Second Team Meeting

or...Zweite Arbeitsgruppe Treffen.

Our team met yesterday and we listened to the first hand experiences of two past GSE team leaders Tim (Southern Mexico exchange) and Eric (Chile exchange). They both offered some very beneficial information, thoughts, ideas and tidbits. They were very open and honest that challenges do exist, people get sick, team members didn't always get along, people went home early and again, sometimes the original team selected is not the final team sent! They BOTH had experiences with arriving to a new place and there were no plans for them! Flexibility seems to be the ticket to success here! Despite these challenges, they both spoke very highly about the experience and still have contact with the team members and their foreign hosts.

Tim and Eric spoke about the challenges of exhaustion too! They were not shy in telling us that this is a very physically demanding experience with very long days, constant exposure to new things and always being "on" for your hosts. Roger will have to work very hard to get a day off for us or some down time. I can understand, the hosts are exited to have us there and any since they may only have us for 3 days, they want to do as much as possible. Then on to the next set of hosts and they want to fill up every minute of their 3 days too! Tim and Eric also spoke of fun, fun parties and events. Lots of late nights, singing, eating, drinking, dancing and talking which are followed by early morning presentation meetings.

Wow...feeling like I better head off to take a nap to be as rested as possible in May!