Swedish Dinner Exchange With The Chargé D'A

Our leaders were extremely generous after Dream and let us sleep in until noon because we didn't get back to the site until 4:00 in the morning. They were even kind enough to make us sandwiches for lunch. Most of our troop left to trade patches but a few of us stayed behind. We learned that our dinner tonight was going to be very interesting. We prepared our site by finishing the gateway and building a ladder, fire pit, and tons of other cool things. I was chosen to climb on the ladder that me and Matthew made to cut off a piece of wood from the top of the gateway and of course it starts to pour as I climb twenty feet into the air with a saw in my hand. After that was done we cleaned up the site and made everything look perfect. Why so much work on the site? you might ask. Well, tonight we were joined by half of the Swedish troop from across the street along with the Chargé D'Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, his assistant, and his two friends from Kuwait. We spent hours preparing our dinner of chili and pineapple pancakes for these important guests. I volunteered to be on the clean-up crew and until after the meal I was the only one actually doing anything. I chased the cooks around, collecting bits of meat that fell everywhere while they were preparing the chili, cleaning the knife and cutting board that Abhi bled on when he cut himself, and even cooking at certain points. It was stressful but I'm glad I did it. Tonight's dinner earned me the nickname "The Garbage Man". Hopefully it won't stick. The meal was delicious. I met a few really nice kids and an adult leader from the Swedish troop. I sat next to Johannes, Jacob, and Mattias (Matthew) from the Swedish troop. Our SPL, Kevin, got to sit with William Stewart (from the embassy) and his friends from Kuwait. Kevin surprised us all with his ability to speak Arabic. Our guests from the embassy will be spending the night with us and eating breakfast with us in the morning. After dinner, the troop from the Netherlands that's right next door to us invited us over to try an...activity...that they were doing. They were timing people to see how long they could hang onto a pair of jeans that they draped over their gateway. I hung on for a minute and twenty-four seconds. Ben (Bleaker) has the record for our troop with a time of one minute and forty-six seconds. After that I cleaned the meal with Callen, Jared, and Mike. Me and Ben left camp after the cleaning was done and not even a minute after leaving we ran into a huge circle of kids singing songs and doing dances. We joined in and did a lot of cool Spanish and Italian dances and songs. We also learned the hokey-pokey in Swedish. After about an hour of dancing and singing we headed back to camp to make curfew. On top of meeting Jacob, Johannes, and Matthew, I also met Sofia from Sweden, a funny girl from Holland, and some girls from Switzerland and Austria. I've stayed up way past curfew to write this and now it's time for me to go to sleep. Goodnight.

This is the table I sat at for dinner.

Word of the Day: Aureate - Characterized by an ornate style of writing or speaking