December meetup

Shortly before Christmas I went to another day long unit meet-up.

The day was a chance to find out more about where we were going, what we were doing and how we were going to go about it. As you may know we are off to New York as well as Washington DC and maybe even Canada. We were asked what we wanted to do on top of what the UK Contingent would arrange for us.

Some of the ideas we had included:

  • Visiting the National Mall in Washington DC, including the Smithson Museums, the White House, the various memorials and the Cherry Blossom trees (even though they won’t be on bloom).
  • Even though we are only in NYC for one day we’d love to see the Empire State Building, Central Park, the Ground Zero memorials, the Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridge.
  • Although we don’t know where we’ll be in Canada we’re hoping we’ll get to see some small towns to contrast the big city experience, Niagara Falls (if we’re close enough), snow-topped mountains, beavers in their natural habitat (rather than the turquoise ninjas racing around the scout hall), and get a chance to buy some maple syrup from a maple syrup farm.

We also had confirmation about what kit we will be given and can purchase. One of our leaders said it was the best Jamboree Kit they have ever seen so we’ve got more confidence it’ll get there and back in one piece.

There were a lot of team building games but I had to sit those out as I was still recovering from my injury – I got to separate and fold raffle tickets instead.

As well as my injury our unit has also had broken arms, broken feet, sprained legs and loads more, hopefully we’ve got these out of the way before the Jamboree but they also told us about how good the on-site hospital will be.

Unfortunately I had to return Blue at this meet-up and found out he had missed the Christmas Meal the day before, although I did get a surprise Chocolate Santa in return.

I got another surprise from Father Christmas my own Blue Bear, who I have named Blue-Too. Blue-Too has found my Washington DC board book, which I got when I was nearly two on my last visit to DC and has been busy planning what he wants to see.