The International Hosting Staff.
All of the leaders at their social.
Myself and one of the other staffers hanging with the leaders from Hong Kong.
Of course you would expect the Scottish to bring some bagpipes.
There's always a good fireworks show.
Mike Rowe addresses the scouts about being clean but not afraid to get dirty.
Seas of scouts.
The Bhutanese scouts had me over for dinner one night. Here I am with their leaders and another staff member from scuba.
I met up with Jeff, my former college roommate. He and I met at the jamboree back in 2001.
One of the exhibits had oobleck set up. It's a mixture of cornstarch and water that becomes a non-Newtonian fluid. Apply a force to it and it becomes like a solid. You can actually run on it if you take short, choppy steps.
Jeff's brother David and I were working together and met this fellow, Marty, one night. Marty's from New York and helped us do our laundry.
I had dinner with this gentleman, Dan, one night. He's from Chicago and had some pretty sweet badges that we swapped for. I don't mind the swapping if I get to chat and meet the person I'm doing the deal with.
International scouts together after the flag raising ceremony.
Scottish and Saudi Arabian scouts.
Australian Scouts
Teaching Chemistry merit badge.
Pioneering.
OK, so it was a bit more difficult getting the blog updated whilst out scouting. AT&T was one of the sponsors so there was excellent reception for cell phones and wi-fi. I just didn't really have the time to sit down and write a blog post. Let me explain why.
I pushed my arrival date early by two days so that I could get on to the army base at the same time as dad. It just so happened that I was the first person
from my staff (except for one guy, I think) to arrive. I was lost. I got dad all settled in and when I went back to my barracks to set up my things I met my boss. He was a real nice guy and as we got to chatting I found out that he is originally from U.P. (Uttar Pradesh) the state that Uttarakhand was split from a few years ago. He actually grew up in the states and made his Eagle there. Currently, he lives in Kuala Lumpur so I chatted to him about the cousins I have moving there shortly.
Well, the first few days were set up so there was a lot of heavy lifting, Wal-Mart/Lowes runs, and sitting in ridiculous Virginia humidity. The rest of the team started arriving and I was surprised to find that the majority of the staff members were younger than I. It was something to do about wanting to show off a more youthful face of scouting to the rest of the world. I think we achieved that quite well. The majority of staff was from the US but there were four scouts from Mexico and one from Canada as well. We had about 400 international participants come in from about 27 different countries including Canada, Austria, Australia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Barbados, Thailand, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, Sweden, Egypt, Korea, England, Scotland, Wales, Trinidad & Tobago, Ireland, Brazil and one or two others that escape me at the moment.
When the jamboree actually began we started making trips out to the airports to pick up the patrols of internationals. I was tasked with picking up eight Bhutanese boys and two of their leaders. It was the first time out of the country for all but one of the leaders. Needless to say that all of them were very excited to be there. I had to get them all taken care of. Passports and flight information checked out, medicals taken care of, etc. I dropped them off to their troop and let them start to mingle. For the remainder of the jamboree my job was to check up twice a day on the Hong Kong scouts and a patrol from Canada. There was a hitch to this however. The only way to guarantee that I could catch them would be to get them in camp. That meant I had to get to their camps before 9.00 in the morning. Now, remember, the national jamboree is one of if not THE biggest scouting events in the world. It beats out the world jamboree by about 23,000 people. We're talking 50,000 participants plus about 10,000 guests a day. You need A LOT of space for that many people.
So my Canadians were up in camp 18 and my Hong Kong guys in 13. I'm down there at the bottom in the Longstreet Barracks. Each morning I got up at 5.30, showered and had breakfast by 7.00 so that I could jump on my bike and head off. The bikes we had were a bit of a mixed blessing. It was great being able to move around quickly and see my scouts but the bikes themselves left quite a bit to be desired. See, they gave us 1950s Schwinn-style street bikes. Single speed, backward break, the whole bit. Now, I don't know how many of you out there have ever been to Virginia but it certainly isn't flat. The first few days one just had to suck it up and walk the bike up a hill. By the end of it though I was able to get up most hills but my thighs were stiff and let's just say the seat could've been better padded.
