So teleconferences, if you've never experienced them, are possibly the strangest communication method, barring smoke signals. First of all, there's the arranging them. Now, if everyone in your team has a similar lifestyle, for example all students, or all working 9-5 jobs, it's not too bad, although there's always the exciting addition of working around everyone's Guiding nights, or gym nights, or whatever else everyone does, but generally you can settle into a routine - Wednesday's 8.30pm for instances.
Now. Try figuring out the best time for Team Latvia. Well. Lets just break this down. We have Alice, who works a (boring) admin office job - generally 9-5 (ish). We have Lizzie who works in some Lawyer type job - day times again, although often late in the evenings (I get told off if I say 9-5!). Then there's Laura - a nurse on shifts (lets not even start with the complications there). Then there's Net (Me!), who works bizarre hours - sometimes 8.30 - 5.30 with a 12-2 lunch break, sometimes Breakfast-9, 12-2, 5-9pm (and I don't find out until the Wednesday before the week starts...). Sarah works weekend nights and sometimes other times as well. And finally Toni works freelance, whenever she can, whatever time she can, and often out of phone signal. Yeah. Now add in all the guiding times, the roller derby games, general holidays, and everything else going on in our lives... Go figure that one out!
So far we've managed a couple of lunch time calls, and one late night (9pm) evening call. We've got another next week.
Now the calls themselves - everyone beeps in, but Guiding's conference call system doesn't tell you who's beeped in, so the first 5 minutes consists of everyone saying their names A LOT. "Hello, this is Net, who else is here?" "Oh it's just Alice right now..." *beep* "Hello, this is Laura, who else is here?" "Net" "Alice" "Hello!" ... and so it continues until everyone has arrived and introduced themselves. We have a quick catch up, find out whether Alice's boyfriend has done any washing up recently (honestly, we have this update every single time we meet/talk! Last time, he'd bought a counter-top dishwasher!). Then we get down to business. Trying to say everything you feel you need/want to say, but not say so much that other people can't talk - it's quite a fine line to walk down, and often hard for a group of Leaders who are used to being in charge!
 |
| Just one of our phone conferences - almost an hour! |
Then, once we've all said our piece and organised everything that we need to, there's the end of the conversation, where we have a bit more of a catch up and eventually, the call fizzles out and people start disappearing, normally so that we can catch up on sleep to continue our crazy lives...
In other news... OUR FLIGHTS ARE BOOKED!!! We're super excited! 1st October - 21st October :)
More updates soon!
Latvian Love,
Team Latvia 2014
