Beautiful days weatherwise; thousands of day visitors;what's a peanut?

We all have been quite busy the past few days with our respective Jamboree jobs. Mark and I are on the same shift, but different teams. We worked from 11 pm Sunday night to 8 am yesterday followed by 3 pm to midnight yesterday followed by 12:30 pm to 4 pm today. I have not kept up those sort of hours since my college days in the 70's! For my 11 to 8 graveyard shift I had an Irish chap from Dublin who had a number of great terms that I was not used to. For yesterday's 3 to midnight shift I had a Brazilian woman who rode her  bike while I walked along on foot. Each of my shifts were uneventful, but interesting. While I was patrolling a campsite last night I watched a great presentation from a groups of Scouts from Taiwan featuring drums, fans that make noise when they open them, etc. They were all decked out in beautiful costumes. It was fun watching the sun rise on Monday morning although a little cold for me. I didn't know that I should have brought gloves, long johns, etc. for a summer jamboree!
 
Today I visited the tents for a number of countries. I gave the fella manning the Tanzania tent a bag of VA peanuts. He was not familiar with peanuts as I tried to explain how they are grown, how good they taste, etc. Hopefully he will enjoy them.
 
I brought American flag lapel pins and bags of shredded US Dollar bills from the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond. I have about given away all my flag pins, but still have a number of bags of money (approximately $80 each) to give away. I try to give the pins to young folks from other countries. Last night I gave two flag pins to two Arab scouts show were in white robes sitting on the ground with all their patches  to trade spread out before them. I have given several pins to Scouts from Sudan who are most courteous in thanking me in excellent English for my gift.
 
We have been blessed with a beautiful couple of days with no rain. We're glad that the Scouts have have not had as much rain as we have experiences.
 
Tonight as dinner we saw a Scout band comprised of Scouts from the UK, Ireland and Holland who are going to perform at tomorrow morning's sunrise service.
 
Watched an interesting presentation form the Singapore delegation who are trying to land the next World Jamboree in 2015 after the 2011 World Jamboree in Sweden. We don't know what other countries they are competing against for that 2015 Jamboree.
 
Met an older gentleman from Scotland who was a Queen Scout (the English equivalent to Eagle Scout) back in the 1950's. He said that a BP relative awarded him his Queen Scout award. He was a big golfer who wanted to talk about Tiger Woods so I gave him a Masters golf tee that a Scouter from Augusta, GA  gave me earlier. He really appreciated it. I had his buddy take a picture of the two of us.
 
Ran into Stuart Tucker, a doctor from Charlotte who grew up in my hometown of Warsaw, VA before moving away. While I was in a camp patrolling last night, I was a Scout from NC with a list of everyone in his Jamboree troop. I noticed the name Stuart Tucker and asked the Scout if Mr. Tucker was a doctor from Charlotte and he said yes. I next asked where Mr. Tucker was and he directed me to their campsite. When I got there, they said Mr. Tucker was back at the stage area for that subcamp where I finally found him. (I already knew that Stuart was a doctor in Charlotte from the 2005 National Scout Jamboree after he looked me up while on break from serving on our subcamp's medical staff.  It's interesting that in 2005 Stuart looked me up and in 2007 I did the same with him.) I had to break the news to Stuart that our old Scoutmaster, Clint Carlin, recently passed away. We both chatted about all the fun we had in Troop 203 which is still sponsored by Warsaw Baptist Church.
 
Lots of day visitors from all over the world are bused into the Jamboree every day. 
 
In this technological age, Scouts and adult leaders exchange business cards with their contact information particularly their email addresses. Some folks have every elaborate business contact cards with extensive artwork, photos, etc. 
 
Mike and I each have a son here with the VA Jamboree troop. We have not seen much of them as they are too busy running around with their friends. I saw John yesterday and asked if he needed anything. He only asked for some more patches to trade after which he said goodbye and went off with his friends. 
Chip Delano

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