Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Troop 799
Bridging to Senior Trip Savannah, Georgia June 26 - July 2, 2011
FORWARD About two years ago we came across some information suggesting that when Girl Scouts bridge (move up) from Cadette Scouts to Senior Scouts, an appropriate place to hold that ceremony is the birthplace of the founder of Girl Scouts, Juliette Gordon Low. That birthplace is Savannah, Georgia. So, we set our sights on Savannah, and the rest is history! It took two years of saving cookie earnings, donations, and a couple of extra fundraisers but we did it. Eight total girls, (who have all been together in this same troop since 2nd grade) and two leaders left California on June 26, 2011 for what proved to me a very memorable trip. What follows is an account of that trip from the perspectives of the girls with some interjections now and then from the leaders. The total cost of the trip was $13,500 not including any personal spending money the girls used. Of that, the parents contributed approximately $2,700. Individual cookie earnings applied was $1,300. The balance, or about $9,500 came from the troop. Most of the $9,500 was from cookie earnings. See how important selling those cookies is for the girls!? The opportunities that cookies allow the girls is why we participate in the madness! Plus, the cookies are yummy!
TROOP 799 MEMBERS Leaders: Carolyn Chrisco, Melinda Dougherty Girls: Kira Chrisco, Alleyna Dougherty, Sarah MacMillan, Claire McGlade, Emily Ostendorf, Keegan Roberts, Lauren Sawdey, Sammie Wilmeth
DEPARTURE DAY – JUNE 26, 2011 Melinda Dougherty, Leader: I was in the kitchen doing some last minute preparations to leave my husband to fend for himself for 5 days when I heard a knock on the door. It was the shuttle that had arrived very early to take us to LAX, the airport we were flying out of. Our flight was a “red eye” leaving at 10:45 p.m. and we were arriving in Savannah the following morning. We would be starting immediately on our planned tour! Well, like I said, the shuttle arrived early, I think it was 4:30 p.m. Nobody else had arrived yet. We were expecting the shuttle around 5:15pm. The driver was concerned about getting us there in time. In Los Angeles, you just never know what kind of traffic you will find. I must also add, that what showed up to take us to the airport was a 12 passenger Mercedes Benz luxury passenger van that was placed in service that day. We were the first group to get to ride in that vehicle. It was very fancy. We got to LAX in record time and were faced with the challenge of what to do with ourselves for 3 hours at the airport. We used up at least one hour checking in. You don’t move anywhere fast with 10 girls. Everything is self-serve now so we had to print boarding passes and pay for our baggage at the kiosks in the airport. Yes, we had to pay $25 for each bag we checked. A side effect of charging $25 per bag is that about 50% of the people do not check their luggage so boarding is a challenge. We did not want to have to worry about running with luggage to make our connection in Atlanta so we decided to check baggage. Only one girl had a suitcase small enough to carry-on so we didn’t really have much of a choice. This ended up being a wise decision because our flight was delayed in boarding so we had less than an hour lay over in Atlanta. After getting boarding passes and checking our luggage we proceeded to security clearance. We had to remove shoes, jewelry, belts, and jackets. They were randomly body-scanning people and Alleyna, my daughter, was picked. She got very nervous so I asked if I could take her place to which the very uncomfortable TSA said tome “ I now only had two options. She has to either get a full body pat down or not travel.” I convinced him to reconsider if she agreed to the scan. Since she was a minor he let her choose that option. Whew! Awkward moment averted.
The fun didn’t stop there. Most of the girls were through when I saw a TSA agent pull Sammie aside. I was coming through right behind her so I went over to see what was going on. Apparently there was something suspicious in her purse and they wanted permission to manually search it. They asked her if she was carrying any liquids and she forgot she was carrying a full size bottle of Victoria Secret perfume. The TSA agent asked us if we would like to go back to the counter and check it in or contribute it to the local dump. Sammy reluctantly let him throw it away. So we managed to now use up almost two hours of our time. The girls were hungry as usual so since we had an hour before boarding we figured it was a good time to eat. For lack of a better place to eat, (you’d think an airport as big as LAX would have many choices) we chose to eat at McDonald’s. Before I get to the girls’ journal entries it’s worth a mention that this was Sarah’s first plane ride ever! She handled it very well. Our plane was a big one that held 300 passengers and came equipped with TV’s in every headrest. Quite fancy for one’s first plane ride! Fancy seemed to be the theme of our transportation this day.
Alleyna: Dear Journal, Our first trip to Savannah! Whoop! Although, we are stuck in the airport. [drawing of a mad face] The lack of sleep is making us punchy but we are all ready for this adventure. I’m gad to be with my Girl Scouts! This trip is gonna be the BOMB! [drawing of a bomb] Oh BTW, we are the first official riders of the MERCEDES BENZ Van! Pretty legit! Well, Peace. <3 Alleyna.
Lauren: Okay, so I am adding on Alleyna’s little story of the airport. So for dinner we all went to Mickey D’s! Yum!! Except there was one problem, a huge one! They had a limit on the sauce for chicken!! Lame O’s. It made me very upset, because if I’m paying almost $10 for this food, which is ridiculously over priced to me, I felt I should get however much
sauce I want. Now I’m not sure if this was a big issue to anyone else, but to me it is a very big problem! Oh well, I got Alleyna’s sauce. <3 Lauren.
Leader adds: They limited the amount of sugar for the coffees too. Depending on what size of coffee you ordered was how much sugar packets they gave you. It was a similar policy as the sauce for the nuggets. Really?
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DAY 2 – JUNE 27, 2011 Melinda Dougherty, Leader: We arrived in Savannah around 8 am Savannah time and our tour guide met us at the airport. Her name was Clara. She came to make sure our shuttle was picking us up as planned which it didn’t. We had more waiting to do at another airport. We were sprawled out in the baggage claim waiting area like vagabonds. Since some of us were dressed for a cold flight we decided to change in the bathrooms because it was really humid and the plan was for us to go to eat at Mrs. Wilkes House. We didn’t think we would have enough time to change. This was a good decision as it turns out. The shuttle didn’t pick us up until closer to 10 am and Mrs. Wilkes opens up at 11am. Once at the hotel, we convinced the shuttle driver to wait for us at the hotel to check in and then take us straight to Mrs. Wilkes House so we could save time walking. We stayed at the Fairfield Inn in the Historic area of Savannah. Almost all the points of interest were within walking distance of our hotel. Well, we got to Mrs. Wilkes house at 10 minutes to 11 and the line was around the corner! We waited in line for 1½ hours but I would say it was worth it. The girls, for the most part, say it wasn’t.
It was the best southern food we had all trip. They sat us at a family style dining room table and offered us sweet tea (No it’s not just simply tea with sugar, it’s actually tea that has simple sugar mixed in it when it is hot. It is very sweet), tea, water, and sodas. When we were seated already served for us on the table were bowls of the following…. Pulled pork, biscuits, cornbread, gravy, black eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, rutabaga, peas with egg noodles, mashed sweet potatoes, collard greens, cooked cabbage, creamed corn, baked beans, white rice (the gravy was for that), stewed okra and tomatoes, savannah red rice and sausage, the widest green beans we’ve ever seen. They brought us chicken “just out of the grease” as the waitress put it. For dessert (yes there was more food) they offered us banana pudding and a fruit cobbler. It was soooooo much food. The girls tried a lot of it but they felt it was not worth the $15 per person. All that aside, it was the best example and preparation of Southern food we had while in Savannah. It was the first of 3 large buffets we would experience on the trip.
Sammie: Wow, it’s the first day and this trip is already amazing. My first memory so far is Kira’s “Oh Elle, you look like the 4th of July. Makes me want a hot dog real bad” Ha Ha Ha. (leader adds, this was an impersonation from Legally Blonde that Kira excelled at.) It was super humid today and we had to wait for an hour and a half outside to get our lunch. It was kind of worth it though. Right now we’re playing “Things” in our hotel room. Anyways, it’s been good so far and I’m looking forward to the rest of the trip. Lataaa skataa! Love Sammie <3
Keegan: So it’s the first day. It was extremely humid. YUCKY! And then it randomly started raining. I don’t like hot rain. Bleh. We ate at Paula Dean’s restaurant and it wasn’t very good. As we were walking out some homeless guy came up to us and started telling us we “are beautiful girls” ha-ha it was pretty creepy. We also went on a carriage tour. At the end the horses got scared and started running. It was really scary. Our tour guide’s name was Jacob and he knows what a bedazzler is! Okay peace out Girl Scout. Love Keegan
Leader adds . . . The hot rain was actually a description of the puddles left from the rain that were so hot from the steamy pavement and sidewalks. It was a strange experience for us desert rats. After we ate at Mrs. Wilkes House we just couldn’t stay up any longer. At this point I would say most of us had been up for over 24 hours with a little sleep on the plane. We skipped out on the walking tour and went to our rooms and went to bed. Clara, our tour guide was very flexible and understanding. We got up in time to go to another southern buffet at Paula Dean’s and it really was disappointing after the great buffet we had at lunch. But it was a Savannah experience worth trying. As for the horses getting scared, the lightening spooked the horses and Jacob was an expert at gaining their control. The horses weighed just under a ton and if we didn’t have a big driver like Jacob we would have had the E ticket carriage ride. For the girls, that means the really fast rides at Disneyland back when your moms were girls. Those rides cost an E ticket.
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DAY 3 – JUNE 28, 2011 Emily: The first thing we did today was went on a scavenger hunt which wasn’t the funnest thing in the word but after that we went on a tour of the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low which was good because it was all indoors! Then we went to Urban Outfitters which is my favorite store in the whole world and then we went to this thing for two hours to help us become a proper lady which was kind of fun. My favorite part of my day was the ghost tour. It’s fun to see how scared people get, but I will have to say the lady leading the tour was really good at making the ghosts seem real. I just hope I can get some sleep tonight. Emily
Leader adds . . .
Today was one of the two Girl Scout type tour activities we experienced on our trip. We all dressed in full uniform and were quite the attraction. One couple actually stopped us in front of the house and asked if we could pose for a picture in front of Juliette’s house. I suppose Girl Scouts in front of Juliette’s house makes for a good photo. The girls learned some pretty neat things about the founder of Girl Scouts. In addition to being a pioneer for girls, she was an artist, a sculptor, a wood worker, and a blacksmith. After we toured the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low and learned how to be a proper Victorian lady, including how to call on company and pour tea, we went to the Riverfront. Savannah still has an active port of call and many overseas containers arrive and leave from this port. While we were eating dinner a huge ship came into the port. It was taller than the building we were eating in. After dinner and a little riverfront shopping we went on a ghost tour. Savannah touts itself as being the most haunted city in the United States. New Orleans likes to say the same thing. Anyway, I must say, I was a little worried about this. I was concerned we were going to have sleeping issues. The tour guide did a good job of making the stories sound like sad tales but we did have two girls who had trouble sleeping that night.
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DAY 4 – JUNE 29, 2011 Sarah: We went to Tybee Island!! We first went to the lighthouse, then we went to The Last Song house! It was so cool! We walked where Miley Cyrus walked. The lighthouse gave me very sore legs. There were 178 steps! After lunch was a dolphin tour. It was sooo cool. I love dolphins!! We saw so many! I LOVED that dolphin ride. All I can say is I am happy, very happy, to be on this trip and that I’m not very scared. Thank you God. Love Sarah
Leader adds . . . Tybee Island is about a half hour from where we were staying so EFT hired a bus for us today. The ocean that surrounds Tybee Island is the Atlantic. This day was the worst weather day we had. It was hot, about 92 degrees, and humid. I think it got up to 80% humidity before it finally rained. We shared the bus with two other groups of Girl Scouts. There was a group of about 20 from South Dakota and a group of 7 from Iowa. The 20 from South Dakota were a mix of ages from elementary age through middle school. I think we overwhelmed the South Dakota group with our California personalities. It definitely was a learning experience for our girls. After visiting the house where The Last Song was filmed we walked from the part of the island that borders the Savannah River over to the Atlantic Ocean side of the island. The girls were extremely hot and were not interested in anything but finding shade. Nevertheless, we made them put their feet in the Atlantic Ocean! We then went and found shaved ice, cooled off, and boarded the bus to go on the dolphin tour. I will say I didn’t expect to see any dolphins but we saw lots of them! They were bottlenose dolphins and dark. Not the type we are used to seeing on the California coast. Before we left the island we visited an old Civil War fort where we experienced the Girl Scout Militia program and earned a patch. Sammie and Keegan “volunteered” (actually I pushed them forward) to participate in priming and loading a canon, which the instructor eventually shot. He also taught us about the flag system the Girl Scouts used and told us how the Girl Scouts trained soldiers from World War II in the art of Morse code! It was very interesting for the girls to see the important contributions Girl Scouts has made throughout history. For dinner we went to the Old Pirate House, which was now a restaurant. This was a place where pirates stopped to eat and legend has it that they would kidnap men who had too much to drink, take them out in secret underground tunnels and make them work on their pirate boats. This was the third and final Southern buffet of our trip. The girls liked this one because it had in addition to Fried Chicken, chicken strips and the mac and cheese was more the type they were used to. The prior mac and cheese had breadcrumbs and was lumpy. The girls didn’t like it too much.
