December Bits

  Happy New Year! It is 2013, the year that wasn't supposed to happen since the world was supposed to end in December. Luckily, it did not, because I had an awesome Christmas and an epic New Year. I have a lot to tell and a lot of pictures to show but in this post I just want to talk about the first part of December, before the holidays began.

   A few days after Emily visited, I had the day off. I slept in, and so did Su Jin. I was just getting out of bed when she glanced out the window and gasped.
     "What?" I asked, quite startled.
     "Snow!" was all she said. Sure enough, there was a good few inches of snow outside. Because the site of snow turns me into an excited five year old, I lept out of bed and pulled on snow-appropriate clothing. I went outside the White House to where those who were working were already shoveling and salting. We all got quite distracted, throwing snowballs at each other and being silly. A good number of the volunteers have never seen snow before, being from South America and Africa.
   Eventually I left them to their work and went to the Den, spending the morning being lazy and occasionally going out in the snow. After eating lunch a bunch of us went out to the Quick, the hill at the far end of the park where we run grass sledging, to try out the home built snow board Blum, Sujin and Nicholas had made. Of course it didn't work but it was fun to see them try. We spent the rest lunch walking around the park, looking for fresh snow to make snow angels and have snow ball fights with.

 Blum and his snowboard made of some wood pilfered from the maintenance yard and an old pair of work boots. 

Blum "teaching" Sujin how to snowboard.

Training Ground snowball fight, Chiara, Sujin, Maggie and Soo Young.

   By the next morning most of the snow had melted and we haven't had anymore since. Which is probably for the best since it means a lot of work for us. I'm glad we got at least some snow, just so the others could experience it for the first time, it was really fun to watch them.

   On December 10th, Eric, Allan, Patrick, Francisco and I were supposed to drive 5-6 hours up to Northumberland to another Scout Activity Centre called Hawkhirst to help them get ready for their Winter Camp. It was mostly going to be digging but we were all excited to take a road trip and see another centre. Also, the staff at Hawkhirst have a full time chef and apparently the food is amazing. We were really looking forward to that. Unfortunately, our trip was cancelled because the ground was just too frozen to dig. That was a shame, but Ian said they would send us up some time in the New Year, so hopefully it still happens. The other bad thing was that all the days we were supposed to be at Hawkhirst became regular working days, meaning I worked nine days out of ten total. I was pretty exhausted by Thursday December 13th,

   That day there was the annual Gilwell Park football match (that's British football remember, not American) in which people from upstairs at the Scout HQ play the people from downstairs. People from the Activity and Conference Centre play with upstairs. The other volunteers kept trying to get me to play but I refused: I do not play football, unless it is a video game, and even then I'm rubbish.
   The game was played on the training ground during lunch break. Our team got in a couple good goals but in the end we lost, though there were some very bad calls by the referee. I had a good time cheering everyone on.

They let us take a picture with the Cup, even though we didn't win. 

  That night I went out to the Station House because it was Dave's going away party. Dave works in the office with Sam, doing bookings and various other admin stuff. He lives with the three other lead instructors in Gilwellbury and is basically on the same level as them management-wise. He left Gilwell because he got a job as a centre manager at one of the county Activity Centres, which is great for him. All the volunteers were invited to the Station House but in the end just Gustavo, Francisco and I went, everyone else either had to work or was too lazy to walk twenty five minutes. It was a small group, Dave; Ian; Vladimi, one of the conference centre managers who I work with a lot doing reception; one of the chefs Rob, and a couple people from Scout HQ. Emma also dropped by for bit. The great thing was, because there were only three of us volunteers, Ian bought us all a drink and we didn't end up spending anything.
  It ended up being a late night and I slept in until 11 the next morning and practically went straight to the Conference building for the Christmas lunch. All staff from the centre and from HQ were there and it was a traditional Christmas lunch, I taught the other volunteers how to pull Christmas crackers, there were little games and our table won the snow man making competition.

  On Saturday I had to work a double shift in reception because Morris was sick. That was twelve hours total, with a fiasco of a wedding thrown into it. Not the best working day. During my dinner break I raced back to the Den because we were doing our Secret Santa exchange. It was loud and silly and opening the gifts all together was better than the actual 5 pound gifts themselves. I got pajamas from Patty. It was hard to go back to work after that when I knew everyone else was going to having a good time in the Den. I finally got off work at 10pm, by which time half the people had either gone to bed or were sitting on the couch exhausted. We managed to find enough energy to dance a little and be silly for some time.

This is kind of typical for Gilwell Park parties: Allan, Benjamin, Gustavo and Blum removing the living room door just because it's possible.

Chiara, a.k.a Little Miss Sunshine and me. 

  As we moved into the last week of work, we were told somewhat unexpectedly that we would be moving out of the White House and into Gilwellbury; the place was finally ready. There was a bit of a crisis when Emma made up the room plans and no one seemed happy with it and it took us a long time to figure it all out. In the end, no one miserable so it worked it. So I spent that Sunday madly packing up and moving everything to Gilwellbury before going to work in reception. It was Dave's last working day so I said goodbye to him and then spent the night in my new bed. I like Gilwellbury because it is more of a proper house, though the Den feels more like a home to me still, especially since we had no food in Gilwellbury for the first couple days.

Sujin decorated our door :)

   

And Francisco and Gustavo felt left out and tried to one-up us. 

(Cancheros is slang for handsome.) 

    Francisco, Gustavo and I decided to decorate for Christmas and put up a tree. We had two fake trees and couldn't decide which one to use, so we put up both! Everyone else think's it's really strange but we think it's awesome.

Francisco and Gustavo and our conjoined tree in Gilwellbury.

  That Monday we had our December staff social, which included the three lead instructors and Kerry. We went bowling some where in Essex, not exactly sure where, but it did not matter since I was not driving. I had not been bowling in years and was pretty bad. Luckily, there were others who were just as bad as me, if not worse. We had a great time and it was almost 10pm before we went upstairs for dinner. Although we had a reservation, the restaurant seemed very surprised to see a party of 21 walking through their doors. As it always happens when we go out for dinner in such a large group, we cause problems. They just did not really know how to deal with us, and everything got confused and took a long time. All I could do was laugh.

Me, Allan and Ian (one of the lead instructors) at dinner.

The whole team.

Korean power! Sujin, Johnny, Ji Yeong, and Hee Jeong with Ian and Kerry behind.

Sujin, Chiara and me with our Christmas cracker hats at the restaurant.

   On the very last day of work, Sam had me working in the office with her. Now that Dave has gone, she has decided she wants me to help her out a day or two a week as well as doing reception, which means less time in the Acitvity Centre for me. I don't mind, I like doing both. That Thursday she was teaching me how to do the banking, adding up all the revenue from the shops, vending machines and bookings, counting out the tills and doing all the complicated bits in the computer system. It is a good thing to know how to do, and I think I enjoy doing it.

   The only other thing that happened in December was our new volunteer Pei-Ling from Taiwan settling in.

She is very quiet and keeps to herself, and some of the others have tried to draw her out with friendly teasing. Sometimes I think they take it too far, though they mean well. So one day I said, "hey guys, why don't you go bully somebody else."
    This is where that got me: