2005 & earlier

Our Trip to Mexico
Our Trips to London
Tea with the President
Our meetings included wall climbing, abseiling, visits to fire stations, mud walks, and more...

Trip to Mexico

Buion An Leanbh Prague, Guides & Rangers
Girl Friendship Session, Our Cabana, Mexico
18th July - 30th July 2005

Why Did We Pick Mexico?

On a trip to Pax Lodge London, in 2003, seeds were planted to undertake an even bigger adventure to one of the other Guide World Centres. Members of Raheny Guides decided how great it would be to visit 'Our Cabana' in Mexico and with that, we started a lot of planning and a lot of fundraising.

Our Time in Mexico City

On arrival in Mexico, after our twelve hour flight, the first thing we noticed was the rain (not the welcome we had been hoping for!) and the heat. We were met by our drivers who would bring us to our home for the next three nights, Ticalli, a guide hostel run by the Mexican Guide association. After being assigned to dorms, we discovered that we would be sharing with some Canadian guides who quickly filled us in on the highs and lows of Mexico City.

Over these three days we were kept very busy seeing the following sights:

The Aztec Pyramids - definitely the highlight of our trip was the Sun and Moon Pyramids, where we got to climb the third largest pyramid in the world.
The Floating Gardens - where you can have a mariachi band sing to you and buy nearly anything you could want as you float along.
A Cactus farm - we had a taste of some cactus juice and saw the many uses of cactus.
Museum of Anthropology - this is one of the largest anthropology museums in the world and to take it all in you would need more than a day!
A trip up to the viewing gallery of the tallest building in Latin America; from here we had a fabulous view of the entire city around us.
While in Mexico City we also had the opportunity to visit some traditional Mexican restaurants and craft markets.

Our Cabana

Our session lasted for nine days and there were 80 participants from countries including: Canada, Chile, Mexico, the UK, and USA. Our group was divided up in to different dorms and these also became our patrols for the duration of the session. Even the leaders were put in to two patrols.

When in Our Cabana, we also had a few day trips to visit the sites around the state of Morelos. We visited Cuernavaca Town, Tepotzlan, and everyone's favourite Taxco, home to the largest and most productive silver mines in Mexico. Something unique to Our Cabana is the Craft House, in here you can have a go at making many of the crafts that you will see on sale in the markets.

Service Project

Before going to Mexico, each travel group was assigned one of the six WAGGGS rights on which we were to educate the children that we would be working with. We were given 'The Right to be Heard'.

The service project would consist of working with over 100 children aged between 4 and 14. This was a mammoth task and took a lot of preparation prior to travelling. We had to make sure we had enough activities to cover all ages and that they did not take much explaining as the children only spoke Spanish and we only spoke English. We arrived well prepared with all the materials we would need and a full translation of our activities and the relationship of the activity to the right to be heard.

All the children were part of an organisation called VAMOS. VAMOS works with several small communities in Cuernavaca and the surrounding area trying to give the families more education, economic and social opportunities. Here is a brief summary of the service project:

We started with a few games to help the children become more relaxed. Then they were broken up in to groups by their age. When each group arrived we had to quickly decide what would suit them best and what they would enjoy the most, based on their age. Some of our activities were; Pick 'n' Mix, The Colour Game, Straw Tower, The Mirror Game, Simon Says and a collage of the words 'Speak Out, Be Heard' (in Spanish of course) that all the children contributed drawings to. All the activities we had organised worked really well, even with the little Spanish that we had.

Later, we all gathered in Mexicocali (the Programme House) and sang songs and had a big campfire, unfortunately indoors as the rain had decided to come down again. Everyone had a great experience, seeing the children turn from being shy and tearful to singing along and hugging us all goodbye. We all felt that we had made a difference in each of the children's lives.

Trips to London

London October 2003

Buckingham Palace

Big Ben

Pax Lodge

London October 2001

The Big Gig in Wembley

Big Ben

The Palace Guards

Tea with President McAleese

On Wednesday 7th January 2004, 40 CGI Leaders from around the country visited the Aras to have tea with President McAleese. The invitation was received in recognition of the 75th celebrations.