I promise that I will do my best...

We're taking a break from the road trip saga today because I'm too excited about something else I want to share.

A few months ago Girlguiding (in which I was a Rainbow, Brownie, Guide, Young Leader and, since I was 18, an adult leader) held a consultation about the Promise. Just asking about it was exciting enough for me, as I had had problems with the wording since I was old enough to really understand what I was saying. However I obviously put up with it, because it never took away from the fact that it's an amazing organisation.

This is what the Promise has been for as long as I can remember:

I promise that I will do my best:
To love my God,
To serve the Queen and my country,
To help other people
and
To keep the (Brownie) Guide Law.

Which is fine, but must have been off-putting for newcomers to the organisation who, for example, were atheist or agnostic; or anyone who believed in another God and weren't able to make this apply to them. I even had a discussion with some fellow Guiders at a training once who were convinced that if you were an atheist you weren't allowed to be a leader. I'm nearly 100% certain that this was never the case, but it does put it into perspective when even people within the organisation were put off by it!

Well, I am very happy to say that today Girlguiding has announced a change in wording for the Promise, effective 1st September 2013. It now reads:

I promise that I will do my best:
To be true to myself and develop my beliefs,
To serve the Queen and my community,
To help other people
and
To keep the (Brownie) Guide Law.

So I no longer have to pretend that I believe in God every time I say the Promise! I can be my true agnostic self, who will wait for a divine being to be proven or disproven either way before I decide whether or not to love it! I no longer have to say my God is "chocolate" or something else silly just to justify the Promise to myself! Yays!

And to all of you who have used the Promise as an excuse not to help at your local unit: haha! You now have no excuse! Now get out there and go for it, I promise you won't regret it!

Update

So yeah, I was doing pretty well at blogging regularly for a while there, but then we weren't doing anything interesting, other than watching a lot of Bones, so I didn't have anything to say! And then we did so much fun stuff that I didn't have time for blogging. And I keep forgetting to take photos. So here's a (hopefully) brief update of what's been going on in these parts recently. Enjoy!

Anniversary

Early in February N & I quietly celebrated a whole four years together with some sushi :)

Chinese New Year

I made spring rolls, and N made the most amazing sweet & sour pork! Nom nom nom!

Bara brith

I made bara brith for the first time for a lab meeting and it went down sooooooo well. It tasted so good and was incredibly easy to make, definitely making that one again!

Roller derby

Got tickets for the final match of the Baltimore league's tournament (Charm City Roller Girls). Lots of fun! Man those girls can skate!

Craft council show

Spent the following day wandering around the Convention Centre all day at the American Craft Council show which was awesome! I didn't realise how massive it was going to be, but we were there for four hours! I bought a mug and some chopsticks, ever practical...

Welsh day

We celebrated St David's Day a day late this year. We wandered over to Whole Foods and picked up some lamb, leek and daffodils, and even managed to find some Welsh cheese and "dragon" sushi for lunch! N made Welsh cakes, always amazing.

Fancy food box

We decided to treat ourselves by subscribing to a box of Fancy foods! The first one was an awesome assortment of tea, ginger ale, chocolate and, best of all for us, chorizo (among other things)! Amazing!

St Patrick's Day Parade

For some reason the St Patrick's Day parade was held on the 10th of March.... Anyway, it passed right outside the front of our apartment building, so we spent a happy hour in the sunshine (the one warm weekend so far, very lucky!) watching all the bands and flags go by. They still weren't done after an hour though, I have no idea how long it took!

Baby nephew!!!

N's nephew was born ten days ago. I'm an aunty! Or tante, seeing as the baby is Dutch. So exciting!

Zipcar, Girl Scouts, Six Nations

And finally, last Saturday was pretty fun, if a bit busier than I would have liked! I finally put my Zipcard to use and booked a car for a couple of hours to go in search of a Girl Scout cookie sale! I had a nice chat with one of their leaders about how it works out here, and came home with five boxes of cookies to my name! Hopefully I can find a troop to work with soon, I'm starting to get Guiding withdrawal symptoms! Oh, and the driving was fine, passed without incident, despite missing an exit :)

I followed that triumph with a brisk walk over to the Irish pub in Fells Point to watch the deciding match of the Six Nations. What a funny sport! Has anyone else ever thought how much it looks like a bird laying an egg when the ball pops out of the scrum? hehe :) I don't think I've ever actually watched a match before, but it was a lot of fun. And being in that pub I could easily forget I was in the US for an hour or so! I have to admit, I went down there expecting to not care who won, but as soon as the Welsh started thrashing the English with some amazing tries, I couldn't help cheering for the Welsh. To be fair, rugby wasn't even on my radar until I went to Wales, not that I paid much attention to it even then. But it just felt right to support them for some reason. I guess despite being English I have lived the majority of my adult life in Wales, so maybe that's why!

So that brings us up to date I think! If you want me to go into more detail about any of the happenings above just leave me a comment and I'll write a longer post!

What have you been up to lately?

World Thinking Day 2012

Each year on the 22nd of February, Girl Guides and Girl Scouts throughout the world take the time to time to think about all of the other Girl Guides and Girl Scouts around the world (that's over 10 million in 145 countries, in case you were wondering), on the birthday of the founders of the movement Lord Robert and Lady Olave Baden-Powell. It is also a brilliant opportunity to raise money for the World Thinking Day Fund.

This year, our Division chose to celebrate by climbing a hill to watch the sunrise, having a cooked breakfast in a local village hall, followed by another walk after breakfast. This was also a perfect way to reflect on this year's theme for World Thinking Day: "Together we can save our planet."

