Woggleknot.com – An Explorer Scout's Blog

I’ve had very little time for this blog as of late because exams and coursework deadlines have been approaching and I’ve been spending a lot of time working and revising. I’ve spent hours over the last week doing music coursework and practicing for performance exams and I hadn’t really left much time for anything else. Fortunately, all the music work is behind me now because today I got everything recorded and sent off. Just in time too – today was the deadline! Now I just need to get through the next two months of exams then I can finally leave school – I can’t wait.

Anyway, I recieved some very good news last week – I’ve been selected for Jamboree! I’ll be joining about 40,000 other scouts in Sweden next year, and I’m really looking forward to it. However, it now means that everybody in our district who got selected needs to work really hard to raise £20,110 so we can go. We’ve had a few fundraising ideas so we’ll definately be able to achieve this.

I said there was going to be 12 places and over one hundred people, but that was wrong. There’s 15 places and 60 people took part – so I have a better chance of getting a place. It was a really good day – the first half of the day my group were doing survival activities. We learnt about the best way to light fires and the best kindling to use. I missed most of this one because I had to go to my interview (which I think went okay). After that, we learnt how to make food to take with you on the go. We mixed flour, wheat grains and fruit together to make a dough then flattened it and put it on tin lids and left it on the fire for a few minutes – we now had biscuits! But mine was rock solid and I couldn’t even get it off the tin lid – I had to scrub it off ): . We then went to the next activity and we made a shelter out of a big plastic sheet and rope. These activities were really fun, so I’ll have to make sure I go to the survival camp at Blackhills in july!

After lunch, we played a few team games. These were tricky and required quite a bit of thought and planning. My favourite game was one where you had to fill a pipe with water so the toy ducks at the bottom would float up and come out. However, the pipe had lots of holes in that we had to cover up or else the water would leak out. We all ended up getting soaked!

I’m not sure really sure If I’ll get a place on Jamboree – I really hope I do. But if I don’t, at least I had a lot of fun on both selection weekends!

This saturday coming up I’ll be taking part in county jamboree selection. In February I went on a selection weekend for my district but I didn’t get a place. Then, there was 3 places for 12 people. This time, there’s 12 places for over one hundred people – so the chance of getting a place is even lower. I really hope I succeed this time!

The event is going to be held at Blackhills Campsite. There’s going to be outdoor, team building activities but I don’t know what we’ll be doing. They’ll want to see how we work as a team and watch how we interact with other people. If building a fire is one of the activities I just hope that It doesn’t rain! It’s hard to get a good fire going with wet wood and it usually creates a lot of smoke – this means we’ll stink for the rest of the day.

Everybody has to give a 3 minute presentation about “The World Jamboree in Sweden 2011″. I’m planning on including a few interesting facts about Jamborees and scouting in Sweden. Does anybody know any? Please comment!

I went on the Huddersfield North Jamboree selection weekend hoping to get a place. And failed.  So I’m absolutely gutted. Urban Dictionary Definition for gutted:

Gutted:

1) Bad luck
2) Shame
3) Ouch

Eleven of us went, but there were only three places. They said I was too shy, so I’m gonna work on becoming more confident before the county selection . There’s going to be plenty more people there, so I’ll just make a conscious effort to connect with more people . I really want to go to the jamboree so I have to give it my best shot. The jamboree sounds awesome. The theme is “Simply Scouting” and they are focusing on three things that can summarise scouting: Meetings, Solidarity and Nature. I need to make sure I get a place with the county and use the feedback I got today to my advantage instead of sulking about it! Besides, if you read on you’ll see how fun this weekend was.

The weekend was composed of various challenges. Crazy, seemingly-impossible, difficult challenges that required thought. But we all got through them eventually.The first one was a scavenger hunt. We had to look for various items. I did absolutely rubbish on this challenge and only got a few of them. I should have put a bit more effort in I guess.  Although I am kind of proud of a few clever things I did. One item was The Scout Law handwritten. I wrote down the words “The Scout Law” and got the point. We also had to do other challenges at the same time and I wasted over 20 minutes trying to pitch a tent in the dark. After this, we went to sleep and I discovered I could sleep better on the church floor than in my own bed.

The next day the main challenge was going to be something to do with manchester airport but it got cancelled because of some protestors. At 2:00 am the leaders planned an alternative challenge. We were split into two teams and each had to plan an afternoon tea event to be held at the church. We were given £50 and told whoever makes the biggest profit wins. My team chose to buy ingredients then bake cakes and buns and make sandwiches, and the other team decided to just buy buns from Sainsbury’s. We also decided we would hold a tiny raffle (with two prizes – A £4 cake and a £3 DVD!) which made us £45. We received£15 as donations standing outside Sainsbury’s, and we made exactly £100 from donations for cakes and buns (we were giving out the food and letting people pay whatever they wanted). We used facebook, called people, asked people outside Sainsbury’s and in the streets to come to the event, and the leaders also invited many people to come along. At the end, my team made a profit of £124, and the other team made £129. Everybody was suprised by how well we all did – even the leaders thought we would fail!

That night we split up into groups (we worked with people of a similar age) and cooked our own tea over the open fire. I tried to used a technique I read in a Ray Mears book but that didn’t really work, but we managed to get the fire going in the end. Then we built it bigger so it was hot enough to boil water and fry mince. We had Pasta Bolagnase, and it tasted great. For dessert we stuffed bananas with chocolate buttons then wrapped them in foil and put them in the embers of the fire.It was a bit goey, but it tasted nice. After eating we went on a hike which had challenges at every checkpoint – each was fun and interesting. After this, we slept in tents we’d pitched earlier in the day. I didn’t sleep well.

Today was also fun. We built our own assualt courses using pioneering poles and rope. They were quite simple but still fun to climb/vault over. After we had dismantled the structures, we got called in one by one to be told if we had been selected or not.

Although I’m extremely disapointed, this weekend was still amazing fun and I’m just gonna have to focus on trying really hard for county selection!