World Thinking Day 2009

So far Girl Scout's has been a bunch of fun games and activities for Lael but yesterday was something a little more special.

Apparently each year on February 22, girls participate in activities, games and projects with global themes to honor their sister Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in other countries. Every year has a different theme and this years was "we can stop the spread of AIDS, malaria and other diseases."

Now since our daisies are only 5 and 6 we thought teaching them about AIDS would be a little too much so we decided to go with the importance of hand washing. We originally thought about having them glitter their hands and shake hands with everyone to show the glitter transferred to every one's hand represents germs that are passed on when hands aren't washed. Well, we decided against it since we would have to be the ones to clean it up. I'm too lazy for all of that.

Anyway, the girls had their World Thinking Day Ceremony yesterday and the girls were really excited. Each troop chose a country to focus on and we chose Thailand since one of our Daisies grandmother is from Thailand. The other troops chose Kenya, Philippines, Latin America and a few other countries. While we were setting up one of the other girls came up to Lael and asked her about Thailand and hand washing. Lael told her "Wash your hands or you will get germs and your nose will run and you'll cough and then touch people and then they will do the same thing."

Isn't she a smarty pants! So the girl decided to tell Lael about her country (I don't recall where) but the disease they chose was Onchocerciasis. Apparently it is an infection caused by a parasite and spread by the bite of an infected blackfly. What happens is people (mostly kids) get bit in the eye by the flies and go blind. They either fall into a ditch and die, get killed by the townsfolk because they are useless, or just die from the disease spreading. If they swatted at the flies and washed hands the spread of this disease would be minimal. Yes. This teenager told my 5 year old ALL of this. I should have caught the look on her face as she was shocked to hear such a thing. To think that she has been living among flies that could cause her to go blind!

Once things kicked off it was lots of fun. There was a Flag Ceremony (Lael held the GS Flag) and tasting of food from different countries and even candle lighting ceremony. Lael was on the end so the firs to start and I almost peed myself from fear of my baby holding a LIT candle. All. By. Herself. But she did it with me right beside her ready to throw my body on her if she caught on fire.

They ended the ceremony by singing this cute little song.

Keep new friends but keep the old
One is silver and the other's gold.

They broke it up by troops so it was really cute how each troop was on a different verse as we sang it over and over.





The funniest part of the day was after the flag ceremony was over I heard a little scream and ran around the corner to check because it was a familiar scream. Lael had dropped the flag and ran into the grass. Apparently a fly had tried to attack her and she wasn't having any of that. "I kinda like my eyes mom." I like them too baby.