Presenting blogger Austin Simonson with Embassy’s 22nd WSJ inaugural event patch

Jay here again with some long overdue follow-up postings. As Austin mentioned in his posting from last Saturday, that was a real hectic time, with all the Scouts packing up before the closing ceremony that night (rained like crazy!), and leaving early next morning. But I did get a chance to catch up with Austin’s crew at their campsite, and present him with the patch specially made for the 22nd WSJ inaugural event that we’d held at the Swedish Embassy in Washington, DC in May. It was a great opportunity for Austin to get some special recognition from his fellow crew members for having gone that extra mile and done the blog. Great job!

H.M. Queen Silvia’s presentation at ‘Safe From Harm’ seminar

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22nd WSJ, safe from harm, Scouts

One of the key themes of the Jamboree was keeping our Scouts, and all youth around the wold, ‘safe from harm’. Special training and certification were required of all adult leaders, in addition to their national requirements (like ‘YPT’ youth protection training  for the Boy Scouts of America). H.M. Queen Silvia’ remarks were all the more timely and significant given the shootings in Norway shortly before the Jamboree began. Here is the link to Her Majesty’s speech (and pardon in advance my technical limitations!):   http://vimeo.com/27173768

Patch Trading and Packing Up

Well, as you know, today is the last day of the Jamboree. We’ve already packed all of our stuf into our duffels and taken down our tents and our gateway. Tonight, we have the closing ceremonies and then tomorrow morning at 3 am, we have to leave our campsite to get to our bus for the airport…fun stuff! On Thursday, a couple people from our crew and I set up shop on the ground to trade our patches. We chose a popular spot where people would walk, laid down a blanket, and arranged our patches and neckerchiefs. Needless to say, I now have contingent patches from many countries as well as neckerchiefs from Israel, Italy, Japan, and Spain, as well as a couple that I don’t know where they’re from. Everybody I’ve met is having a good time at the Jamboree…most of them don’t want to go home! Unfortunately, the computers here don’t allow me to get the photos off of my camera’s memory card, but I’ll be sure to add them in tomorrow night!

Hike-in-Camp…but not IN camp!

Well, today was the day for hike-in-camp. We started out the day by waking up at the great time of 6 am so we could make and eat breakfast by 7:20 am and get to the bus stops by 7:50. Once we got there, we had to wait for an hour for the buses to arrive to pick us up. They drove us up a little ways north to an area that was more “foresty” where we got off. My patrol got paired up with a group of people from Sweden, themselves! We hiked along a trail that ended up to be 12 km long and had 6 hours to do it in. We ended up with lots of extra time that we spent at the end and at lunch. During the hike, we were able to talk with the Swedish people and learned more about Sweden. One of then showed us this clover that you could eat…it tasted like a sour apple! They also picked a bunch of mushrooms that later, when we got back to camp, they cooked up and fed to us. They tasted great! We are hoping to have a dinner exchange with them sometime before we leave the jamboree. I’ll add a group photo of us together when I can get them off my camera.

Loads of fun at 22nd World Scout Jamboree

Today was absolutely beautiful. We got to dry everything out, thanks to the sun. The IST are quite busy with their assigned jobs, and trying to complete special program called IST Experience — of course that leads to another patch. Food is good, but the site is massive, and only way around is walking, so losing some weight. Special shout-out to Philmont crews 803_W-01 and 02 from Manassas Virginia, on their way out to the Ranch – they’ll have the experience of their lifetimes!  We’ll be having a Philmont Staff Assn reunion here. And Chief Scout executive Bob Mazzuca meets on Tuesday with our BSA IST contingent. First photo is of a scout doing a flip on the slackline course – very talented. Second photo is scouts on top of their tower.  Third photo is of me with my colleague Ray from Ireland and his son Jack in front of their troop site. So smiles for miles around thanks to world scouting.

Sunshine Once More!

