Dutch television

As I've mentioned before, the team gathered in The Netherlands in mid-January to meet each other and to take the first steps on this journey. I was (as I think most of us were) expecting a week of presentations and meetings with slides and facts about AkzoNobel and the program. While we did have a little of that, what a different and exciting week it was. I should have known when the first day shaped up to be a bit of an "Amazing Race" type day--we were hurried out of the headquarters building to a meeting an eco-friendly water cooling district and told to meet back at the train station at a certain hour. When we met back at the train station, we were divided into pairs and given very little information about the afternoon--different meetings for each pair to give each pair a glimpse at how people in Deventer were implementing sustainable measures in their lives. 2 of the groups (mine included) were pulled aside and notified that we would be interviewed by a local Dutch television station at our meetings--and all with only 2 minutes of media guidelines. Well, here we are a month after this visit, and I have finally seen the interview--if only I could understand it, about 90% of the story was in Dutch, but my clips as well as the clips of my teammate Lloyd are in English, and I don't think we did half-bad. The point of all this is that the week in Deventer certainly did a good job of driving home a theme to expect the unexpected. We had a really nice week--getting to know each other, getting to know more about ourselves and getting prepared for this expedition. We all left at the end of the week ready to go--seeing the video brought it all back--I'm ready to go again! 2 weeks from today!!!