Bandon Dunes is a world class golf resort where the team were housed for a couple of days - it really is a hard job being a GSE team member you know! I still don't believe that it was "staff housing" as each room had two king size beds EACH and two bathroom areas. I did burn my toesies on the glass fire place - there was no warning for Caribbean nationals that they shouldn't place feet too close to the fire (I am completely forgetting my unofficial Comberemerian motto "a breach of common sense is a breach of the school rules" here).
The accommodations were lovely - we did absolutely no golf related stuff :-) and we enjoyed lovely breakfasts planning our presentation for the District Conference. The girls did enjoy the sauna and jacuzzi - as well as all the freebie toiletries we could find. Melissa Mattoo was the culprit there I think, right Liesl?
Now don't think that we didn't do some work. We had previously presented at the Bandon RC club when we were in Port Orford, so we did lots of cultural activities in the few days we had in Bandon.
We had a lovely welcome barbeque and walked the beach, seeing Face Rock with it's recent nose job. Shout outs to Colleen Showalter for doing this in heels! What a gal! Some of us may have gone wading in the Pacific and ending up screaming like girls due to the cold - but no name no blame no lock up!
The next day we had a tour of Bandon proper - the old town, the docks, and the fabulous C'est Vert where the tabled up fantastic deserts for the team and the Rotarians - go Clyde and Colleen!
The best vocational I had yet was next at the Art 101 experience. Here the artist Angela Pozzi has masterminded a fantastical community driven project - but first let's talk about the gallery and educational facility. Angela works with found objects and materials - making what amounts to fantastic sea-creature like creations. In fact she has created a "sea cave" which is a complete sensory experience with bio-luminescence and all!
Added to this she runs a gallery of local artists, a thrift shop, and a fantastic little area where anyone can come and take classes and create art and craft.
Now comes the doozy "Washed Ashore" - Angela actively seeks to educate the public about the issues of garbage washing up on the Bandon shores by creating huge found object sculptures - out of the very same garbage! We're talking remnants from the making of flip flops - old plastic bottles, shoes, toys, styrofoam - anything that washes up ends up in the sculptures of jelly fish, whales, turtles and more. The work constructing these creatures is done by volunteers, schools, even passers-by.
It really was a fantastic experience, actually contributing to the process by making a tentacle for the jelly fish, and you know me and my mouth - I ended up doing an interview for a film that is being done for the whole process. I gave that camera-man so much chat - messing with his shots, sorry Pete!
Washed Ashore marries environmentalism, activism, social awareness and artistic merit all into one package. Kudos to all involved. This is definitely something that we can do in te Caribbean as it's something that also effects us to a huge extent.
Oh yeah - the guy that I thought was Tiger Woods, wasn't. Shucks. Apparently Tiger is 6 foot tall, so I figure I saw his much shorter younger brother ;-) Also don't want to forget meeting up with the lovely Shelly from the GSE team that went to the Eastern Caribbean and her bloke Karl - they were real sports and joined in all the fun!
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