After this horribly humid day, it poured! The rain resulted in cutting our tour day short and the girls were so happy to be able to go to the hotel early and just hang out. In the hotel we asked the girls to plan out their bridging. After about an hour of going nowhere, they asked Carolyn and me to plan it for them. We agreed to help them but now Carolyn and I were starting to really stress out about this ceremony and were very unsure what we were going to do and where would be a significant and meaningful place to have it.
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DAY 5 - JUNE 30, 2011 Kira: The cemetery was really not and humid. There were a lot of gravestones there. I was surprised. It was very creepy in the daytime so I don’t want to go at night. It was cool how Juliet was buried with her whole family. Kira <3
Claire: The headquarters was really interesting! Our tour guy was hilarious!!! I loved seeing all the different uniforms. The timeline was very cool because of how Girl Scouts have evolved through the years. I really enjoyed the headquarters and loved knowing I have been where Juliet was. Claire
Carolyn Chrisco, Leader: Today was the last “day” of our EF portion of the tour. We have had some interaction with the scouts travelling with us from other states but they are fairly glad to see us end the tour. WE have been viewed as crazy Californians.
We are quite persistent and apparently crazy as we were able to gain admission to a live TV show on Thursday featuring Paula Dean! The Real Women of Philadelphia had their show that unveiled the winners of each food category & Paula was/is the host/sponsor. The girls were so excited to see the show and Paula gave them a wave and the Girl Scout “handshake” from the stage when the show was over. Last year’s winners even took photos of us!
Melinda Dougherty, Leader: This was the second Girl Scout activity day on our tour. We started the day by visiting the burial site of Juliette. It was one of those cemeteries you see in creepy scary movies. It had trees with moss hanging from them, really old tombstones, and uneven, cobbled ground. After that we visited First Headquarters. This was the first official Girl Scout headquarters and was actually the carriage house of the Low house. Juliette would walk across the courtyard from her house to conduct business there. We toured the Low House which was a very fancy home with lots of extremely rare and valuable historical artifacts, The girls pet the lion statutes “guarding the wealth” of the home. The tour guide told them that Daisy (Juliette) would pet those same lion statutes every day. This is still a functioning council and we learned some early Girl Scout skills as part of our program here. The girls were shown a public service announcement movie that was shown before movies in the 20’s. Then they were taught the flag code used by the scouts for communication and how to tie up a burglar with 8 inches of rope, (it’s a stretch but you can do it), and finally a resting technique used by the soldiers during the war which was adopted by the Girl Scouts for hiking/camping trips. While there I asked the manager Jamie, if there was a program that was offered there for bridging. She explained that there wasn’t a bridge there but they had something called a “stepping up” ceremony and she agreed to help us. We scheduled a return visit for the next day. Carolyn and I were so relieved! This was the last activity we did on our official tour. From this point on we were on our own. Having said goodbye to all the other scouts we headed to our hotel room to change and get ready for the Paula Dean show. After the show we went to this famous ice cream shop called Leopold’s.
