First Day!
Today was my first actual day on the job, as a Parliamentary tour guide.
The morning started out with a gr. 8 school tour from Guelph (near Toronto). It actually went better than expected, as the lady with the educational tour company warned me about them. Apparently the teachers were "on vacation", and I had to watch out for the kid in the red shorts. When I asked anyone if they could guess why the House of Commons is green, the kid in the red shorts said "because it was the kings favourite colour!" and laughed thinking that he was making a wise-crack. Little did he know, but that`s one of the theories. He wasn`t a problem after that :)
Just after the tour, one of the bosses came into the guide lounge and said, " Belinda Stronach just crossed the floor" (from Conservative to Liberal). All of us political nerds went into action, theorizing how that will affect the vote of confidence on Thursday, and if that will keep the government from falling, and...
Then I had an English public tour with about 50 people on it, from Scotland, England, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, as well as all over Canada and the US. It was a lot of fun, and I think it went pretty well. At the end, an American woman and her husband came up and took a photo of me for their scrapbook!
After lunch, I had a French public tour, which was much smaller, yet I was a lot more nervous. Because both the House of Commons and the Senate were sitting, we could only go into the Hall of Honour, and the LRV (Library Replacement Visit). They were all great, except for one guy who kept asking questions in English, and complained about having to go through security. At least they all gave me a round of applause at the end of the tour.