We Love Girl Scouts

On Friday my troop is doing a service project, attending a bingo night event with 100+ other Girl Scouts, and having a sleepover, then running a bake sale first thing Saturday morning.  It makes me question my sanity - and my level of involvement in Girl Scouts (it's grown instead of shrunk over the past three years).

But this Girl-Scout-a-thon weekend is also making me reflect on all of the great things Lydia and I have done together in Girl Scouts.  I need to post (and think about!) more of those experiences!  I'll start with the one that I think is both of our favorite - an English language exchange/pen pal program with a local school.

The local school we paired with is about as far away from Lydia's school as you can get and still be in Hong Kong.  When I looked on a map, I realized we were almost on the China border.  Most of the kids rarely see Westerners - in fact, several asked if we had traveled from the USA for the visit! 

While local kids in Hong Kong learn to speak English at school, they generally have instructors that aren't native English speakers.  This means that they are learning English that is heavily accented, often to the extent that native English speakers can't understand what is said.  As a result, this is how the kids are learning to speak. Not exactly helpful if the goal of learning English is to be able to use it effectively!

The purpose of our visit was to share our "native" English with the students by doing fun activities like reading a book as a group (we chose "Going on a Bear Hunt" so  girls could stand up and act it out as a group) and playing games like Simon Says.  The girls also got to meet the pen pals they'd been assigned.

The girls did have a hard time understanding each other at first, but seemed to overcome it (and shyness) after a few warm up activities.  It was a really fun day of kids from very different backgrounds enjoying each other's company.  Really, no language is needed to play! By the end of the afternoon, Lydia and her pen pal were holding hands and hugging each other.  Here's our group:

And here's Lydia with her pen pal, Kiki, who she adores:

Although the point of the visit was for the Girl Scouts to "help" the local students, I think we all got as much out of it as they did.  It was good for the girls to spend time with kids who REALLY live in Hong Kong - not just other expat kids here on set timelines.  It was definitely the most meaningful interaction I've had with local people. 

It's experiences like that this make the rest of the Girl Scout mayhem worth it.  So...let the Girl-Scout-a-Thon weekend begin!