Meeting people and sharing culture

So far, the jamboree has been a blast. We arrived in London on July 24 at 6:30 a.m. British Summer Time, or 1:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Daylight Time. We toured London for three days, which was wonderful. My favorite part of the tour by far was visiting the Royal Observatory and seeing marine chronometers developed by John Harrison on display there. I had read so much about them that it was great to be finally seeing them.

Then we arrived at the Jamboree site in Hylands Park, Chelmsford. Then we set up our site. An English troop from Shropshire came over to help us, and, later, we met members of the Somerset, U.K., troop camped next to us. They are a very nice troop; very fun, but a bit more low-key than some of the other English troops. That day, one of the boys in our troop started playing his bagpipes outside our site, and a whole bunch of Scots came over and started dancing to the music. That was really fun.

The next day was the opening ceremony. The ceremony was wonderful, but my favorite part was seeing all the waving flags in our subcamp before the ceremony. Later that night there was a camp-wide dance party — known to the British as “The Rave” — at the main arena. It was a lot of fun.

Yesterday, we went to the Gilwell Adventure. There we saw exhibits about the history of Scouting, visited a Scout amusement park (I tried stilts there), exhibited Scout skills and ran through a challenge course. Later that night there was a subcamp campfire where all the contingents in the subcamp showed off parts of their culture. My favorite part of that day by far was meeting people. I met a boy from Italy, a girl from the Netherlands and a girl from Hungary. It was a lot of fun.

Today I visited the Elements site at the Jamboree, where I took a course from the Germans on water conservation. I also met a bunch of Russians there.

I’ve had a great time at the Jamboree so far, and am looking forward to the rest.

Cole Houston is submitting blog posts from the World Jamboree in England. He is from Troop 526, New York, N.Y.