Got up half an hour earlier this morning to lower the stress. The extra thirty minutes and some clouds made the weather much cooler. Shower and then breakfast, almost no queue.
No queue for lunch either, and outside I met Tom, Sherri, and Karen who were gonna walk instead of taking the bus, so I tagged along. Took about 30 minutes to do, definitely a competitor to the bus, depending on your timing of its departure. Though you got rather sweaty because of the hills.
Since the morning went so smoothly, I arrived an hour before I was supposed to.
Started with a morning meeting with the whole team and the name game, where you say a word that describes you and begins on the same letter as your name, and everyone repeats those before them. I became Just Jens.
After that, we split into our groups, which meant we kept updating the Ambassadors’ profiles and added photos. Also started working with the GoPros to see how they are going to use them. After lunch, a bit of rain hit us, so we had to close up the tent to protect the electronics. Intensive rainfall, but only for like 15 minutes.
Since we still are missing phones, we were done by 14 and could take the rest of the day off, if we kept an eye on WhatsApp in case the phones showed up.
Headed back to Echo while checking in with dad via a Telegram call. Sat down in Chat N’ Chew and went through all the news feeds from the last couple of days. Also went through all the pictures I’ve uploaded and added captions.
Got some dinner and then got back to the tent before heading to the IST opening ceremony, which according to some should start at 18:30. I also heard the times 19:30 and 20:30. There were also rumors that some type of party (Basecamp bash) should start at 20:30 but our information point had very little information.
At roughly 19:00, they announced on stage to the audience that had gathered that a lightning warning was in effect and that everyone should seek shelter. So, I slowly headed off to Chat N’ Chew, and when I got into the tent, the rain started to pour down, glad to be under a roof.
It stopped raining after like 15 minutes, but we didn’t get an all clear for the lightning. People started to gather outside anyway and head to the stage again. I tried a couple of different contacts to get any information regarding the opening ceremony and the bash, whether they were postponed or cancelled. Huge gap in the information flow here. Lots of different rumours were floating around. Scouts activated themselves in different ways, dancing or doing other stuff.
Finally, around 20, perhaps, we got another lightning warning, and they said that all the activities for tonight were cancelled. I suspect that the delay in information/decision was because they were following the storm to see if it would come back or just leave us alone. Sadly enough, it was the former.
Disappointed, I tagged along with a couple of Swedes, and we found a large tent to take cover in. They also brought along four Americans who I think were colleagues with one of the Swedes.
I taught them Gurka, and at least I wasn’t the first to go out. Exciting game that boiled down to two of the Americans being left with 29, respectively 28 points.
They all worked at the gun range, so I’m thinking of taking one of my days off to go there.
Got back to the tent after a shower around 22:30 and now going to sleep. Today, all the participants from the hosting countries, Mexico, Canada, and the USA, came; tomorrow it’s time for the rest of the world and the 24th World Scout Jamboree to begin. Exciting!
