Days 1, 2 and 3... I survived!

The 2007 Summer Guides!

Ah, the Guide Program... What can't it do? It can make you smile, make your stomach knot, make you cringe, make you step outside of your comfort zone, and make you laugh so hard it hurts. And on your first day of actual work, you get to experience alllll of these things, haha. First off, you're super excited, so you're smiling like a mad man, and if you're like me, you are almost late, so you are sweating quite profusely after power walking a 20-25 minute walk in 15 minutes. But yeah, you're smiling nonetheless! And then, oh then, you find out when your very first tour will be. You're hoping with all your might that it's in your first language, and that it is not a group of uninterested grade eight students from Toronto. Now, don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with Toronto, nor the people from Toronto.. In fact, I've never even really visited there, so I've no opinion, and there are a few super cool guides from Toronto. But it is the inside joke among Guides about how grade eight students from Toronto are consistently (and consistently mainly because it is a massive city that is so close) very uninterested and well, just not very attentive during tours.

So yeah, you hope for first language, and not grade eights from Toronto. And lo and behold, yay! I had an English public tour, no grade eights, not even one! I had a few members of an Italian wedding party, some lovely ladies from Ireland, an Australian woman, a few visitors from China, and of course, a large number of Canadians. The tour went relatively well for my first tour, except when we got to the part where it made me cringe... Like I said, I had some lovely women from Ireland on my tour; real sweethearts. So when I was discussing the symbols on the ceiling of the Senate, I mixed up a few of them, including the symbols for Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Of course, the Irish women knew, and they came up to me at the end of the tour saying, "Darling, you were brilliant, but...", and proceeded to correct my silly mistakes. But they were so wonderful and kind that I couldn't help laughing at myself. But at least now, I know those darn symbols on the ceiling of the Senate, and hopefully I don't mess them up again, haha.

Ben (Ottawa, ON), Me (Campbellton, NB), Abbas (Toronto, ON), Liz (Ottawa, ON).
Yes, our uniforms are extremely sexy.

So that was my first tour of life! Not so bad; only one little screw-up, and fortunately, I had a pretty attentive and interested audience, which makes all the difference in how you feel about a tour. Now what really surprised me, was how much better I felt about my second tour, which was in French, my second language. Don't get me wrong, I love French, and I'm comfortable and fluent in it, but it is certainly a lot easier to forget and stumble over words in your second language. But again, I was so, so lucky with my group. There were only six people on my tour; one of them was from France, one from Canada, and four people from Chile, who were pretty good with their French! What was nice about that tour was that the building was almost deserted as it was one of the last tours of the evening, so we could linger as long as we wanted in most of the areas, without having to be concerned about holding up other groups behind us. It was more like a really interesting discussion and question session, which really gave me the chance to build up my confidence in my French tour :)

Me (Campbellton, NB) and Tejas (Vancouver, BC), doing some serious dancing in our spare time, haha.

The next day I was on the Tower & Acceuil Shift, meaning that for the morning I was working in the Peace Tower, putting people onto the elevator, bringing people up in the elevator and doing some informal interpretation and question answering in the Memorial Chamber. In the afternoon/evening I was outside welcoming people to the Hill and handing out tickets for tours with a few other guides. Those jobs are pretty good positions as your sole responsibility is really just talking to visitors and giving them the information that they need. I met visitors from all over the world, and even got to practice a little bit of my German with a few visitors from Germany and Switzerland. Very cool day!

Today I was again on guiding duty, and I stopped by the kiosk to find out what my assignment for the day was... Grade eights from Toronto. Noooooooooooooo. Please, not me, anyone else, they scare me, honest! But no luck. They were allllll mine. Well, fifty of them anyway. The other fifty were going with another guide, Caroline, who was pretty much as excited as I was. But, we decided that it wasn't really fair to judge the kids before they even got here, so we thought it would be best to keep open minds. But then, they arrived. And well, they were just like everyone said; grade eights students, uninterested, always talking, and mainly, just wanting to be with their friends in a place other than school. I guess I can't really blame them. I mean, when I was in grade eight, I had the exact same mentality. But nonetheless, they were certainly not my best tour, just because I felt rather useless and boring, even though I tried to present some of the more interesting and startling facts about Parliament (yes, there are some). And when I talked to Caroline about her group after the tour she agreed that they simply weren't interested. Ah well, what can you do? Not everyone is as in love with Parliament as I am, and I suppose I can try to understand that, haha.

Much love,

Sue

sjhumphrey@mta.ca