Alleyna says it was the best ice cream she has ever had and “I know ice cream!” It was so good we went back the next day for more! The owner of Leopold’s is also a movie producer. One of his famous movies is “Mission Impossible” with Tom Cruz. ………………………………………………………………………………………………
DAY 6 – JULY 1, 2011 (OUR LAST FULL DAY THERE AND “BRIDGING DAY”)
Melinda Dougherty, Leader: We let the girls sleep in today and left the hotel in time to arrive at First Headquarters at 11 am. The girls stopped in front of the First Headquarters for one last picture as Cadette scouts. We then checked in with Jamie and she took over from there. What follows is an account of what happened during the ceremony. Jamie took the girls into the museum and spoke to them about their past experience in Girl Scouts and all they have done leading up to that day. The girls shared about Brighton Gardens, making “tons” of blankets, TDPS, the camping trip at Glen Helen Park, Laguna, and the recycling program they started at the school. They talked about how much fun they had at Parent’s Night Out, and the baby-sitting CPR class they took. When Jamie heard this she got really happy. She told them a story an 85 year old Girl Scout shared with her about how Girl Scouts were part of a California WWII evacuation plan. It was believed at that time that California was vulnerable to attack after Pearl Harbor because of its ammunition manufacturing plants. The plan involved children being taken to the closest school in their neighborhood if there was a perceived threat of attack. Girl Scouts were to meet them there and hike out of city limits to the outlying caves that were stocked with emergency supplies and food. They were to stay there until the adults came back for them and if they didn’t within a week’s time they were to hike to the next city and ask for help. (they never had to put that plan into action) She explained how caring for children is a long standing tradition for scouts and how they even baby sat for moms who were crossing the picket lines during the suffrage. (girls, this means exercising their right to vote when women didn’t have
such right) Baby sitting stations were set up close by the polls to allow the moms to vote without having to carry their children across the hostile picket lines. Jamie asked the girls to give some thought about the fun things they want to do as scouts as well as how they wanted to contribute to their world in a positive way. She then took them outside to the courtyard where Juliette made her daily walk from her house to the headquarters. Carolyn and I stayed inside and called each girl one by one to “step up”. The girls stepped up and through the door Juliette walked through every morning during her time as the first president of scouting. I bridged 4 girls including Alleyna and Carolyn bridged 4 girls including Kira. To each girl we asked “Are you ready to follow in the footsteps of Juliette Gordon Low and step up to the challenges of being a Senior scout?” When they answered yes we invited them inside, pinned them with the special pin only girls who have visited First Headquarters are allowed to wear, gave them the Girl Scout handshake and welcomed them to Senior scouting! Jamie came back inside and challenged the girls to think about how they wanted to impact the world and “make it a better place” like the promise states and then the girls recited the promise in front of Juliette’s portrait in the museum room of the house. So that ceremony was pretty amazing in itself, but there was more! Jamie took us back outside to the courtyard and explained the significance of the Candle Light Ceremony that is so popular with scouts which was started by Juliette. She explained that the flame represented the glow we feel when we do good, the warmth we get from the friends we make in scouting, and how we should be the light of the world. She told us the story of the eternal flame. Now bear with me, this was a lot of information to recall but I think this is how it went. The eternal flame had been glowing in a gas lamp there in the courtyard lit by Juliette and sustained until a gas outage caused the flame to go out. The flame was not re-lit until last year because they were waiting for a significant way to relight it. Last year was the start of the 100th year celebration of Girl Guides in England. Juliette had a big part in starting Girl Guides as well. At the opening ceremony in England they lit a huge bonfire. A special group of scouts was sent to England to participate with a special candle lighter, and flame keeper. That group lit the candle at the bonfire. They also collected some embers and placed
the candle in the special flame keeper and travelled all the way back from England to Savannah with the new flame and re-lit the original gas lamp. Our girls each lit a candle with that new flame and were commissioned to take the flame back to California and pass it along. The goal is to get every scouting area lit by a candle from that original flame by our 100th birthday on March 12, 2012. How exciting this is for us! We are now in the planning stages of how to exactly accomplish that. We believe we are the only troop from our area that can do this! That concluded our ceremony. It was very touching and couldn’t have been planned better. Thank you so much Jamie! We went back to the hotel, changed out of our Girl Scout uniforms, and then went to go take a tour of the First African Baptist Church. This church was actually designed and built by slaves. The tour guide told us that many of the slaves contributed the money they were saving to buy their freedom to build God’s house and they felt