By: Brittany G.
Riding Icelandic Horses
Caving in Iceland
Going to London
What am I most concerned about:
Fighting with the girls
Someone getting hurt
Injuring my knee
What am I going to miss the most:
My dad and sister
Being alone
Free time
This is what the first page of our journals looks like, but of course the answers are different because not everyone can read my mind. The second page of our journals hold the excitement and uncontrollable craziness of our last meeting of the school year, which was also our last meeting before our troop trip to Iceland and England. The meeting was full of yelling, screaming, jumping around, and, well, just being crazily excited girls (because I’m sure that everyone knows how jumpy and happy girls can get). However, this was only one beginning in our journey. The true beginning was far earlier than anyone could have expected: 2004, the year we were in 1st grade.
Think back to when you were very young, just starting to see the world and the wonders it holds. Did you ever have dreams of what you wanted to do? Were you ever the one who asked, “What if?” That’s how this entire adventure started, one little question. “What if we went on a grand adventure one day?” That’s when our leader told our troop that she would take us to Europe. That’s when the seed was planted, and it grew into a magnificent thing.
Granted, I was skeptical of this when I first joined the troop three years later. I didn’t think it was possible for a group of young girls to accomplish anything this huge but I have never been so happy to be proven wrong. The first strike against my doubt was our trip to Seattle in the summer of 2011. We had planned this entire 10 day trip all on our own, and we traveled all the way across the country for our first adventure of a lifetime. The day we got home from Seattle is the day that started our path to reaching Europe.
Three agonizing years of fundraising followed. I can’t even count how many cars we washed or how many songs we taught or how many girls we interacted with at Campfire Meadow Magic and on top of all of the fundraising, there was the planning process. It took us an entire two years just to decide where we were going: “Oh, I want to go here!”
“No, we have to go here!”
“I don’t want to go there...”
“We can’t afford to go there.”
Finally, after months of research and months of failure, we finally found our breakthrough. A mom assisting our troop helped us research, and she found that the cheapest flights were to Iceland and then over to England. It took of lot of debating and extra research, but finally we set that as our game plan.
Now came the difficult, yet fun, part: scheduling and planning. We decided to tackle this task in two separate teams: four of us made up the Iceland team while the other three made up the England team. Then came the research. We researched what we could do, where we would stay, how we would get from place to place, and every other question that comes up before a big trip. We also established sister troops in each country. Our sister troops gave us a contact that we could get to know, easier access to information and relationships that turned out to be life altering and life lasting.
Now that you’ve heard the true story of how we planned and fundraised for our trip hopefully you want to read about our actual trip. I could not possibly do a better job at portraying what our adventure was like than members of my troop could. There is no possible way that I can tell you all about our experiences and keep it under 20 pages long. This passage was only meant to inspire you. With a little hope and inspiration, you too can make your dreams become you’re reality.
If you would like to read about our trip, I would encourage you to check out our blog. It has the amazing story of our trip as seen through the eyes of the girls and leaders who made it possible. I very much hope you enjoy it!! To read Troop 1640’s blog click here.
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