Scout Camporee

Bee and I are both in Scouting now. I was asked to be Scoutmaster for Troop 87 here in Yongsan, South Korea, and Bee has been asked to be the assistant scoutmaster. Our troop is just a few boys in Yongsan but we are part of the Far East Council which covers all of Korea and Japan and a few other counties of the Far East. It is a new experience for us, especially for Bee. I am an Eagle Scout and was assistant scoutmaster in Alabama when I lived there but Bee is brand new to scouting but is super excited to get involved with it; mostly because that means we get to go camping together more.

This weekend was our first outing in conjunction with our scouting assignment. It was a Camporee near Wonju, a few hours away from Seoul, in the mountains. We had one boy who wanted to go so we took him. We probably would have gone anyway even if we didn't have a boy interested in going, just to help out and get involved with the other scout troops in the area.

We met up Friday afternoon with our scout and one of the other scout troops on Yongsan, Troop 80, and helped them get all packed up and then followed them to the campground. A trip that should have been two hours turned into a little over three hours because of a big wreck that had happened on the interstate that we had chosen. We spent about an hour sitting on the highway as 5 lanes were all pushed into one. We lost the people we were following at one point and happened to meet up with them again a ways down the road but then we passed them again as they stopped at a rest area. Sense I had directions I decided we would just get there as we were already so far behind because of the wreck. We got to camp around 9pm or so and set up our tent and made it over to the campfire and opening ceremonies for the encampment.

We attached our boy with the boys from Troop 80 so he could participate with them in the team activities and Bee and I helped staff some of the events. Saturday morning the different troops had a Tepee building activity to see who could build the best Tepee. After that was breakfast. Bee and I met up with Andreas, a leader from a troop in Osan, and assisted him for the day with his event -the tomahawk throw. Because we did not have actual tomahawks or an appropriate range to throw them in, and because at camporees scouts are supposed to practice scouting skills, Andreas had prepared wooden tomahawk handles and heads. Part of the event was that the scouters had to lash their tomahawk head to its handle with a piece of rope that was provided before they threw it. There were different animals painted on six different wood targets and the boys had to stand behind a line and see if they could hit them with their hawks. Because each troop was competing against the other there was a point system in place. After lashing their hawk together each troop selected ten throwers. Each target was worth one point and each target could only be hit twice, that prevented them from always throwing at the closest targets. If the the tomahawk came apart that was a demerit and if there were to be a tie the demerits would be the tiebreaker.

After all the troops went through the throw we packed up and followed them down to the Buddhist temple where they were learning about the culture of Buddhism. It was fascinating learning about different cultures and I hope the boys got something out of it. The temple was the 9 Dragons Temple and there was some story about 8 dragons being scared off by something in the area and the 9th dragon was sick so it stayed there and hid behind a waterfall nearby and a wise turtle found it and carried it to a lake I think. I don't remember the details of the story but that is the jest of it. It was very interesting.

I am always amazed at the vivid colors and detail on the temples and traditional structures in Korea.

The final activity of the day was the river crossing. Near the camp was a small river gorge and each troop had to span a rope across the stream and get each of their boys across to the opposite side. Though our boy was with the other troop I decided to grab my gear and string my own rope across and do the activity too. I am still very much a little boy and enjoy doing things like that. Sense there seemed to be enough leaders monitoring the other boys I set my rope up and traversed across it. With some coaxing, and after all the others were done and had gone up to get ready for dinner, Bee also traversed the rope. It was a fun activity and I was SUPER excited that Bee finally did it too.

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The camp went until Sunday but we drove back late Saturday night after the campfire and award ceremony so that we all could be at church on Sunday. Camp was a blast! We had a great time and we hope to do it again in the near future.