Created with Dandelion Dust Designs' SPREAD YOUR WINGS kit.
Journaling: Due to the COVID-19 situation, we were forced to cancel our annual Youth Tour to protect the health of both our chaperones and our student delegates. This trip would have been my 20th youth tour, and I found myself grieving for the lost friendships and life-changing experience of the students who had already been awarded this trip. Months of careful planning was undone in a matter of days as I called all of the hotels, bus companies, airline, restaurants, and sites. Luckily, most of the venues were very understanding and offered refunds. I was very sad to have to cancel on our videographer, tour guide, and photographer, as I know times are going to be very tight for my friends in these professions.
Our national association decided to create a video to share on social media about the cancellation and our reasons, and the fact that we are genuinely concerned about our students (despite the fact we haven’t met them yet). They wrote a script and assigned a few sentences to each of the Youth Tour Directors from across the country, and asked us to record our parts on a cell phone and email it to one of our videographers who has worked with us often. Randy agreed to be my videographer and we searched for someplace outside that wasn’t too windy and that my voice would come across clearly. I had to chuckle when Randy, who is known to not be the best videographer, was taking photos instead of video. But hey, he got this photo of me and I was really happy with it! So, I can still say that he has a lot of wonderful skills, and his videography is getting better. I sent in some options, so now I’m looking forward to seeing how the video turns out. April 4, 2020
