We were tasked to group up with someone from the same nationality and run a team building exercise typical for your country. As there are no other Finns, me and Caroline from Denmark teamed up. We had one day to come up with an exercise and I decided to run a game of cops and robbers as that is a very popular game amongst school children in Finland. The game consists of two teams that should work together either to capture everyone from the other team and take them to the prison or avoid being caught and free everyone from your own team from the prison. A game of tag is not what I would usually have as a team building game. However, I was thinking that it would be great to have an active game as the weather was bit nippy, and most of the games people said they would organise did not involve that much moving.

The next day we arrived to the camping spot and before doing the activities we put up the camp. For the people who had not been camping much, this was good practise before any of our longer trips. We also built a group shelter and a fireplace under it. This required a bit of improvising as we did not have enough ropes. After the camp was set, we started with the activities. When it was my turn to run my activity I think I did not explain the rules clear enough. The cop team had 5 minutes to catch all the robbers, but instead of trying to free each other the robbers just scattered away and therefore lost. The rules were that if half of the robbers are in the prison when the time is up, they will lose. Instead of working as a team the robbers just tried to avoid being caught. After we switched the roles I limited the game area so the robbers cannot just disappear. I also explained the target of the robbers again and this round they tried to save each other from the prison, but they still did not have a good tactic and they all got caught one by one. In future when playing this game, I will set the area from the start and make sure everyone understands the aim of the game. After each game we gave feedback about it to each other. My game got critic for not being about team building. I agree to some level, but still think it was good to have an active game in-between inactive exercises.

The other activities we had were varying a lot from some that were really great, to others that were not really meeting the assignment. One good example is the ‘defusing the bomb’ game, where we had to fetch the rucksack from middle of a circle without dropping it and without going inside the circle by using ropes. This game was great because it allowed all of us to work together to find a solution. The game was also easy to variate, making it harder for us as some people were blindfolded and some people could not talk.

What I liked about the team building exercises was that we had lots of different type of games. Some of them involved the whole class, for some of them we were divided into smaller groups, and for some it was just working in pairs. With changing the groups and the sizes of the groups we had the chance to get to know each other better. For some people it is also easier to work in a smaller group as in a big group it is harder to introduce your ideas or get yourself heard.

After the activities we had a cooking competition. Len provided us with ingredients and each group had half an hour to make a delicious dish. This was also good practise for future camping trips. The rest of the evening it was raining, and we were all sitting under the tarp. The camping trip was great way to bring the group closer to each other as this was the first time we were all spending time together outside the classroom.