Second day of visitors – Day 8 of WSJ

Another 5:45 AM alarm, another cool morning, another snooze. I did manage to get out of my sleeping bag, dressed, and out of the tent. After breakfast a couple of us were able to catch a ride with the team leads rather than a shuttle.

Today several friends from home came as visitors. It was great to see some familiar faces, and we snapped a few photos. Once the morning rush died down those of us who had worked a full day yesterday got to leave earlier. We hopped on one of the visitor shuttles and went to check out Summit Center.

At Summit Center we first went to see the food houses. Along the way we ambled through the Global Development Village which had booths about topics like sustainable fishing, alternative protein sources (spoiler alert: that means insects), clothing manufacturing, the impact of plastic, and much more. The lines for the food houses were so long we skipped them altogether.

After the food houses we checked out the CONSOL Energy Wing Tip Bridge, and walked around Action Point. Then we headed back toward to the other side of Summit Center.

On our way back one of the places we stopped was the booth by Czech Scouting. They had activities teaching about how scouts worked against the Nazis and Communists over the years. We watched a video about the history of Czech scouting which was very interesting:

I love that it shows how resilient the scouting movement is.

We moved on to World Point where each of the participating nations had booths with information about their homes and activities to participate in. We made our way through the countries, checking out what they had to offer. I found the branding tent, and got a brand put on my hat. We also found the Great Britain tent and got some awesome inclusion wristbands.

Eventually we made our way to the tent with the Nordic countries. They had an opportunity to earn a Nordic Challenge patch for completing an activity at each nation’s booth. First we sang karaoke in Icelandic, then we discussed and filled out a survey about carbon emissions for Norway. For Denmark we did a communication challenge where one side built something out of LEGOs and then had to describe it to the other side so they could build it without seeing our creation. For Finland we voted on what was most important to us about nature. For Sweden we needed to get Pippi Longstocking’s treasures to safe harbor while avoiding pirates and running aground. We accomplished all the tasks and were awarded the patch.

After this we had been walking around for long enough, and headed back to camp. We went to gather our gear from our tents, then met back up for dinner. After dinner, we hit the sauna again. It was wonderfully relaxing after a long day. We sat, enjoyed ourselves, and chatted with the other ladies. A great cap to a fantastic day.