that God honored that because only two years after the church was finished the Emancipation Proclamation was signed giving those same slaves their freedom without having to buy it. The girls were not too thrilled about taking this tour but came out really glad they did. They were actually sorry they wouldn’t be able to make church service on Sunday since we were leaving Saturday. There was actually a stopping pit of the “underground railroad” under the first floor of the building. It has not been explored yet because they have not found the entrance and do not want to destroy the building in order to get there. They know it’s there because there are air holes in the ground of the first floor which were explained away previously as a pattern of some religious significance. About five years ago there was some utility work that had to be done there and through the digging the employees came across a four-foot high area under the church. Their description is consistent with that of other Underground Railroad locations. They patched up their hole and left it untouched. Currently there is an effort being launched to try and locate the actual entrance without damaging the church. It is a functioning church to this day. Martin Luther King Jr. actually preached as a visiting pastor at that church and practiced his now famous speech on its members before he took the speech to Washington DC. After our tour we went back to the hotel and got ready for our celebratory dinner. Carolyn had made reservations at a nice Italian restaurant since that is what the
girls asked for their dinner. The food was really good but the service was not so good. Truthfully, I think some of the girls left the restaurant hungry. We ordered the half portions, which were more like 1/3 of the size of the full portion for more than half the price. This was another learning lesson. After that we visited Forsythe Park. Home of the very famous fountain you see on most of the advertising posters for Savannah. Pictures were taken and then we went back to the hotel to relax and get ready for the trip back home. I asked all the girls to share with us their bridging experience and I will close the journal with what they wrote. Claire: I really enjoyed the Bridging Ceremony because we stepped right where “Daisy” would step every time she would come in. I really have a different view of Girl Scouts now because of this trip. I realized what in important thing we are and what our purpose in the community is. The whole ceremony was very special. I will always remember this day. Lauren: The bridging ceremony is something I will never forget. Finally a SENIOR! • The ceremony started with us talking about what we did as Cadettes and brownies and juniors. Then we talked about what other people have done in Girl Scout history! Which was soooo cool. It really had an impact on me and made me want to help much more. We then did the bridging up and then lit the Girl Scout eternal flame (well passed it on anyways ) it was a great day that I will always look back to and enjoy.
Keegan: Today was our day to bridge up into being Seniors. It was a really cool experience. That part that stuck with me the most is when she said we were contributing to the history of Girl Scouts. She also said that if we come back in a couple of years me might be up on the timeline. I thought that was really cool. Anyways, it was a lot of fun. Sammie:
Today was really fun. We went to the Girl Scouts First Headquarters and had our bridging ceremony. It was really cool hearing all of the stuff we could do and ways we could contribute to our country by being Girl Scouts. I thought it was special how we made our promises to Juliette Low’s picture at the headquarters and also what a big difference it makes when you’ve earned your gold award. Overall I liked today a lot. Georgia was a really memorable trip.
Emily: The part that most interested me about Girl Scouts was that the girls babysat all the women’s kids so they could vote which impacted a big part of history and we also had a big impact on Morse code. Something also that was really cool was that right when we were done turning Cadettes it turned 12:00. I am so happy I am a Girl Scout. I got to do so many great things. <3
Leader adds . . . The church bells from the church across the street chimed for the noon hour right when we all blew out our candles and finished the ceremony. It was really neat.
Alleyna: The bridging was really fun! It was really small but nice! It was simple but really nice! I enjoyed the ceremony and am excited for the year to come! I hope we all stay together and love and cherish the special times that are to come! What an awesome trip! Hope Europe’s next! Leader adds . . . When Jamie asked them what fun thing they wanted to do next they all said EUROPE! Kira:
I liked bridging because it was so much fun! It was really hot too! I saw a wasp nest outside while bridging. Anyways, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m looking forward to being a Senior! <3
Leader adds . . . Kira is always observing her environment. To explain the last entry, Sarah moved in 7th grade to a new school. She stayed in our troop to keep connected to her friends that she has had since preschool.
Sarah: I liked bridging because it was very special to me because it was where Juliette actually walked up those steps. I am proud of all my friends and I have to admit I was going to quit because I was getting kind of sad because they all talked about all my old friends (besides the people in our troop). I am very glad, very glad that I stayed in Girl Scouts. I am not stopping now. I am only getting started!