Last year, my husband and I signed up for GiShWhEs at the last possible moment. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t even know how little I knew. I’m not even sure I owned a working camera. When teams were set up, we were joined with strangers from all over the world. As each of these strangers had set up a team in the system when they registered, our team name was crazy: “Team ColonialArmylovesKalelliopelovesGishapocalypselovesZeppelinRuleslovesChaoticlovesTheSupernaturalslovesLimelovesBellas”. We changed that. We became “Team Gishsaurians” as a tribute to the 2015 GishwHes mascot, Dinomite.

This year, we already had a team we loved. Those strangers from last year have become my friends. Back in May, communicating on a private FB page, we started sculpting a 2016 team. Messages were sent to teammates to find out who was still in the hunt… We kept nine of our original team members, one unofficially. Each team consists of fifteen members, so we needed to romance seven more into joining into GiShWheS matrimony with us. We advertised on the GISHWHES CITIZENS Facebook page, and on The GIsHWheS Network page. There were posts in Twitter, and maybe Tumblr. Seven more people signed up to our Team when they registered, so we were able to communicate with them and get everything organized well before the hunt began!

On a side note… You may be wondering at the many ways this scavenger hunt’s initials are displayed. Some are upper-case, others lower case; sometimes they switch! Last year, one of the commandments required GiShWheS to never be spelled all upper- or all lower-case. This year, kale has become the leafy-green that must not be named (I hope I don’t get in trouble for that!)***

Registration is already closed this year, but if you plan to register as a first-timer next year, I recommend checking out GiShWhes-related social media posts to find a team that is advertising and active. The only cloud I have found in the GIShWHes sky is when a bunch of people register early, then don’t participate by the time August comes around. I haven’t experienced it, but I have heard the stories.

GiSHwheS is all about celebrating yourself and your team (and everyone else participating) and exiting your comfort zone. The ironic part of that is it involves a LOT of social media. Being a returning team, we already have a youtube and imgur set up for our team. We have an email with google docs already prepared for the coming hunt. A number of submissions require tweeted images and sometimes getting responses to tweeted images. Last year, each member was basically on their own, and it became difficult to get views. This year, we’ve listed everyone’s twitter and followed each other. When someone from our team posts, we will all reply and repost it! If you want to follow along with any of the chaos in our twitter game this year, my twitter is: https://twitter.com/MerlinMouth . From there you can find all kinds of GisHwheS twitter-ers and topics. Check the people I am following! We cannot share any of our items until the scavenger hunt ends, so checking out our submission tweets is the only thing I can share until the second week in August.

We have an organizational queen on our team who also happens to be going for her fourth year of GiShWheS (I think…). She keeps us in line and makes sure we know what the heck we are doing. I definitely recommend getting one of those!

So what else are we going to need??? Besides a camera, who knows! I truly have no idea what is going to come up! Basically, I plan on putting every human functionary I know on notice that I could possibly need anything they own or any talent they possess (I’m open to pseudo-talent: stupid human tricks anyone???) at any given moment!

I’ll tell you all about it later!!