Monday‘s trip: teambuilding, making stretchers and carrying an injured person, shelter making, fire making, leadership training.

It all started today according to the scenario with which we were familiar with from the last Monday – gathering near “Spicheren”, distributing fire wood and some more stuff. As previously, we didn’t need any special equipment – only lunch and appropriate clothing.

Norwegian friluftsliv students prepared us a great program this time, but I‘m not saying that the last Monday wasn‘t great, its only that this time we had to start thinking on our own while last week we (international students) were like young ducklings following a mother duck.

Our veileader this time was another Norwegian student. I am really bad in remembering Norwegian names so I can only say that he was a big bearded guy and he spoke with authority – true Viking. He introduced as with a technique for getting audience attention – clapping hands… And whenever he clapped his hands we had to clap in response – confirming that he had our attention. It took a whole day to get used to this technique although it’s quite effective once you start not to forget clapping back. Later on he gave us a good feedback on our today’s activities, evaluated our efforts and skills.

In the beginning we distributed some firewood, tarps, some rope and paddles between the whole group, than just a couple hundred meters away from our gathering point we were divided into four teams and given out a task to make stretchers out of materials we had (rope, tarp, paddle and a big branch) and then carry one of our team member with it to „the green field“ where we were last Monday and which was a bit less than a kilometer away from our starting point. This field provided us a great environment for team building games, it offered a landscape suitable for building shelters, making fires and etc.

This task was in a form of competition and you could have sensed how excited were some teams, motivation levels were up. Although my team spent most time preparing our stretchers later on we could rely on our product and carry our friend (Anne) much faster than other groups. We carried her often making shifting between stretcher’s „crew“ so we could rest and maintain a good speed at the same time because if there were too many people carrying her at once we would have disturbed one another and our pace. So in the end, maybe because of our technique or our spirit and tenacity – we arrived first!

And that was not the last time when we have won a task. Team “Gandalf” really did a good job today, today’s veileader approved (we named ourselves after this fictional character because we had a big funny shaped wooden branch that reminded for each of us of a magical staff that this wizard used to carry with himself).

Later on we had to build a shelter out of a tarp. The trick here was to pick a good spot in natural surroundings: e.g. natural wind protection, a place where water wouldn’t reach if it was a heavy rain and etc.

Another task was to lead our teams through a difficult terrain with their eyes closed. Two shepherds (me and Anne) did it quite well and brought back everyone in one piece.

Third task was fire making! We had to light up the fire as quick as possible, get it going so it would burn through a string that was hanging above the fire place. Needless to say team “Gandalf” used their magic and burned the string quickly. Then we had a nice lunch break near our campfires, most of the guys started playing football. After this break we had to get through the spider’s web, disassemble our shelters and collect all our gear.

Spider web - do not wake the spider....

Our veileader gave us a feedback on our efforts in the end and asked for a feedback from us: of course we were happy with today’s trip. The day was really well organized: life saving practice on the way here was a clever use of road which otherwise would have been just walking; activities involved our initiatives and actions – completely the opposite from the previous trip; by getting our hands on we learned a lot – personally I got a good practice from it on fire making, making stretchers, building shelter and leading a team through a difficult paths – all of these are really important skills to have if you want to be safe in outdoors. Although it was all in a form of a game – it’s still a good practice, because it is the way how even animals learn things – by playing.

After we summed everything up, we headed back towards university and maybe towards a swimming pool and jacuzzi in “Spicheren” – to relax indoors after a day outdoors. It was a really fun day and I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Being outdoors and learning practical things here is way more fun than sitting in auditorium in Lithuania for at half a day listening to a some professor mumbling beneath his nose.