New Zealand Badge Swopping

Kia Ora!
Well, we have reached the less than two weeks mark. Can you feel the
excitement building?
We are heading out on Thursday, Dec 18, only 13 days from now!!!!

Some of you who received your shirts and stuff by mail may be wondering
about the contents of the package. At the last trek meeting (in November),
we handed out a baggie with some throw-away badges (mostly cub stuff) in
them, and similar baggies were included in the mailed packages. The
question some have asked is "why?"

Well, we had a request from our New Zealand contact that all our
participants "bring lots of badges to swop". We are going to be meeting
with a ***LOT*** of New Zealand scouts. Most of them are going to be quite
a bit younger than our participants. The greatest gift you can give them is
an American scout patch. So, in our effort to encourage all of you to at
least have *something*, we gave you some of what we look at as throw-away
patches. Of course, if you have other patches you want to swop or give
away, by all means, bring them!

"Badge swopping" (which is what the rest of the world call patch trading) is
BIG when scouts get together. Those of you who have been to National
Jamboree or World Jamboree *know* what I am talking about.

As we mentioned during the meeting, if you are not interested in swopping,
please bring some badges anyway, just to give away. Make the day of one of
those NZ scouts! Sure, our own trek badge will be popular, but American
badges, about American events will be very popular as well. If you have a
couple old neckers lying about, you might want to bring them too.
Neckerchief swopping is pretty big as well.

The current NZ scout uniform is a dark green polo shirt with the NZ scout
association logo on it. You probably won't want to swop one of your class
A's for that, but that is up to you, so long as you have at least one class
A for the flight to Fiji at the end. They don't put badges on their uniform
shirt, rather than have what we would call a patch vest that they wear from
squeaker to shaver. Woggles (neckerchief slides) are popular trading items
as well.

Be creative! Remember, part of the reason for this trip is to make new
friends, so just do it! It would be a good idea to bring lots of contact
cards to hand out too.

Neckers will be delivered AT THE AIRPORT.

Cheers!
Don Roberts
Trek Organizer