Last week I had my first scout camp. It was the most awesome week ever. We had our scout camp at Camp Freedom, which is a couple hours away in Germany.
I completed four merit badges: Wilderness Survival, Environmental Science(eagle required), Emergency Preparedness (eagle required) and Pioneering. I’ve almost completed Orienteering – I just have to lead two orienteering courses.
Day One: We got there on Monday instead of Sunday, like all the other troops, so we didn’t their good tents and had to use our own. I missed the first day of Environmental Science because we had to set up our tents.
Monday was the only night I showered. The rest of the nights I was way too tired.
That night it rained and rained and we had rivers in our tents. Some of the scouts slept in vans but I’m proud to say I didn’t.
Day two: (Tuesday) I went to all my classes and that night I learned such an awesome game. It’s called Kubb. It’s a Swedish game. There are five cubes on each persons’ side. The other player has to knock all of them over and then the tall King which is in the middle. But it they knock down the King before the cubes then they lose. That first night I played I was very bad. But by the end I became the best… well, that’s what everybody else said.
Everyday we had to make a motto for flag ceremonies – which were before breakfast and before dinner. That day we thought of the motto: “throw a tarp on it” because that was what we had been doing because of the rain.
Day Three: (Wednesday) We share a campsite with Troop 177 so we combined our tarps to make a big shelter with a big table to eat at and a clothes rack for clothes to dry off on. That day we made our own lunch and dinner, instead of going to the dinning hall. For lunch we made Chili and we entered it into the Chili contest and won ‘tastiest chili’. It was REALLY good. For dinner we ate sloppy Joes. They were good too. It was really fun to use my own camping ‘squishy bowls’ that I got for my birthday. After dinner we went over to show some of the leaders our skits to see if we could perform them on the last night. Our first skit was a failure because it involved ‘farting’… so then we made a new one about a ship which was WAY better.
Day Four: (Thursday) We made our own breakfast. I was the cook for that morning. I helped make ham and cheese English muffins. They were pretty good. There was also cereal and grapes. I love grapes. (After my scout camp everyone said I ate a lot.) That night, my Wilderness Survival Class and I walked for awhile to a place where we would set up a shelter and sleep in it for the night. I was in a group with Talbert ( a great new deacon from our ward) and a kid that no one else wanted to be partners with so we took him in. We tied a string between two trees and “threw a tarp on it”. That motto was turning into a big scout troop joke. We put our sleeping bags on a tarp on the ground under the tarp on the rope. We slept very well and we were woken up early to take down our shelters and go back in time for breakfast.
Day Five: (Friday) We had no classes on Friday except for doing the ones that we missed on Monday. We played Kubb most of the day. The campfire with the entire group of scouts might have been the best part of the whole week because we all got to do our skits. There was a funny Batman skit and another one called Gates to Heaven but I have to say that the best two skits were the ones that our troop did. One was called ‘Can of Beans’ with directors and actors and in every scene one actor says: “Hey, dude want some beans?” and the second actor says “thanks, man, I’m really hungry”. Then he drinks them and the first actor says: “oh, wait! Those were the bad beans!!” Then the second actors falls to the ground. Then the first actor calls the doctor and says “Is he dead?” The Doctor checks and then says, “Yep, he’s dead.” Then the first actor says “NOOOOO!” Then the director asked the actors to act in a different style. It was SOOO funny. The styles were normal, soap opera, world war II, kung fu, Shakespeare and scouting. In the scouting scene the second actor refuses the beans and they ask the scout master if he wanted them. He drinks it and both of the other actors say “oh, wait, those were the bad beans!” Then the scout leader falls to the ground. The first actor says, “What did we learn in scouting? First step, check if they’re dead. Then the other one checks and says, “He’s dead.” Then the actors say, “What should we do man?” The first actor suggests “throw a tarp on it?” and the other one agrees… “Ya, throw a tarp on it!” Our troop did another one that was totally funny too. Everyone was laughing so hard for both of our troops skits.
Day Six: (Saturday) We woke up, packed up and left.
My backpack inside my tent.
My sleeping bag and stuff inside the tent.
Our camping site. (Notice the tarps thrown over the tents.)
The American and German flags.
Those are all the staff. They were really fun. In the mornings the staff would say some ‘words of wisdom’. Every time they did the whole group of them would say “Ooooo, Aaaaaah, Wisdom.” We added that to one of our skits.
This is Mose and me folding tents for our service project.
This is our pioneering project we had to do for Pioneering.
This is me leading an Orienteering course that Mitch made.
This is Bryant and Jack playing Kubb.
