So this is where my lazy days end. Some people rest during weekends but for me, with weekend comes programme. Definitely some more super cool activities!
Today, there was the Cultural Celebration Day. That means every unit (a group of scouts that lives and attends some activities together here at the jamboree) prepared a meal typical for their country along with some short introduction to their traditions. We have decided to make potato salad – a traditional meal that we make for Christmas in the Czech Republic. This has been a plan for a really long time, probably since April last year. We bumped into an ugly obstacle though.
We just could not get any potatoes anywhere.
Some of our unit members got up very early in the morning to buy the ingredients hoping they wouldn’t be sold out yet. When they came back empty handed, it turned out the shop never had them in the first place anyways and that’s where our potato hunt adventure started. While some of us stayed back at the camp to cut the other vegetables, the rest started running around the site trying to get at least some potatoes. And guess what? Together, we managed to find five kilos of them! Teamwork truly makes the dream work. After that, we finished the salad and made some ‘chlebíčky’, which is a piece of bread with many different topping such as eggs, lettuce, tomatoes, ham or basically anything else that one likes. We eat these at parties. And then – we were ready to go!
I walked around with two of my mates, Dyne and Uzlik. We visited many different camps and I sadly don’t have space to talk about all of them so let me just get through some of my favourites.
Swedish people offered typical Swedish candy and a type of bread called knackebrot. I personally loved the candy because it wasn’t as sweet as the american food so it was a nice break from all the sugar. Swedish people also introduced us to their Midsummer celebration. They dance around a maypole to celebrate the summer solstice. We got to learn the dance and do it with them too! It was a lot of fun.
Omani people offered their typical sweet that’s made of dates, nuts and other ingredients. It tasted very unfamiliar but extremely pleasant. I loved it. We also had a little chat with one of the Omani scouts and he told us about their culture. I got so invested that he gave me a CD about Oman because I just couldn’t get enough of the information.
In the evening, a Unity Show took place. Three big shows take place at the arena during the jamboree – The Opening Ceremony, Unity Show and The Closing Ceremony. I can’t believe two of them are already over! Everything’s passing by so fast.
We got to the arena about two hours before the show started to get good seats. Thanks to that, we were at the very front and could see everything super clear!
So the point of the show was to unlock a box – to unlock it, all of us had to become friends by completing a friendship ritual and ignite the flame of friendship inside of us. We got to learn about a lot of different religions. Scouts from all over the world would step up on stage, introduce their faith and sing or say a prayer. Some of them would even dance! This helped us learn so much about each other’s cultures and bring us closer together.
And finally, we were able to ignite the fire and open the box. As the fire lit up, our Novuses (watch-like devices that we wear on our wrists to easily connect with each other – you only need to click the button on your Novus to activate it, bring it close to another activated device, and the other person’s name and social media account that they chose to share appear in your jamboree app on your phone!) all lit up too in orange and it looked absolutely fabulous!
The end of the show was very unexpected. We got a concert from Broadway singers! They sang famous Disney songs for us! Everyone sang along and had an amazing time. The last song was Let It Go and then an instrumental version of Take Me Home Country Roads as an encore. The atmosphere was absolutely magical – do check out my Instagram @hobi.hobit for some videos!
The show was absolutely incredible and although we didn’t get much sleep since it ended pretty late, it was definitely worth it! Can’t wait for the third one 🙂