Just another way of fishing...
Very nice week, we fished and ate fish a lot, we tied knots, rowed with rowing boats, sea kayaked, snorkeled and survived in the island.
The moment when I will find out if I will have to pay pay my scholarship back had come… 🙂 I was feeling confident enough about what I’ve learned so far here during this course, but I wasn’t confident in my English skills… I struggled speaking in my native language for more than five minutes and now we are required to speak on two specific topics for half an hour 😮
But it’s healthy to be worried about sometimes, because when this came to the past I felt slight relief. Looks like I could talk a bit more than five minutes, although my performance wasn’t great 😉
Life saving test wasn’t that bad either, I managed to “rescue” Miriam in 4 minutes and 40 seconds. It wasn’t a “best” time but I knew my limitation on this one – I’m not a good swimmer and didn’t had much swimming practice lately.
The time has come to use our knowledge in a veileading way – that is what we were trained for this semester. I was really happy with this very successful week although it was very very wet. Our efforts in a heavy rain paid off.
We organised 10 activities for Norwegian students… a lot of Norwegian students -each day we received more that 40 of them. Orienteering, canoeing, abseiling, fire making, stretcher making and a bunch of other group dynamics games – these were our prepared activities. Our task was to challenge teams of students and evaluate their performance and group dynamic processes.
In the evening we would return to our own gapahuks (simple construction wooden shelters). There we light fires and celebrate birthdays… there were 3 birthdays this week alone – Luke’s, Katja’s and Jochen’s.
This week was brilliant as we had a chance to meet so many new faces and put some friluftsliv and veileading skills into action.
Since I got a package from home containing home made products from Lithuania, I was keeping an idea to host a little party with Lithuanian cuisine. Turned out there was never a good time for that. Until NOW.
8 liters of cold beet root soup with 3 kilos of hot potatoes (traditional Lithuanian dish) just vanished. Everyone told that they loved it… I hope they weren’t just polite 😀
After spending four days being sick and unable to do a trip, a window of opportunity arose. On Friday morning I was finally feeling reasonably well. But I already thought that I’ve missed the chance to canoe somewhere in the local area. Luckily Jochen and Flurin still had canoes in Roligheden and I was invited to join.
That was a bit of a surprise, because I was only starting my lunch when I received a call from Jochen. Canoeing in 30 minutes… I’m in!
Jochen and me set sail from Bertesbukta (a beach near Roligheden) and soldered on to Topdalsfjord keeping a small distance from the shore we paddled around the coast line until we found the narrowest part of the fjord to cross. Our plan was to reach Ronsbukta which was on the other side of the fjord. The Fjord was quite calm, but we still had to be a bit careful, because canoes weren’t made for the sea.
As we reached Ronsbukta, we followed the stream and found our way into Drangsvatna lake. There we reunited with Flurin’s family. They drove here by car, because it’s a bit too far away canoeing with Flurin’s little daughter Jana.
The weather was threatening to pour heavy rain rain on us at first but it never happened. It turned out to a really pleasant day. Sunshine, nice view and good company.
We paddled all the way until the very end of this long narrow lake. On the way we took a break in one of the islands. It was Engeholmen – a perfect place for overnight trip. There we enjoyed sunshine for a bit, climbed some trees and etc.
At one point we even made a raft out of our canoes. That turned out to be a stable and quite fast mean of transportation.
For a trip back Jochen switched with Flurin. Quite fast Me and Flurin we reached the shores near Roligheden. Where dinner awaited us in Jochen’s place.
It was a small day trip, but it reminded me that being outside with good companions is the thing that really makes me happy.