So during the day there was a bit of down time so we got to go out and see the jamboree. I met up with dad a few times and we saw the sights. There was a lot of exhibits from the army, national guard, religions, sea scouts, the national park service, etc. The scouts were supposed to go around and visit these places (and things like BMX, shotguns, rappelling, fishing) and get stamps. If they get the right number of stamps for each station, then they get badges.
Speaking of badges... that's probably one thing about the jamboree that I disliked the most. Some kids only want to swap badges. Leaders can be even worse. When I brought the Bhutanese guys for their medical checkups we got bombarded by some scouts from South Carolina and they didn't even ask names or anything like that. The first thing out of their mouths was, "Do you got any patches?" I was excited to swap badges myself before I got out there but after witnessing countless scenes like that just on the first day I was turned off from it. I eventually went out the last day or so and got some sweet badges (the Dr McNinja ones I mentioned in an earlier post and a cool Captain America one) but although my intention was to obtain the badges I did make an effort to talk with whoever I was with and make more of a personal connection. The councils just encourage the madness though. Several put out multiple badges so that there can be more trading. It's cool and I don't necessarily not like the idea but for some people it takes over what the jamboree is about.
We had two arena shows where everyone attended. Being surrounded by 50,000 people is an odd feeling. Getting that many people there on time takes some planning too. Some of the troops further away had to start mobilizing about 4 hours or so before the show started. Sitting in the sun for that long can't be pleasant. Luckily I was able to go in when I wanted and so long as you can find a seat you're good to sit there. The shows were a lot more fun than the one's when I attended back in 2001. The speakers were good and the entertainment was bands that people (not me though) had actually heard of. One of my favourite parts to the shows was Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel's 'Dirty Jobs' fame. He is an Eagle Scout and came to share some thoughts with the kids. Overall it was a lot of fun. Working in International Hosting though I and several of my coworkers got rather red-faced at how pro-American the shows were. I understand that it is the national jamboree and all but even if I hadn't worked I.H. I would still feel uncomfortable with how in your face they were about it. It just felt cheesy if nothing else. Several of the international scouts and leaders approached me about it and felt it could have certainly had more of a 'scouting brotherhood' sort of feel to it rather than being like a week-long fourth of July.
Did I mention Sgt. Slaughter was there? Awesome!
We can fit about 30,000 more people in here...
Mobilising for the arena show.
All in all it was a great time and I am really glad that I went for the 100th year anniversary. It just so happens that the world jamboree is next summer in Sweden. Anyone want to help me get there? I'm not too proud to ask for donations. Needless to say, I have once again been bitten by the scouting bug. I am in talks with staff members to get something set up at Woodstock. We have some problems to deal with though. The biggest one is interest. I've really got to work on making it sound exciting for the kids. Other than that I have to do something about what programme to follow. I can't have Indian kids joining an American overseas troop and taking numbers away from their groups but I think I've got it figured out after talking with the head of the overseas programme for BSA. Hopefully, between the years of scouting experience we have here we can pull together to get something set up.
The only real complaint I have about the jamboree has to deal with the lack of recycling. One would think that with the Outdoor Code that scouts follow the BSA would have set up recycling. In some of the arena shows you can see packages of bottled water. Now imagine all of those plastic bottles in the hands of teenage boys. The morning after the evening show I biked by the area and it was trashed and where were all of those bottles going to go? I just think that the BSA could have been a bit more 'conservation minded' when considering things like that or all of the lunches being wrapped up in layers of plastic bags or all of the packaging at the trading posts that got strewn about.
Anywho, I'm back at Woodstock now and have made it successfully through a week of teaching. I was jet lagged for a few days but I think I'm over it now. It's good to see the kids again. Tomorrow is independence day so I'll have to make another post soon with all of the pictures and stories from that.
