25-01-2016

Today I‘m going on the second Monday trip with Norwegian students. So like usually everybody met in the morning 9 o’clock at Spicheren. There Norwegian students told for everybody take few pieces of wood and we left for the Jegersberg. Today was cloudy and little bit cold day, but I don’t minded about that, because I was wearing proper clothes ( thermo clothes, sleeve,  skiing clothing) and in the backpack had some warm tea . There in Jegersberg was a lot of snow, so we was able to ski . When we all gathered at the place where we were staying all this day, our outdoor education group separated into mixed international- Norwegian groups. Today we going again to have some group dynamics tasks. Altogether there was prepared 4 tasks/ challenges: racing, shelter preparing, blindfolded competition, and build snow sculpture. First of all, our mixed group started with race-relay task, challenging another mixed group. This challenge we had to do by skiing. So 2 groups was standing near the start-finish line, first person start the race with only one ski on his leg, when he cross finish line after the racing lap, then other group member go with both skis but no poles. After second person done the lap, It was time for the last group members, who are together banded with each others one leg, and on the skis. So in this part me and one of my group member were with banded legs, so It was really hard to land down from the small hill and after that get on the top of the small hill, at the end we were both crawling 😀 but we won this race .

After first task our team had to do second, find perfect spot and try to build better shelter with rope, tarp and shovel than other teams shelter, It was competing challenge again. I was very interested in this challenge, because I wanted to use my knowledge, received in Lens lectures. Our team didn’t had any problems with this event, because there was some guys who are really good in this and experienced. So we found good smooth spot between trees, than tied up rope between trees, put tarp on the rope, strengthened it by putting some snow on the sides ( which was on the ground) of tarp, covered spacing with some fir branches and snow and  after all we won against another team. Third competing game was like this: Norwegians put 5-6 things in different places in the some kid area, then one guy from the team has to be blindfolded, he need to go and pick one of these things and bring back to the starting point, than goes another team member and repeat till everyone from the team will be done this at least once. Not blinded team members can only do this: say, try to explain direction where blinded person can and need to go. The team wins if they were faster in time with picking all the things. So we won third game in a row . After third game we set up campfire and all got some lunch. This time I got with me prepared at home meal, cooked noodles with meat, broccoli, beans and avocado. It was nutritious food with high energy rate and good calories, but the is that it was cold already, and for the cold weather is not so good. Later, when we done with our lunch, our team got to do last task build a snow sculpture. We got for this event 40 minutes. So we quickly decided what we are going to build ( 2 humans hanging each other) and started working with it. We done our “masterpiece” I think in the last minute, and we still didn’t end some elements of it. There was around a lot of other group sculptures like snow lions, Paris tower, Unexplainable towers, human sculptures, Centaur-which won this task, and many more. After forth the Monday trip was done, some of us (including me) put our skis on and went for some skiing in Jegersberg  .

After this day I was feeling happy about organizing, because spot for the activities was good, tasks was very orientated in team building and groups cohesion strengthening, for example shelter and sculpture build tasks, where you need to come up all together with one decision, communicate with each other, spread with the works, and of course get, spread with some new knowledge with each other . Also in the blindfolded game we were raising trust. Racing with skis game was more orientated in balance, coordination. So, after all we know each other more than last time, which fact is very nice .