Day 8 — Culture Activity
My patrol was on duty today (we have to cook the meals and upkeep the site) so we were up at the relatively late time of 5:30. Breakfast was delicious — bacon salad!!
Today were were scheduled to take part in the culture module, so our unit made a walk up to the activity area, where there were lots of different stalls set up in a big marquee tent. I wandered around with Sophie Smith and we first went to an activity which was based around the different Newcastles in the world! It involved us breaking into 2 teams, building a ‘castle’ out of jenga, and then trying to knock down our opponent’s castles. Whilst reading about different Newcastles, we learnt that, obviously, Newcastle-upon-Tyne was the best, but it was very interesting to see so many common town names. One of them is actually situated in Osaka, Japan!
We then headed to some other, much more different activities; one of those was Japanese acupuncture… Strangly, it didn’t involve needles (they used very hot candles instead), so I was completely okay with it!
Other activities included: getting married with the Saudi Arabians, playing the tin flute with the Irish, lassoing some cows with some rope with the Americans, making traditional wooden clogs with the Japanese and getting my hat logo’d with the French. There were also various small wildlife scenes in one area.
Once we got back to the site, I was so tired I fell asleep at the table for around an hour!
For dinner, we had a patrol swap with the Slovakians that live next door; they were great to talk to and spoke very good English!