Norwegian Monday Trip Day 1

The first Norwegian organized field trip was a good time.  We went on a hike and even though it was raining and windy I didn’t mind, because I had on the proper clothes.  I enjoyed seeing what Norwegian families do on a typical hike.  The Kwikluch were really tasty and I always enjoy oranges.  The Norwegians showed us that when you go hiking in the woods or on trails it is typical to find a book tied to a tree or in a box that serves the purpose of keeping record of how many people use the trail.  We all sat down and passed the book around and wrote our names, date, and what countries we are from.  I thought the book was a fun idea to see how many people have traveled the trail and to see where everyone is from.  During the day we saw some great views and enjoyed company with each other while being surrounded in Norway’s beautiful nature.

Norwegian Monday Trip Day 2

Our Second Norwegian trip was full of some fun group dynamic games and different ways for us to interact with each other.  We were divided into groups and given the task of carrying one of our team members to the top of the hill.  We were suppose to pretend that one of our team members had broken their leg and could not walk.  We were given a trap, two long wooden sticks and some rope.  The instructions were to make a stretcher for the injured person on our team with the supplies that were given to our teams.  We divided not to use the rope and just roll the tarp over the wood and put our injured team member on the tarp.  The plan worked out pretty well, we got second place out of 5 teams I believe.

Throughout the day we played different trust games and competitive games which was fun and gave us a good opportunity to get to know everyone a little bit better.  For lunch we had a competition between the groups in building a fire.  Each fire pit had a string that was tied about two feet above the ground and the goal was to build a fire tall enough so that the rope would burn and break.  Once again our team got second place, but at least we had 5 fires burning and ready to cook our lunch on!

International Monday Trip

My group planned the first international day with the Norwegians.  Our assignment was to teach the Norwegians something about our culture since they taught us things about their culture.  We play capture the flag for the day because we felt that Norwegians were not very competitive as a whole and we wanted to show them a fun competitive game that most of us internationals had played as children.  We started the day with some name games because we did not know everyone’s name in the group.  I was really happy we did name games because it made it more fun to interact with everyone, since you could call them by their names.

After we were done with name games we played two rounds of capture the flag the red team won both times I believe but the second game was really close.  At the end of the second game we had both the red and blue team on a pancasila at a stand off, and yelling for other team members for help and what not, it was quite funny to watch!  At the end of both games we all gathered and had lunch around the camp fire.  If I remember correctly Moritz packed a delicious lunch that day, typical Moritz for you!  We finished the day by teaching the Norwegians what smores’ were and all eating them together.  I think everyone was happy with the day and had a fun time!  We will probably play the game again at night time sometime and with our head lamps:)