Bienvenidos a Mexico!

Last night our Girl Scout Service Unit celebrated Thinking Day at one of the local churches in town.  In case you haven't heard of World Thinking Day before, or don't remember it from your own girl scout days (Don't worry - I didn't either!!), Thinking Day is officially February 22 and is a day for girl scouts to "participate in activities with a global theme to remember their sister girl scouts and girl guides in other countries."


Each troop within our service unit was asked to pick a country that has girl scouts or girl guides and learn some things about that country that they could share with the other troops.  Booths were set up in the church hall and while half of the girls rotated around the booths with 'passports' that could be stamped at each country they visited, the other half acted as hostesses for the country we chose - sharing food, swaps and cool facts about the country.  Once the first group visited every country, then they switched groups so that all the girls had a chance to visit and to hostess.  The world tour was followed by performances or demonstrations (a song, a game, etc.) by each of the troops.

As a troop, we are very fortunate to have access to individuals and artifacts from many countries:  Italy, England, Mexico, Japan, Colombia and Canada!  We ended up hosting Mexico for our first ever Thinking Day and had only two meetings to prepare!  We are also in the midst of the 'Between the Earth and Sky' Journey, so were were desperate to find a way to combine our Journey with our Thinking Day preparations!  So, my co-leader and I spent and evening with some wine and the computer and voila!

We decided to focus on Monarch butterflies, as animals can surely be considered a natural resource AND Monarchs a journey each year (just like our crazy daisies!) all the way from Canada, through Texas and into Mexico!!!  Perfect!!

Each booth was required to have a sample of food from their country and our local Mexican restaurant was kind enough to donate rice.  Thanks Tony!!

Our girls made butterfly swaps using tulle, pipe cleaners and pony beads for the head.  So cute and so super easy to do!!  Thank goodness, because we had to make 130 of them!!

Our girls were each responsible for learning a word in Spanish or a fact about girl scouting in Mexico that they could teach each other (Journey requirement) and could share with the other scouts when they visited our booth!  For example - we discovered that the Spanish word for Daisy is Margarita!!  We won't be forgetting that one - ha!

We also had our girls dress like Daisy/Brownie scouts or 'Gacelas' by having them wear the uniform in Mexico - white shirt, dark blue pants and a yellow bandana - how easy is that?!?  We added a tissue paper flower that we made during our meeting to their hair so our Gacelas would look like flowers in a butterfly garden (learning about caring for the natural resource is another Journey requirement).  Aren't we 'clever and efficient' co-leaders?!  I think so!!

Our Daisy mom from Guanajuato, Mexico, who just so happens to be an architect as well (how lucky is that?!) volunteered to do our display board and our table display as well.  I expected something fabulous from someone so talented and we weren't disappointed!!

She also helped translate the girl scout song 'Make New Friends' into Spanish so our Margaritas could perform it at the end of the evening.  She even stayed to help serve rice and keep our 'tour guides' on track and we are just so blessed to have her!!

At our last meeting before the event, our girls made the tissue paper flowers and made tissue paper monarchs to help round out our booth decorations.  They were so simple to complete and I think the girls did an awesome job!!  Don't you?!

This was probably the first big event that our girls have had a chance to do with other troops and they all seemed to have a great time!  If you are looking for a way to celebrate Thinking Day in your area, I would encourage you to consider a 'World Tour!!'  If you celebrate Thinking Day some other way, I'd love to hear about it too!