We've had a lot of fun with scouting here in Rome. We are a small group here so we sometimes join in with the troops in Naples. This summer the council camps were cancelled because of uncertainty with international travel etc. By the time summer came around it was OK to travel, but earlier in spring cases were spiking and schools were temporarily online. With the council camp in Switzerland closed for the season the troops in Naples decided to put on their own camp at Carney park. Carney park is a US military recreation area in the crater of a volcano just outside of Naples. We were there a year and a half ago for a camporee. It's a little piece of America where you pay in dollars and you can buy root beer in the vending machines.
The program for this year's camp was a lot of fun. There were a couple days of merit badge classes and then fun adventure outings outside of camp for the last few days. I taught the art and public health merit badges. I even came up with a game to teach about various diseases, their causes, and how they are spread. That's a fun one with scouts (cringe). My teaching partner on that one was really great. He works in public health with the Navy and was really informative when it came to providing real life examples and details. The wilderness survival teacher was hard core. He smiled the whole time, but no tarps allowed for the overnight shelters.
The adventure days were really fantastic and unique. Activities included white water rafting, aqua-trekking, speleo-rafting, and snorkeling. I had to look up a couple of those things. I wasn't sure what they meant. Aqua-trekking is hiking in a river. The scouts and leaders had a great time sliding down rocks and jumping off cliffs, not too high of course. The speleo-rafting was similar. They took little rafts up a river and into and through a cave.
I went with the slightly less adventurous, but also less strenuous, snorkeling. We were led by a Navy seal who had some connections with a local outfitter. They took us across Naples bay to Baiae, a submerged Roman town. Baiae was a resort town for the ancient Roman elite. Through the water we could see the walls and mosaic floors of the ruins. In other locations there are columns and statues standing. (Sorry, I don't have any underwater picture, but you can find plenty online.) It was a lot of fun to get in the water and cool off and the scenery was quite impressive. Across the water you could see the Arogonese/Spanish fortress called the castle of Baia. The castle was built in the late 1400s on the site of a villa owned by Emperor Nero.
Toward the end of the week there was an order of the arrow ceremony. My Girl was nominated by her virtual troop to be an OA member. She now gets to go to an OA ordeal sometime in the next two years. I'm not sure how or when that will happen. They usually take place in Germany, since that is where most of the scouters seem to live. That is a long way for a short weekend. Hopefully something else will come up.
Even though it was hot and a bit muggy the scouts played endlessly with a chewed and broken three sided boomerang toy they found. It was probably someone's lost dog toy. Because it was broken it flew in very unpredictable ways. I'm not sure what the game was. It was a little Calvinball, and involved a lot of running around.
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