It's the ultimate adventure - traveling with your Girl Scout troop. In order to create these amazing expereinces, we need well-trained team members ready to lead the girls on their trip of a lifetime.
Girl Scouts Dakota Horiozns has a trip planned to Scotland and England this summer. In order to prepare for the trip, Amy T., GSDH Girl Experience Manager, took a trip to Paris for training.
Read Amy's recap of the trip below.
I went to Paris on an EF Tours Training Tour. This is something the EF Tours offers for first-time travel leads, so that they can prepare you more for the experience and to have an international travel experience of my own before leading a group!
This trip truly was amazing, and the biggest part of that was the group that I was with. We had EF Tours staff there that gave us insight as to what they all do, and their part in supporting our tour. Our Tour Director is an expert on where we are at and is contracted through and provided by EF for each tour taken. (We will have our own personal Tour Director when we go to Ireland/Scotland/London.) The Tour Director usually lives in the area, or close to it and knows the history, current events and the “where to go” of the city. We also had our Group Leader, Daisy. She works for EF Tours and was in the role that I will be doing when we take our council trip. She kept everyone and everything running smoothly - working with the Tour Director. We also had two experienced tour leaders. They shared how they do their tours and what works well for them. One works for a Girl Scout council and has led one tour, with three more coming up. The other is a Girl Scout leader of an International Travel Troop that has more than 100 Girl Scouts in it that just go on international trips! The girls belong to other troops for all of the other Girl Scout-related activities. We spent about five hours over two days in a board room with these very knowledgeable people, and we took full advantage of the opportunity to learn from them. I came back with pages of notes for upcoming tours.
The first full day that we were in the board room, I was super intimidated walking into this room. There were 36 of us total, and I had no idea who was who and how much experience they all had. Once we sat down and started, I found out that we were all in Girl Scouts in some way, and that just made me feel warm inside. Here were a bunch of strangers that were already sisters to me because of our shared bond! We started going around the room to introduce ourselves, and to say if we were a volunteer or council staff and where we were traveling to. The first person to stand up said her name and then said “I am only a volunteer”. She was stopped right away and was very nicely told that there is no such thing as “only a volunteer”. Our volunteers are the heart of Girl Scouts, and I’m so happy that they made that distinction right from the start. There were people in that room from volunteer to council CEO, but titles were never used. Everybody was equal, valued and important. It was like living the Girl Scout Experience myself! I hope that our Girl Scouts get that same feeling when they are with their troop, at camp, on trips or at our council events.
I learned a lot about myself on this trip, good and bad. I now know that I am able to handle an international flight and the lack of sleep that goes along with traveling, especially that first day. With international travel, you fly overnight and hit the ground running the first day at your destination because you land in the early morning their time (which is the middle of the night your time). I feel much more prepared for how to travel with a large group (there’s 42 of us) and how EF Tours works while on tour. I also learned some things that I am working on before my next trip. I experienced homesickness like I haven’t in a long time. This will help me with being empathetic with the Girl Scouts on our trip. I also experienced a tiredness and soreness that went straight down to my bones . I don’t usually walk as much as you do when on a trip, and when you are physically tired, it is much easier to be mentally exhausted which adds to how much your feet hurt. With all of this though, it was an awesome experience.
To think that I was in France is surreal to me now. I got to see the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dam in person! The Palace of Versailles was one of the most beautiful buildings that I think I have ever seen. Our tour director for the palace was super easy to stay engaged with as well because he customizes his tours to the group that he is presenting to. He told us a lot about what the women would be doing during the time, and what Marie Antionette experienced. You could tell that he believed she got a bum rap, and took the fall for a lot of things that went wrong at that time. I would say that was my favorite part of the trip (other than the group I was with).
I just love the EF offers this opportunity to the tour leads because I walked away feeling confident in what was going to happen and how to answer questions that the travelers have. I know that things are going to come up that I’m not prepared for, but I’m a Girl Scout with a whole group of Girl Scouts who are all there to support each other. We got this 😊
