Welcome & Swiss Night

At 7.30 am my alarm woke me up. I decided to lay down for a little while longer and to take a shower after that. When I arrived in the ladies bathroom the surprised me. There were a lot of showercabins, basins and cabins with a bad in it!!! After taking the shower I went to the dining room for a breakfast. The breakfast was made out of milk, yoghurt, muesli and bread with butter or marmalade. And after that I changed my clothes into the official uniform for the camp opening.

All the girls went outside were we made a group picture because not everybody from the staff was ready. It was cool to see the uniforms of the different country’s, some country’s didn’t have an official uniform and some country’s still were an old uniform or a dress. After making a lot of pictures (because everybody wants this picture on her photocamera we made a circle around the flagtower. Then Lars (world centre manager) give us a warm welcome and introduced the staf, following by the world flag recipie and the world song. Then we had handed out the thoughts books while reading a poem. We also need to write down on little carts what our expectations are from this week.

In the Friendship Room the morning programme continued. Before Sol divided us in different groups, she told us a little bit about the programme of this week and about Adelboden. Then we need to prepare in groups a presentation about a female Nobel price winner. While preparing the presentation we also had the opportunity to get lunch. There was a large table filled with all kind of vegetables and a large bowl of chips. We also had time to get our stuff for the oror-presentations. Every delegate got a table to display the oror-project in their country. The Netherlands didn’t have an official project so I told about the ‘Meiden aan Zet’ project from the Overijssel supporting office. I also had time to explore the building, there was a room with all kind of books, even from 1930.
The programma af the afternoon was having the presentation of the Nobel price winners and the oror-projects. That was a long sit, although the stories were very interesting. It give a clear sight about scouting in other country’s. Like New-Zealand with a special programma to earn badges, and for every subject of oror there’s a badge. Of the cleaning project from Sri Lanka, or the aids-project form South-Africa. In some country’s scouting is a part of the mutual aid programmes. When it was my turn it seemed harder than expected to do it in the English language, although some girls said it was good to understand. When it was 18.00 they changed the programme so that the last presentations were the other day and we could go to get our diner. It was a lot of information for the first day.

Our diner was a part of the evening programme, what was Swiss night. So we had cheese fondue with little parts of bread and some vegetables. After that a alpine horn blower visited us to let us hear a few traditional songs. We also had the opportunity to try it ourselves. It was a lot harder than expected and only a few girls had success. We also had the chance to ask him some questions and he told us about the history of the alpine horn. After that we made two groups for the swiss quiz. They had a few questions about famous swiss people, citys and objects like the swiss army knife and edelweiss. For the winning group the was swiss chocolate (and also for the losing group). Than we need to become creative while making a swiss flag out of beadles and to make a papiroflex. This was quit hard, although it seemed to be a little childish. After this I went to bed, because living in the mountains makes me very tired.