Cazzle's Blurty

Interesting stuff
So, as you already know, I'm on the team going to America next year. As you may not have known, the district we will be visiting have sent their team over, and they're about halfway through their trip.

All 4 of us and our team leader, Barbara, went to the District Conference yesterday, where we met the US team. They seem like a very pleasant lot. We watched them do their presentation and we also go introduced to the rest of the delegates, i.e. the people who make up the clubs which are sponsoring us to visit NY. Thankfully we didn't have to say anything, just stand up and wave! One of the American team was really poorly, I think something she ate the night before had upset her tummy, but she came down and did the presentation anyway. I was very impressed, because I don't know if I could have managed the same if it had been me! Obviously she went straight back to her room after, so we didn't get to chat to her, but we'll be seeing the team again on Tuesday.

The team are all about our age, mid-20s, and seemed cool. There were 2 guys, Tim and Jeremy - I think Jeremy is probably closest to my age i.e. youngest in the group. He was rather bouncy and excited by everything, very confident. The other guy, Tim, was more quiet and calm. He's the group's unoffical photographer, I gather, with a Very Serious camera. He has 2 kids, who we saw a photo of during the presentation, two little girls. Very sweet. The other member of the team was a lass called Vickey, who's a full-time writer and specialises in RPGs. I wasn't sure whether she writes for computer games or for the more LARP-style kind of thing, or board games, but for some reason I was feeling really shy and I didn't ask her about it. I'm hoping to chat to her a bit more on Tuesday. Vickey had also made cute little buddies for everyone, those little pom-pom critters with googly eyes, that she'd stuck onto ribbon wit GSE 'O9 written on, and a little strip of ribbon in red, white and blue. Oh and little smiley face badges too! I think we would get on quite well if I can manage to actually talk to her a bit more.

As for our team, I got a lift down to the conference and back with James. He's a little bit older than me, 26, and seems a really genuinely nice bloke. The other guy in our team is Tom, who's the oldest at 31. He seems quite quiet so far but I think he'll open up a bit more as we all get to know each other. Rounding out the team, there's Helen, who's almost exactly a year older than me (her birthday's three days after mine!) From first impressions, I really really like Helen, she's dead sound. She also did English Language and Lit at uni, and is very warm and friendly. (She also had very nice shoes on yesterday.) Finally, our leader, Barbara, is very no-nonsense. She's very funny and says what she's thinking. I really think she'll take great care of us abroad, and she won't be afraid to tell people if we need a rest or whatever.

After the presentations and stuff, we had lunch together, both teams and leaders. It was nice to be able to talk a bit to the other team without them being dragged off a lot. Then after lunch, we went outside and had a few photos taken with each other. It was really quite nice! We chatted briefly and then the US team went back to get changed and stuff, and we had a brief team meeting on our own, talking about uniforms and stuff. We also talked vaguely about our own presentation, and Barbara divided us up into covering different areas of the region. It'll be an education for me, to be honest, because even though I've lived here for almost 6 years, I still haven't seen that much of the North East. (Mostly just Durham and bits of Newcastle, though I have walked a little bit of Hadrian's Wall, obviously.)

I'm starting to get really excited about this trip!

So, next. I'm going along on Tuesday with the US team, out to Barnard Castle, and we'll go and visit the Bowes museum while we're there. I've been before, but since this is one of the few trips the team are on that I'll be able to attend, I'm going again. I'm hoping my ankle doesn't give me too much gyp - I've got a support bandage on it which is fab so far, but there are wheelchairs I can borrow if needs be!

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