Waking up in Prague is awesome. Slept in a tiny bit this morning before Heather and I packed up and headed to a place to work. Wore our festival T shirts (I have 2 in purple and 2 in white - they are our uniform this week). We found a café not too far from our house with outdoor seating and wifi. We sat there for about 2 hours working on our presentations. We are delivering a leadership development series - "Coming Together: Innovations in Leadership Development" which is a 4 -day, 4-part workshop every morning from 9am-12pm. We are also giving a 90 minute workshop on Tuesday call "Women in the Y."

We went straight from the café to the festival grounds. It was about a 45 minute walk. Across the river and through a tunnel and up a hill. There was a US Delegation kickoff meeting at 3pm. We have 500 participants here from the US. The only delegation larger is Norway. There are about 3500 people here total. It's great that way have so many global-minded and interested youth, but it's not great that we have a larger delegation than most. It's just another example of how we exert our power and dominance over others.

Heather and I got to the festival grounds early. It's being held on an old Expo center area where they once hosted the world's fair. We walked around until we saw the gate where we picked up our wristbands and transportation passes. Then we had to walk all the way in the opposite direction (because the festival grounds weren't open yet) so we could enter for the meeting. It was about 15 min walk from the entrance to the gate where we could get in. Disorganization and miscommunication seem to be a theme for this festival - noted that the US are particularly anal and OCD about rules, directions, logistics, details, and risk management. In order to get into the grounds, we had to pass through this run down, dilapidated, fun house crazy mirror type carnival. It's like what you would see at a county fair, but with no people, and 3 workers, one ride running, and creepy music playing. The meeting took place in the dining hall. About 300 showed up to kick it off, including a flash mob. Some delegations hadn't arrived yet and some were having issues checking into their hostels.

The planning committee and staff were in a hotel, Heather and I opted to rent an apartment, and most delegations were staying in hostels. There was once incident where the hostel was in such poor shape they didn't have any towels and there were maxi-pads lying in the middle of the ground. There was another situation where the hostel had changed its name and posted no signage, so some participants thought their reservation had vanished. All got sorted out eventually. Not a great start to a happy trip, especially if you've never been out of the country before.

We had a bit of time after our meeting and before the official festival kickoff. We wandered the grounds. One of the cool things about this festival is a group called "outdoor tech". They come in early and spend time building a treehouse on festival grounds. It is so amazingly cool. They sleep in the treehouse the entire time they are at the festival. It's like swiss family robinson but better. I'd love to do it sometime.

After saying hi to a few people and walking around, we discovered the festival didn't really kickoff until 7. We thought it did at 5:30. So we were about to head home and get a good night's sleep before our workshop early the next morning. As we were heading out, we noticed some intense clouds looming overhead. It wasn't long before the clouds turned over on themselves and started dumping rain on the grounds. Everyone ran for cover under the tents. Then the winds picked up and festival staff ushered us, panicked, from the tents to a more secure place - the dining hall. Except that when we arrived at the dining hall, the doors were locked, so we had about 500 people standing out in the storm waiting for help and directions, speaking different languages.

Eventually everyone got it. Different delegations started singing songs and chanting waiting for….whatever we were waiting for. About 30 minutes in, Ian, the festival manager, took the microphone and announced that the storms were bad, and that we had to cancel the kickoff for the evening. I felt terrible for him. 3 years of planning and this is how it jumps off. He also announced that there was another wave of storms coming, and that those who could, should head home for shelter.

Heather and I were walking home, the trams were packed, so we waited a bit longer. The air was uneasy and although most were in good spirits, there was a little bit of fear looming. We made it home before the second wave hit. We found that the concierge downstairs had taken liberty to close our windows for us (yay!) so we weren't flooded out of the apartment. As we were prepping for our am session, we found out that the festival grounds had more damage than anticipated. Trees had crashed down into tents, and one young man had been injured. They needed time to clean up festival grounds, and were canceling our morning sessions as well.

So, Heather and I hung out for a bit before showering and heading to bed. We take multiple showers here because of the heat. Everyone is constantly sweating. We have named the stench in the air "eau du prague" which is really really strong BO. You can taste it it's so bad. There is no AC in the apartment. The windows are double pained with no screens, so we leave them open as much as possible but often it doesn't help to let in the stagnant air. We try to keep the drapes drawn during the day.

Tomorrow should be interesting - festival grounds don't open until noon now.