Three days before Folkmoot started, Joel Wadopian, a Folkmoot guide, got word that he had been assigned to accompany the group of performers from Latvia during the two-week festival.

“I was really excited because I’d never heard anything about that country, like what type of dance they had, what food they ate, what language they spoke, or really where it was,” said Wadopian, an Asheville High School student.

Enter Google. He soon knew all kinds of fun facts on Latvia, from its population to its gross national debt.

Sara Bernardi, who was also assigned to Latvia, had done the same thing, discovering the former Russian province has its own language and its primary religion is Lutheran, followed by Roman Catholic.

Last Friday, Wadopian and Bernardi exchanged their Latvia trivia during the supper portion of an overnight training course for guides. Over the next 48 hours, busloads of international groups would begin rolling into the Folkmoot Friendship Center in Waynesville. The group of mostly teenagers seated in the cafeteria would soon have the awesome responsibility of herding dozens of performers back and forth to performances, evacuating them from the building if the fire alarm goes off, making sure water coolers and bag lunches make it on the bus for field trips, and accompanying them on their ubiquitous trips to Wal-Mart.

Being a guide is full of challenges and rewards, said Doug Garrett and Vivian Poppas, both long-time guides who led the training session, sharing tricks of the trade with the novices.

One part of the job is keeping the peace in a building with 350 people speaking 11 languages — all vying over the same washers and driers to launder their sweaty costumes from the previous night’s performance. Controversy can arise over seemingly minor things, like scheduling for coveted practice time in the gym. Be firm and get your group out of the gym when their practice session is over, regardless if the director is in the middle of drills, Garrett said.

“If your group runs over by 10 minutes and another group runs over by 10 minutes, pretty soon one group is going to lose most of their practice time and it’s running right up to the time they are supposed to be going to Wal-Mart,” Garrett said.

Same goes for getting the group to performances on time.

“You’ll learn pretty quick like whether your group is punctual. If you find they always run late, put down on their departure sheet 10 or 15 minutes earlier than you really have to leave,” Poppas advised.

During their overnight training session guides were reminded that the Folkmoot Center is in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It’s the guides’ responsibility to keep the night-time noise level down.

“If someone is consistently out front playing their trumpet at 3 a.m., it is going to get on the neighbor’s nerves,” Garrett said.

Guides are also responsible for monitoring their group’s health and getting performers to the health clinic during its scheduled hours.

“Be aware of how your people are eating or acting. Maybe there is something in their diet they have to have every day like rice and they aren’t getting it,” Garrett said.

“And make sure they are drinking enough. A lot of countries don’t like ice in the water, so make sure that’s not a problem,” Poppas said.

While there are always a few illnesses or injuries — especially given the high energy nature of performances — there are rarely major crises.

Melanie Stratton, a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill who served as a guide before, recalled her biggest crisis her first year as a guide was trying to convince a group from Costa Rica that it was not a good idea to walk to Wal-Mart from the Friendship Center.

One last word of advice from Garrett: pre-make a stack of cards with your name, email and address. You don’t want to spend your final hours before the groups leave — time rather spent hugging goodbye — franticly scribbling out dozens of slips of paper with your contact info for your new-found friends.

“I like to think that I travel the world every year without leaving home,” Poppas said.