated for me. When we went around the group to share our ideas I was last to speak, so I probably just repeated a bunch of ideas that had already been said. Oh well! It was funny because I could pick up a fair number of buzzwords like “opportunistas” and “communicationa” (or similar spanishified English sounding phrases) but not enough to really fully understand anyone’s point. I am picking up a surprisingly decent amount of Spanish, though, considering I’ve only been here a day. I guess that’s just proof that if I want to actually learn French I really need to figure out a way to immerse myself in the language somehow.

At the end of the day it came time to vote for the next coordinator and vice-coordinator of the Interamericas Region Youth Network. Ah! This was actually quite a major decision, and since I was one of only 8 votes I had a reasonably significant say in it, but I felt like I was completely unfamiliar with everyone there (I think in the end though knew about as much as most of the other people there). Well, I took the plunge and nominated someone, Daniel from the Dutch Antilles (haha I totally had to pretend I knew what those were when he first introduced himself because he had such and accent I wasn’t sure what he was saying), and he ended up being elected in the end. Yea! I think he’ll do a great job, as will the new vice-coordinator from Ecuador (I forget his name).

OK, so blah blah blah, meetings, blah blah blah, time to go back to the hotel and change because we were invited with the Venezuala contingent to go to a local Scout leader’s HUGE home for dinner. What a fun evening! Chris and I had a great time teasing and playing with the little kids. (Have I told you who Chris is? He’s the other youth delegate from Scouts Canada. He’s on the International Relations Committee—a committee I’ve been trying to get on for years but they’re pretty secretive about themselves. He’s a great guy and we’ve been having lots of fun together). We kept sending them off to trick various people we knew into letting the girls whack them on the forehead. Oh we’re so devilish. Since we were sitting at a table with pure non-English speakers, it gave us quite a chance to talk. I got to find out all about Chris’ incredible background. I might be screwing some of this up, but basically he was born in Trinidad and Tobago, moved around to a bunch or wild places, lived in Spain for a few years, went to high school in Calgary, went to journalism school in Ontario, and now is a professional news photographer for Reuters. So look for his name next time you see a politician’s mug from the House of Commons in the Globe, because there’s a 50% chance that he took it if it’s form Reuters! He’s also covered the Athens AND Torino Olympics, even though he’s only 23!!! I’m totally in awe. These are those times when I realize my life has a long way to go still… So, naturally I’m hardly taking any pictures because I brought a crappy camera that has about a 3 minute delay, and I’m traveling with a professional photographer, so there isn’t a lot of incentive for me to make an effort.

Speaking of the House of Commons, we found latino Stephen Harper!!!!! It was actually the funniest thing ever (made funnier by the fact we’d just had champagne after not eating or drinking for hours and hours). Chris was like “hey, that guy—never mind.” (I think he thought he’d been sitting in the House too long). And I immediately cut in with “Stephen Harper?!!!!” (because I’d been thinking it too) And he was like “YES!” And then we basically squealed and laughed excessively loudly. Oh those crazy Canadians. We next proceeded to repeatedly photograph Steve paparazzi style. It’s a perfect likeness now that the real PM has put on a few pounds. Even his hand gestures are similar. I couldn’t stop staring at him.

After a very well prepared 3 course meal (the first of which was fish, which Chris and I both were less than happy about) by two chefs who were also Scouters, we all went outside for a campfire. There’s nothing like a campfire to drive home the international nature of Scouting and of music in general. They’re always SO fun no matter what cultures are represented. Chris and I led the Canadian crew’s presentation of “skinny marinky dinky dink” (of Sharon, Lois, and Bram fame, of course), complete with actions, and it was a huge hit. There were lots of “awwwws” during the “I Looooooove You!” part.

We were running way behind schedule and it was getting quite late, so the campfire was cut a bit short. We had to drag Chris away from all his new little 10 year old girlfriends, but eventually everyone was back on the bus and we were headed back, exhausted, to our hotel. Upon arriving I made the grizzly discovery of the internet outage, but it was probably for the better because I only ended up with less than five hours of sleep even without a blog update. I’m SO sleep deprived it’s nuts!

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Photos

Cubs giggle in Spanish, too.
Chris and his new swarm of groupies. I guess some people still like the old Rover berets after all! (Photo courtesy Christian)

Meetings
This wasn't the session I attended, but you get the idea of what it was like (photo courtesy Christian)

Maple Syrup? What's that?
Christian (this is Quebecois Christian I'm talking about, who was here on behalf of the Canadian francophone Scouting organization, not Scouts Canada. Don't confuse him with Chris.) presents some maple syrup to our dinner hosts. I really meant to bring some Canadian paraphernalia, but I just was too busy to get my act together. When I was talking to some Ecuadorians earlier they had never heard of maple syrup.

It was a full house!
I think Ross said he counted 60 guests at these poor people's homes. This is only half of the seating area.

Course #2
Post fish. Nice presentation! (Photo courtesy Christian)

Eye Spy With My Little Eye...
Can you find Stephen Harper? Because he attended the campfire with us! Better pics will follow in the future...