A birthday in different shapes

Almost slept until 7, then the temperature reached 30 and I couldn’t stay in bed 🙂

Got up and went for breakfast, I had asked my team lead to sleep in.

I sat at the Swedish CMT flag and spoke to a couple of Swedes working at another Subcamp. I get more and more of the impression that we have the best staff and leadership.

On the way back I passed the convenience store GS25 and bought myself two cokes. Lots of kids in the queue so it took significantly longer than it should have :p

Just when I got back to camp, the food (breakfast and lunch) for the participants arrived. The time was now nine, it should have gotten here at four.
It took us an hour to unload the eight pallets into our tents and cooling container, then another hour to distribute them to the troops. Some issues with mislabeled crates and missing gluten-free, but I think, overall it went okay. Except for the time. We were about ten people staffing this, not sure how the food distribution team thought they would be able to handle this with only two.

Afterward, the first (I think) Swedish troop arrived so I tagged along with Johan to check their equipment. All there, he was happy, I was happy, this is going to be fine 🙂

More of fetching water, looking into issues of raided pallets (for units that haven’t moved in yet), a few ISTs is washing some clothes. Checking in a unit once in a while. And lots of rest, it’s really hot today. Around 17 Vicky and Marilyn started to cook dinner so those who wanted could attend the opening ceremony. Delicious hamburgers.

At 18:55 we left for the ceremony, walking past a bunch of people to try and get good seats. The walk took about 20 minutes. When we arrived at the Main Arena there were security checkpoints. However, it went much smoother than I expected, even if they checked everyone with a paddle and scanned bags.

There were a lot of rumors on Discord before about needing a passport to enter, couldn’t bringing bottles inside, and so on. None ended up being true. Someone posted a schedule that stated that the “Closing remarks” should start at 23:10. It’s going to be a late night.

We found the Swedish contingents IST which was shortly moved to the back. At 20 the pre-event ended and the pre-ceremony started.

While we waited, Henrik in IST-support (I shared a tent with him in the USA in 2019), approached me with a balloon and started singing “ja må han leva” (happy birthday in Swedish), soon getting support from the about 300 Swedish ISTs, ending with hip hip hooray. What more could you ask for? Thank you, Henrik! ❤️

I also ran into Lenke whom I worked with in USA 2019. We got to talk a couple of times, nice to see her again!

The President of South Korea attended the first half of the opening ceremony and that was probably the reason for all the security.
The usual flag parade occurred with all participating nations. Sweden made a huge noise, first for Sri Lanka, because it sounded like Sweden in Korean. But we were the next one.

The legend Bear Grylls made of course an appearance. His speech started off great with some inspirational words but ended in a more odd way.

He was followed by the South Korean president. However he spoke in Korean and the subtitles on the screens were so small that if you were halfway from the stage, you couldn’t read it.

Then came a bunch a couple of more speeches, a video greeting from UN secretary general Antonio Guterres. Then a bunch of performances. Fairly good music, but most of us (I think) were waiting for the fireworks and the drone show.

There were a lot of people being transported from the area because of the heat. It was apparently a lot hotter closer to the stage. Someone brought water and the Dutch IST started to run around and distribute it.

With an hour left, people were leaving. It was late, warm and the youth would probably have program in the morning.

Great drone show. It ended at 23:15, but it took ages to clear the field because the road that would be used was full of ambulances. At midnight we got free, open road and got back to camp at 00:20.

Checked the new schedule and I don’t start until 12 so I get to sleep in! This is good because, after my evening shower, a unit leader came and told us that a girl in his camp had a problem with her legs. Luckey enough, a Dutch who uses to hang around us works at the Jamboree emergency center, so he called them and asked for an ambulance, 25 minutes was the response.

Her condition worsened so they carried her to the road (the units’ sites aren’t accessible by car) and we called again to increase the priority. Two different police cars stopped and got on their radios to get help, as well as a safety patrol from the Jamboree who tried through their channels. In the end, it took about 40 minutes for the ambulance to come. They loaded her up and left for the hospital (I presume). The last indication we got was that it hopefully wasn’t as bad as we initially thought. No, 2:40 in the morning I’m writing this blog post, reflecting over the last couple of hours, and am thankful for all the helpful people that are here. There is a clear language barrier but we do what we can to help each other out.