Consequently, I was up at 5.30am yesterday morning, and by 6am I was driving through the fog to see the sunrise. This is a more accurate reflection of what we saw:

but it was a great idea anyway! There were great views over to the mouth of the river Axe:

(yeah, alright, you'll just have to believe me, I'm sure its amazing on a sunny day!). And we saw the hut where the man responsible for lighting the beacon used to sit:

After official sunrise time had come and gone we walked on, for I think about an hour, to our breakfast destination. Unfortunately there had been some technical hitches, but the Trefoil Guild ladies did an excellent job of managing to cook everything despite a faulty oven! In the meantime we learnt about Thinking Day, I got roped into reading a poem about Nature, and then we remade our promises. When we finally got breakfast, 3.5 hours after getting up, it tasted awesome! Two sausages, two hash browns, baked beans and bacon:

Plus OJ + tea, yum yum yum :D  Suitably refuelled, we were soon off on another walk, 1 mile for the Rainbows and some Brownies, 2 miles for the Guides and some other Brownies. Spring is in the air!

Considering we live in such a rural area, some of the kids obviously don't get out much, which is a shame. Some of them were super-excited about mud! And we had to stop so they could paddle in the stream! This is what is so great about Guiding, we give these girls opportunities to experience such simple things that they wouldn't otherwise have access to, for whatever reason. And by getting out and about and experiencing nature, hopefully they are more likely to want to look after it in the future!

On that note, the weather is fabulous here today, so I'm off out to enjoy it by taking a long walk with the dog!

Oh yeah, on a side note, we also spent some time delivering leaflets for the Guide coffee morning and jumble sale next Saturday. If you have anything you would like to donate to be sold, or if you would like to come along and buy cake and jumble, get in touch and I will give you more details!

Visa la vida

On a remarkably hot day at the end of September N and I took a trip to London town for the interview to get his visa at the American Embassy.

You're not allowed to take anything in with you except for your documents (and I think your wallet is OK), and N didn't fancy going all the way to London and back without a phone, which is understandable, so I went along for the ride and looked after his stuff while he was there.

So I had several hours to kill, alone, in London. As I mentioned, it was extremely hot for the end of September, so rather than spending my time underground on the, well, on the Underground, I took a walk across central London.  I ended up in Green Park: it was lovely to find such a green space after all the hot streets.

And found Buckingham Palace, where something was going on, I never did find out what!

I fought my way through the crowds and finally reached my goal: Girlguiding HQ! As well as all the offices of the staff there is a shop there and also, happily, a member's lounge where I could get free tea (well for a donation) and where I could set myself up and get some work done. And avoid the horror of London (I guess I didn't mention yet that I really don't like the place!)

At GGUK there were badges on the walls, including the one below. I'll be living near there soon!

A few hours later N called from a payphone - he waited all that time and only had to have answer a couple of simple questions before his visa was approved - only took a couple of minutes! So anyway, I raced back across town from Victoria to Oxford Circus (this time I did take the tube) to meet him outside the embassy, then we went off in search of fooooddd. We found this lovely place, I think it was Italian, serving the most fantastic paninis. From what I can remember we shared a mozarella, sundried tomato and basil; and a mozarella, tomato and avocado, both of which were incredible:

After lunch we headed back to the underground and made our way to South Kensington to go the Natural History Museum. Neither of us had been before and we were keen to see dinosaurs and things :D And we got to meet Darwin:

Awesome!

The whale room was pretty impressive, although I think I still can't get my head around how big whales are!

Overall I was pretty underwhelmed to be honest, but I did get hugely excited when I saw Mary Anning's icthyosaur and other fossils on the walls. I also really loved the panels on the ceiling. And I found some lemons! (I know several people who will appreciate this, maybe one day I will explain why...)

We enjoyed afternoon tea in the museum then headed back to Paddington to find some dinner before our train home. It was a long day, but worth it for the visa (N's been over there for over two weeks now , more on that soon) and to spend the extra time perusing the museum. It was also just nice to actually spend some time together amidst working so hard on our PhDs for so long!


In other news, as I say, N is now in Baltimore, working hard, and has found an apartment. I'm on the farm in Dorset, also working hard - I sent my first draft of my first results chapter off to my supervisors for their constructive criticism last Monday, scary stuff! And I'm aiming to send them another first draft, of my second results chapter, on Tuesday. So I've mostly been doing that, and walking the dog. And I've started helping out again at my old Guide unit, which is surreal, but fun! Gives me something to look forward to on a Wednesday. And today I made the Christmas cake! So the house smells really Christmassy now, I think I'm getting into the Christmas spirit already, sorry if that offends anyone! But Christmas this year holds a lot for me to look forward to :)

Next blog will probably be about moving, which was already a month ago!

Hey look, a new post!

Hi there friends! So I've been trying to write you all a long post, with pictures, about all the fun things I got up to this August, but blogger has been slow and delayed me every time I've tried, which in fairness is very few times, because lab times are tough at the moment: only 3 weeks to go until I leave Cardiff!

So in the meantime, while I'm trying to finish said fun post, here is a post about this:

N and I went to the official presentation of my Queen's Guide Award on Friday, which was super exciting! It's the highest award you can obtain in Guiding in the UK, and I finally finished in January, after four years and three months of hard work and setbacks (to any Guidey types reading, this does include a 12 month break and a 3 month extension for personal reasons, I did actually finish it within the 3 years), so it was really special to finally get the actual award.

It was presented by this lady:

The new Chief Guide, Gill Slocombe! I was overly excited by this (can you tell by the crazy look in my eyes?) The best thing of all is that she is soooooo super lovely! We had a nice long chat with her afterwards and she is so genuine and obviously cares about the future of the organisation >> happy Gem :D

So look out for tales of summer fun soon, and I guess more Baltimore news at some point (although there's really not as much to tell as I thought there might be!)