For the first time it was the turn of the international students to organize a Monday trip. Marek, Martin, Joey, Michael, Chris, Jill, Saedis and me took over and had the task to plan something about group dynamic exercises/teambuilding. Me met on Saturday and expected to be done in half an hour which was definitely not the case. In the end it took us about two to three hours to plan everything. The plan was to go to the clearing in Jegersberg and having lunch with a campfire. Moreover, we wanted to do something bigger not just a couple of games there because we expected that this would be boring after an hour. Therefore we discussed an hour what we should do but unfortunately without result. Meanwhile the discussion I searched the internet and found an article about 5km races which was used by a company for teambuilding. While reading the article I started liking the idea and transferred it into your setting. My idea was to make a rallye with two teams around the 4km track with several stages where the teams have to solve a task. The majority liked my idea and we started to think about the stages and the point system because we wanted to have a winning team and time pressure. In the end, we had a warm-up game (Viking games) and six stages with ten points for the winning team. The team that completes the rallye first gets ten points in addition. Every stage was prepared and run by one to two persons who stayed there until both teams completed it.

Even with the idea it took us over an hour to be completely done. Most of the time we were discussing about the point system. The big question was how to judge a winner at each stage. Finally, we decided to take time of every single task which was probably the smartest solution. After solving this issue the next question aroused: how many points can the teams win at the stages and how many for completing the ralley first. At the beginning, we were thinking about a graded point system. The winner gets 10 point and the other team still can earn point if they are not too slow. There, we were not able to come to a smart solution whereas we decided to give 10 points for the winner and 0 points for the loser team for every stage and 10 points for the fastest team.

Stage one (Marek) was a wood throwing competition between the two teams. Both teams faced each other with a distance of a couple of meters. Player A1 had to throw the brick over the centre line and player B1 had to pick up the piece of wood where it landed. Afterwards he threw it back into the field of team A. Every player had one try and if somebody is not able to throw across the centre line the other team gets a point. The team with more points is the winner. On Monday we had a draw and improvised by continuing in a sudden death mode. After that Team A started the track clockwise, team B stayed with me at the clearing and did a task there which was, of course, the last task for team A after returning to the clearing. In this task the team has to carry a person, who is not allowed to touch the bottom, around the 700m circle. After that team B started their 4km anticlockwise because we wanted to avoid that the teams meet at the same stage. So, Marek and I had to wait at the clearing until the teams returned. We were the judges that have to check which team was faster. In the period of waiting we tried to start a fire with a flint. This was really difficult because our dry wood was in use by Saedis and Michael who did a crocodile game. The bricks were islands on which the players are safe. As consequence, we had to deal with the wet wood and were not able to start a fire.

At Jill’s stage the team has to stay on top of a tarp and turn it the other way round without leaving it. Martin made a boulder competition and Chris/Joey made a spider net out of a rope. One after another of the team had to get through the net without touching it. All stages worked and it was a lot of fun to the teams. Lunch time was a lot of fun as well due to the sunny weather. This Monday was the most sunny and warmest day since I am in Kristiansand and I felt like in spring. We were sitting around the campfire, talking and making jokes. It was the perfect end of a nice day in the woods and I think everyone went home with a smile on their faces.