Dream Or Nightmare?

What a day... Before we had breakfast we walked to the main avenue in camp because our troop was selected to help raise the flags of all of the countries attending the jamboree. We waited in a tent while it was pouring and when the rain let up we lined up along the flag poles. We each raised a flag. I raised the French flag. Then we headed back to the site. After breakfast, a few of us went out on a patch hunt around the camp. I got a ton of really cool stuff. A few of the countries that we met people from and traded with; England, Israel, Italy, Japan, Holland, Brazil, and many more. It was raining all day so around lunch time we headed back to eat lunch under the dining fly. It continued raining but a few guys toughed it out and worked on the gateway during the rain. Mel, Paul, and Chris (from England) came to our site after hearing that we were the New York troop and we invited them to wait out the rain with us under our tarp. They were really cool and wanted to learn all that they could about the United States. We might have "tea" with them one day in the near future. After it stopped raining, they left and we got to work on dinner. We ate spaghetti and Swedish meatballs. The opening arena show was tonight. We trekked over (in the rain) in a huge line to the stage. Along the way we learned and performed songs with scouts from Germany and Spain. When we got there we were met with an amazing show. They had representatives from all 146 countries walk their flags onto the stage (very much like the Olympics). There was a lot of singing, dancing, Swedish history, and ABBA. Bear Grylls, Chief Scout of the UK, passed the WSJ flag to Sweden (England hosted the last WSJ in 2007). This officially opened the jamboree. We walked back to our site at around 11:00 and got ready for our first module activity; Dream. We had to walk for a very long time (at midnight) to the Dream area. At one point while we were waiting around in a queue, we were all hurried off of the road to let an ambulance through. As we advanced in the line we saw two scouts being lifted into the ambulance. Supposedly they had passed out and became unresponsive. It was scary to see that things really could go wrong at the Jamboree. We waited in another queue fro a few more hours and we discovered that a few kids from our troop were missing. After sending people to comb the lines in front of us and behind us we eventually just continued on into Dream. In "Dream", you go through life backwards, starting with death and ending with birth. As we walked into the smoky tunnel that represented death, a few people in reflective jackets ran past us. When we exited death, we saw two people trying to help a kid that was seizing and wheezing just outside the tunnel. The reflective jacket people made a wall, telling us to continue on, just as they did with the other two scouts earlier. This was so much scarier than the first encounter with a medical problem we had earlier. Now 3:00 in the morning, we continue on through Dream with the image of the boy seizing on the side of the road still in our minds. In old age we learned what it's like trying to perform simple tasks without senses such as sight and touch. Adulthood, or "wisdom", was a bunch of pictures of influential people and how they changed the world. In childhood we learned about ourselves by trying to build the kind of person you wanted to be in the future and in infancy (my favorite) we got to play with blocks and stuffed animals (3:30 a.m.). In birth, we walked silently along a lighted path reflecting on what we had learned that night. When we all regrouped at the end and walked back to our campsite (4:00 a.m.), people kept complaining about how bad Dream was. In all honesty, I had a good time doing all of the activities but I'm sure I would have had more fun if it wasn't at 3:00 in the morning after seeing two scary medical emergencies. If we didn't have to wait so long to participate, it would have been more like a dream and less like a nightmare.

This is a picture of Justin, me, Mel, Shane, and Chris.

Word of the Day: Deadpan - Marked by or accomplished with a careful pretense of seriousness or calm detachment