International selection

This weekend I spent time with 40 girls who wanted to be selected for international trips. As usual their abilities varied but, in the main, they were all capable, friendly girls who we would happily send abroad. Some were exceptional and a few, only a few, were just not ready. In one case her mobile phone was obviously far more interesting than anything we were doing!

Now, when you go abroad you are likely to come up against unfamiliar food so the challenge was to produce some that they looked at and weren't quite sure about. A Philippine friend of mine had prepared black sticky rice for them. This is simply a rice pudding made with coconut milk but it is very black. Actually it tasted very nice but more than half tried about half a grain of rice and said they didn't like it. Several, when asked what it was, suggested it was poo (now where in the world do they eat poo if they aren't a dung beetle?). If we had been more upfront that it was competitive and not everyone would go abroad, I wonder whether there would have been a different response - I suspect not, sadly.

I would also like to say Thank you to all the people who came to the weekend especially Ann Wright and Hannah Roberts who gave up their entire weekend.