hello, hello, hello

Six out of seven days a week we gotta wear these polo shirts - one's white and one's navy, with the Pax Lodge logo on breast. On Saturdays, we get to wear our Saturday shirt. This is me in my Saturday shirt - as you can see, it has the logos of all four world centers plus the tagline 'girls worldwide say "Discover Our World Centers."'

There are three other world centers in addition to Pax Lodge. Our Chalet is in Switzerland and it is the oldest of world centers. Our Cabana is the second oldest, in Mexico. Sangam is in India. Pax Lodge is actually the newest world center, since it was only completed in 1991. However, it is the third world center to be based in London. The first one was open in 1939, until they ran out of space and had to open a bigger one in the 1960s. They ran out of space in that building as well, so they built Pax Lodge in the late 80s. Pax Lodge is the most ideal, so far, as it is based right next to the WAGGGS, which is what Lady Baden-Powell always wanted, but what was an impossible goal previously due to London building laws.

(WAGGGS [World Asssociation of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts] is the umbrella organisation for girl guiding and girl scouting organisations internationally. I didn't know, or care about, the significance of this, until I was given a tour of the grounds and our manager took me next door and showed me the mailboxes. They have mailboxes for nearly every nation in the world.)

Anyway, what I meant to say is that my shirt is too big, but you can see now also the amount of information I've soaked up in the past couple of weeks as well. I honestly had no idea of the reach and enormity of girl guiding until I started working here.