Finally…we finally get some sunshine! It’s been raining pretty much everyday since we got here. The weather report says possibly some rain tonight, PM showers tomorrow, and rain/thunder on Friday. Other than that, there should be sunny skies from now on. Despite the rain, we’ve still done the module activities for our subcamp. Yesterday night, we did Dream, which was where we went down this path through the forest and there were things that helped us imagine that we were old and getting younger as we went down the path. I’ve met scouts from a lot of countries, now. We’ve already invited people from Germany and the UK to have a meal with us, in addition to the people from the Czech Republic inviting us to a meal (which was delicious I might add!). The picture shown is from when we were almost finished with the gateway…we keep renovating it every day! I’ve only got 2 minutes left (out of 20) on my computer time today, so I’ll talk more later!

scouts are here – greeted by rain today

hi, Jay from IST checking in from a rainy jamboree site. The contingents arrived without incident yesterday and got set up. I continue work in IST Info Center. Picture is a couple of my colleagues. Has been raining steadily all day long! Had an interesting lunch, learning from my colleague, Ulf Anderson of Sweden. Got talking about Swedish customs at Christmas time. Swede’s favorite thing to do at 3:00 pm on Christmas Eve is for everyone to watch ‘Donald Duck’s Christmas’ on TV.  Then lots of good food and dancing around the Christmas tree. Yeah, then church services start at 4:00 am on Christmas day. This is a unique opportunity to meet fellow Scouts from the whole world, and learn about there customs and culture — and no, we are not all alike, and all the better for it. Happy Scouting.

Setting up Camp!

Yesterday, after our almost 15 hours of flight time, we finally arrived in Copenhagen at about 1pm (GMT +1)! It was a partly cloudy day, and just the right temperature for setting up. We took a bus from the airport to the Jamboree site on a two story bus (a first for me!) with a group of Scouts from Portugal. We were able to talk to them for a bit before we arrived. When we got to the site, we checked in and and then walked to our campsite in the Summer subcamp with our bags. We quickly got the tents up and brought over some tables and benches to sit on. Because of setting up, we ended up just making something easy for dinner…sandwiches! Fortunately, since I didn’t sleep much on the plane ride, I was able to quickly fall asleep despite the time change. Today (Thursday), we built and set up our very large gateway, of which I’ll post some pictures of later. Tonight, we will be having another troop over for dinner, which should be fun! Hopefully the cake we’re making will be ready in time!

IST in full swing

Hi, Jay from IST Team. We are up and running at Spring Camp.  Let me introduce myself more fully. I’m with the  NCAC Intnational team (IST}’ and this is my first world scout jamboree.  There are’ appx 6,000 serving here in many roles. About 40 of us flew out Sunday from Washington, but were delayed 2hours for weather. Finally arrived, then 2hr. Bus ride to 22nd WSJ.  You can see from picture the long queue to check in.  After working as a team to set up tents, we began getting to know our way around. I had a train the trainer session.  The other picture is Tor, our leader, showing us how to teah the actiities. today we got to train all the otherIST members. My activity was ‘personal development, communications’. Loads of fun, and met Scouters from all over world. Tonight is opening ceremony for IST. Ciao

Gettin’ Ready to Jam at the Jambo!

Hey! I’m Austin Simonson. I’m from the Golden Empire Council (the west coast of the USA…California!) of the Boy Scouts of America…Crew 440! I have never been to Sweden before, so this will definitely be an exciting trip for me, especially since my great-grandfather came to the USA from Sweden when he was only 16 years old, so that’s where my ancestors are from. Although I have been to Cancun, Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica, I only remember Mexico as I was young enough that I wouldn’t remember when I went to the other places. The jamboree sounds like it will be very fun from what I’ve read in the Participant’s Guide and on the website (www.worldscoutjamboree.se)! I did go to the National Jamboree for the USA last year, so I do have an idea of what the jamboree will be like, but I’m sure that this will be different in its own special way. Not to mention, I’ve heard that there’s only 5 hours of darkness every day! That should be exciting combined with the jet lag. Well, I got to go make sure I have everything ready! Only 23 hours left to go!