Paperwork done!

The team met in Skövde on Saturday the 23rd and had a very efficient day. GSE Coordinator for our District, Conny Johansson, joined us for the morning session. That meant we could air plenty of questions that we had about badges, broschures, printing, contacts and many other things. We also filled in the Travel Request Form, went through insurance papers, answers from embassies about visas, and compared notes on vaccinations. This last was interesting - which vaccinations were recommended varied a bit depending on where we asked.

We had another visitor in the afternoon, after another attempt by Mr Hanna to teach us polite introductory phrases in Arabic. Dr Mats Bäckman came, having kindly agreed to give us medical examinations free of charge. Dr Bäckman is an experienced G.P. who may well become more involved in the Rotary community in the future. He also discussed the vaccination issue with us, and promised to look into it a little more deeply. Having examined the three of us that didn't already have signed medical certificates, we all had our paperwork done. Two weeks ahead of schedule, no less, so there will be no last minute pressure with that!

This means we can now devote ourselves to all the other things that we want to have well prepared before we leave: clothes, presentations, brochures and some gifts.

As we are going to five different countries, we have also decided that each team member prepares a short basic introduction to one of the countries for presentation at our meetings. Björn presented some facts on Lebanon last time we met, and this week Kristin told us a little about Bahrain. This really whets our appetite and makes us very eager to see and learn more!

- 10 degrees and learning Arabic

We are leaving in 10 weeks and the preparations are ongoing, with increasing focus. Right now Mr Hanna is trying to teach us basics of Arabic, he has a tough job:)

Back to class!

/Björn

Welcome to our blog!

As Team Leader of the Swedish GSE team from District 2380, I feel I should start this blog off. First, let me say how honoured and thankful I am to have been chosen to lead this team to such an exciting and interesting part of the world! Secondly, I must say how proud I am to have such excellent team members, and how glad I am that we seem to work so well together! We also like each other as individuals, and that’s what I feel will take us through any rocky patches we may have in the time ahead.

We decided to write this blog entirely in English. Even though its primary purpose is to report our doings to our district and to keep in touch with friends, family, sponsoring clubs and employers, we found early in our preparation that reading others’ blogs was very informative. Using a language that is more widespread than Swedish, we hope will mean that more will find our experiences interesting and perhaps helpful.

So why start this blog so early? We haven’t left yet. We have nothing exciting to tell you about, no warm desert breezes, no interesting people and no buildings and monuments to show pictures of. The reason is that we found ourselves looking for information that we couldn’t find. How should we prepare ourselves? What clothes do we need, how many pamphlets should we print? Here, for all other teams struggling with those questions, is our story to be published: our questions, our mistakes, our (hopefully) brilliant ideas.

Our preparations started last year. We met twice after the formation of the team: one evening for the first meeting, and one whole weekend to get to know each other, to make plans and to participate in an introduction to Rotary, where our governor Mrs Edzia Koch, paid special attention to our team and gave us valuable insights.

We discovered that first weekend that the team members all have different talents that made the distribution of tasks easy. As Team Leader I find I mainly sit back and see the work get done around me, which isn’t at all unpleasant!

Since we entered the new year, we have decided on a schedule of meeting roughly every second Saturday a whole day, and one whole weekend in early March. We have planning list of tasks and deadlines. We have also decided to take a short course of elementary introduction to Arabic, some of the culture and some basic knowledge of the region. Our tutor is from Syria, Mr Emad Hanna. How well he succeeds in teaching us force our throats and tongues around the words that sound so strange to us we will see… (Mr Hanna is in the picture on the right.)

So here we are! Wish us luck in being able to represent our district well! We are sure we will all have the experience of a lifetime!