This week’s trip was organised by George, Bowen, Max and Connor with a focus on team building.

We began with 4 tasks which the groups rotated around they were, Shrinking Island, an Obstacle course, Spiders web and Titanic. All tasks were timed and the winner would have the shortest times in each task.

Titanic was the first task we did, it involved having to get the whole team across a ‘body of water’ having only 4 ‘islands’ when we had 7 people in our group. This task took us a long time to complete and this could be because we jumped straight in and started the task without making a plan beforehand. This task involved most people in the group as you had to communicate with each other the whole way along the line of ‘islands’.

Again when it came to the Spiders web we began the task without communicating with each other and this resulted in some people going through the easy holes which we should have left until the end for the final people to come through.  I felt we didn’t all have the chance to give our opinions on how to do it as one or two people took the lead in the group when maybe there should have been more of a group thought process. If we had made a plan I believe we would have finished the task quicker and easier than we did.

Shrinking Island involved some planning before we began the activity during this there was much discussion on the best way to do it, we decided to go with4 people on the shoulders of 4 others while one person folded the tarp. When discussing and during the activity it was mainly the boys giving instructions and ideas. This task needed a fair amount of communication for example when people needed to lift their feet up so the tarp could be folded; it was not always clear what was required of each person. It also required the 4 people on the shoulders to work together and hold the small group of people close together so no one stepped off the tarp.

The obstacle course was very good for team building as it involved working in pairs with one person blind folded. This gave us the opportunity to work with more of the Norwegians than we had before, with this in mind we had to think carefully about our communication and the language or words we used as most international students partnered with Norwegians.

After lunch we played rubber chicken rounders and 21. We were lucky to win the rubber chicken rounder’s tournament. I feel by this point we were working better as a team and communicating more effectively with everyone paying attention to the game and playing a role in the group.

This week it was snowing so the group did well to reorganise their activities so that everyone managed to keep warm and therefore had a more enjoyable day which is important when team building, if the participants aren’t having a good time they are less likely to fully engage in the tasks. This was a good day and I think the activities successfully worked towards improving our communication and teamwork. I particularly liked the obstacle course and would use all the games in the future. Even though I have taken part in and run most of these games before I saw new solutions to the shrinking island and titanic game.