Finally our island trip together with the Norwegian class has arrived. So we went to Randøya from 28th may to 1st june. It was our last trip with the whole class which was quite sad. We were divided into four groups. And always two groups were staying together in one barrack. Therefore my group with Aussie Sam, British Tom, Scott, Lila, Boogie, Will, Matias, Steffen, Tomke, Renata, Kristian and I were in the former hospital together with group four. Our barrack was really cozy with a nice common room, a little kitchen and a shower. In the group we got different task to do, so I was responsible for organizing the kayak trip together with Boogie and Tom.

After settling down at our barrack, we started with our first lesson on Monday afternoon which was a basic kayak technique course. Even that it was cloudy and rainy this afternoon, we had a great time on the water. For most of our group it was just a little repetition of the kayak course but I haven’t had the kayak course yet, so there were a lot of new things I learned like the sweep stroke or draw stroke. After dinner we had a small island tour where Ketil talked about the history of the island during World War II. He also showed us an underground tunnel and control rooms. I thought it was really cool and fascinated that people actually lived there a long time ago, I really couldn’t imagine it. When we got back we spent the rest of the night playing a card game called Werewolves.

On Tuesday we started with kayaking again. This time we did a longer trip around the whole island. Then after kayaking and a good lunch break, we went to the other side of the island for a shallow ocean biology lecture. We were looking through a glass binocular and trying to catch different animals and algae. I ended up learning which algae you can eat and that they are used in lipstick and ice cream. He also boiled some snails for having a little taste. It tasted alright. In the evening we played some frisbee, volleyball and football.

In the morning on Wednesday we had deep water biology. We went to another place at the island where we could get a little deeper in the ocean; there we tried to collect some algae and small animals again, while we were snorkeling through the water. I did snorkeling before and I knew that it is a lot of fun, so I really enjoyed this morning. After lunch it was time to head over to the survival island. Before rowing to the island we had to sort out the fishing nets. The rowing to the island was quite difficult as neither of us in my rowing boat had tried rowing before and we had to take the yellow rowing boat with only one pair of oars in it. Tomke, Renata and me struggeled that much with the rowing, that the guys had to “save us” and they had to help out with the rowing. When we finally arrived at the island we choose a spot for sleeping just down some rocks next to the ocean. It was a little bit windy there but we decided that is a perfect protection against the mosquitoes. After we settled down Steffen, Matias, Will and I took out the fishing nets in the water. The rest of the day we spent with fishing, swimming and playing the ukulele. The time was passing really fast and as we weren’t lucky with the fishing we decided to check one fishing net for fishes. We were lucky and there were already seven fishes in the net. We put the fishes out of the net and took the net back in the water. After that we prepared our dinner, enjoyed the beautiful sunset and finally went to bed. I slept quite good as it wasn’t really cold and the wind really protected us from mosquitoes.

First activity after coming back from the survival island was to clean and tidy up the fishing net. Then we learned how to properly prepare fish filets for cooking. Since Steffen already showed me how to do that the night before on the island I already knew what to do. After lunch we went on our motorboat lesson, where we steered and navigated a motorboat ourselves. For me it was the first time steering this type of boat and it wasn’t really difficult but a lot of fun. After our lesson we took the kayaks and paddled to a nice cliff jumping spot, where we spent quite a while for jumping down the cliffs. It was so much fun. In the evening we prepared a delicious fish soup with our catches from the fishing net. After dinner I slacklined a little bit with some Norwegians and we played Werewolves again.

Our last activity for this week was rowing boats. To be honest I wasn’t really looking forward to that lesson as last time rowing a boat didn’t work out at all for me. This time we used a rowing boat with two pairs of oars and it was way easier to handle than the other one. At the end of the lesson I actually enjoyed rowing a boat, what was quite a good outcome of this day! As the weather was sunny we stopped at our survival island for a little swim before returning to the island and cleaning and packing up our staff.

This week was great fun and I really enjoyed all the different activities we did. It was a perfect opportunity to get to know the Norwegian class better; it’s just a shame that we haven’t really had the chance to do that earlier. Because I think even that we had the Monday trips together with them, they were too short to really get to know them.