Exams are past and the next field trip is coming. This time our whole course was asked to organize and execute an outdoor camp for the Tangen college students. One the one hand we should teach them things like fire starting, shelter building, orienteering and canoeing and one the other hand we were able to practice our teaching and veileding practice. The area of Donevann is close to Kristiansand, in about 20 to 30 minutes by bus we arrived at the nearest bus stop. From there we had a two kilometer walk to Roligheda where the gapahuks and our base camp was located.

On Monday we arrived there at around 11ish, had a short briefing by Len and afterwards we prepared our stage. Following to that we had off until 17 o’clock when the arrival of the first group of people arrived. Adam, Stella, Chris and I decided to take the canoes and discover the lake. We found some interesting water bouldering spots but we decided to head towards Donevannsholmen. It is an island in the middle of the lake and of course Chris and I had to discover the spot. I found a perfect bivouac place which was wind covered and with morning and evening sun. Unluckily, I was not able to convince people to join me in my plan of sleeping there and I was not allowed to go there on my own due to the restrictions that we should always be two canoes. After a little sunbathing we continued our tour towards Sandviga. We hid the canoes near the road and walked the last couple of hundred meters and I have to say that this was definitely the best choice we were able to take. We found a small and lovely beach that was 10 times 5 meters and we had to cross shallow water to go there. This place was amazing because we had sun, it was wind covered and we had a boulder rock in addition. There, we spent all our breaks.

Now some words to the groups and how the procedure looked like. The arrived at around 18ish, Paige welcomed them because she was the organization master. She did a very good job, she had all the time an eye on the watch and walked around to stay in contact to all the groups. Following to the welcome words and the introduction on what all this camp is about the around 60 pupils were divided in 7 to 8 groups á 4-6 students each. Each group was allocated to one of our stages and we took the students from the base camp with us to the stages. There, we explained what their task is and after 40 minutes the switched to the next station. Of course we showed them were to go because we tried to avoid that they got lost or sneaked away. This worked pretty well like all the stages. Depending from group to group we had to do some small changes within the stages to adjust them but after some groups we all were able to react spontaneously. All of us noticed that there were big differences in motivation and skill level among the groups of one class but also among the classes itself.

In the evening the pupils did three stages and the next morning they continued from 8:30 to noon with the remaining five. In the evening they had free time and they were able to do whatever they wanted to do. I liked the group of day one most because the teachers were very sportive and joined us in playing volleyball. Moreover, they took a slag line with them and explained some small ball games to us. The class also had to prepare a game night and one of the girls tried to involve us. Unfortunately, the Norwegian pupils stuck to Norwegian but she translated all the games to us. This was very nice and a lot of fun.

The days before the camp I was asking myself why we international students have to run a camp for Norwegians to give them a closer understanding of their tradition of friluftsliv. I expected them to be better in the things we should teach them. In the end I noticed that I was wrong and I noticed that the the values and tradition of friluftsliv is dying nowadays. This fact made me sad because in my opinion every Norwegian citizen should be proud of their country and the beautiful countryside and all off them should recollect to where they came from and what are their national roots and traditions.