Once upon a time there was trouble in paradise...

The very first rays of morning sun slipped through the tent and I jumped out of my sleeping bag. The sun woke me up because it was shining right into my face but I couldn't have been more relieved and stepped out of my cocoon and out of the tent. I woke up feeling frozen like a popsicle and I tired popsicle, that hardly slept, and was yearning to feel a little warmth after the dark and extremely cold night that lay behind me.
I literally ran the 200 meters (at least) to the toilet, not just to get a little warmer than I had been all night but also because I had stalled peeing because I simply refused to get out of bed and wander into the cold night to go to the toilet. Maybe a diaper would be a good option after all.

I took a warm shower and got a warm cup of latte macciato. Both things did me really well. I also filled a can of tea with warm water and brought it to the camp site. I forgot to bring a bag of green tea so I drank some warm water because at the campsite we only had black English tea, which doesn't taste so great and plus (yes and and plus) it's not really healthy. Green tea is better, but hot water is even better. Hot water would do. One of the Romanian girls thought it was very weird but drinking hot water is actually a great way to get hydrated and warmer at the same time. And as I found out it has many more benefits. Maybe you should try it some time!

12-unexpected benefits of drinking hot water

Breakfast went well. Everyone was getting to know each other and as I had noticed before every bird was singing the same song: Everyone had been freezing in their sleeping bag the passed night. The ones who didn't have a good night sleep the night before they arrived in the Netherlands, because they had slept on the airport of Istanbul did not get a chance to rest, because they had been too busy shivering. It was funny in a way that we all had been so miserable and maybe sharing at least this experience already created some sort of bond. Everyone had a rough first night, except for the Dutch trainer who had given us the advice that most of us did not follow. He was the only one who had slept well.

One or two things were explained to us after breakfast. We were told that during this training we would have to prepare our own workshop in a group and we had to present it to the other groups on Saturday.  We could choose between doing a workshop on energizers, risk management or volunteer management. Hmm..I immediately started thinking: Energizers seemed like fun. It sounded less serious than the other two aspects, but then again risk management was something I didn't know much about. Volunteer management sounded important but a little bit boring, to be honest.

The rule was that there could be a maximum of 2 people from the same country in the same group. great rule! I had made my choice and ran to write my name down as soon as I got the chance to. Since I was the first one to write my name I was really curious and excited to know who would eventually be in my group.






After breakfast, I can't exactly remember when but somewhere during the day, we got a short workshop about organizing a summer camp. I had been at the camping site 3 or 4 times before but it was the first time I got to go up into the attic. First we got some information on for example:
The different stakeholders that are involved when organizing a summercamp:

• participants
• parents
• organisation
• volunteers
• insurance.

Examples of aspects you should think of when you're organizing a summercamp:

• the program
• practical stuff
• participants
• camp counselors
• accommodation
• transport
• health
• safety (risk management)

We had to sit together and think about what would be important to consider when organizing a summer camp in groups of 3. The blond guy from Macedonia and a tall guy from Moldova decided to work together. We had been sitting next to each other so it was an easy decision.
Well, we tried to work together but it was difficult since he could understand (some) English but could not speak it or did not speak it... Most of the time I found myself wondering whether he understood me or not. He asked, the guy from Macedonia translated this, whether he could and we agreed that it was better for all of us if he joined the others from his own country. That way they could work together in their own language and we continued working with the two of us in English.
He spoke Moldavian and Russian. It turned out that most of the people from the countries in Eastern Europe that were present could understand each other's language, except for us, the Dutch people, who could only understood English, German and Dutch and perhaps other languages that did not make communicating any easier in this case.
Some people who could not speak English got some help from the others, and this was either the same person or differed every time, who translated everything for them. Translating usually went really well, but we lost a lot of time in translation.

The people from Macedonia and Romania spoke English very well, this made it easier to work together. So we, this guy from Macedonia and I, continued working together and we worked very hard even though we were sitting in the sun and both really felt like relaxing. It turned out that we were a really good team and we managed to put a whole list together of things that we thought were important when organizing a camp, that we both agreed on (and also got a chance to talk about things that were completely irrelevant but very interesting). Afterwards every subgroup got the chance to discuss everything they came up with, with the rest of the group.

It was a great workshop, a great success. The lady who gave the workshop had mentioned that it was the first time she gave a workshop in English but she had done a really good job.

Cultural differences

It was time for lunch. 'Breakfast again?', the Lithuanian group was complaining and I actually thought it was funny and kind of had to laugh about it. I asked why they were complaining because for me it was perfectly normal to eat a meal that was indeed very similar to what I had for breakfast, but they were obviously not used to it. Someone told me that they usually eat warm food for lunch in their country and weren't used to eating bread again around 12 p.m. 'Well, here in the Netherlands we eat bread two times a day.' They were not happy, but they had no choice.

A saying in Dutch which means that you should eat whatever they cook for you because you have no choice.

After lunch it was time to work on our work-shops. The groups had been formed. I was happy with my group but working together turned out to be harder than I could ever imagine.

We got some basic information that we could use.We choose a nice spot and sat together with all of us and got work, well we tried. It was funny that 3 people, including myself automatically, took the lead. So, 3 people took the lead. How would that work?

Our group consisted of 11 different individuals with different ideas, different qualities, different personalities.

What happens when you try to work together with a lot of different individuals. 

The question that I was trying to answer was: How could you keep everyone happy but get to a result at the same time?

It took really long and it was extremely exhausting but we finally really started working on something, on the same thing, in the last 10 minutes instead of screaming at the same time to see who could scream the loudest. Our motivation: The clock that was ticking away.
We had 2 hours to prepare this workshop and the first hour was coming to an end. So we finally stuck our heads together instead of bumping them into each other and put something on paper. It was something everyone sort of agreed on, well sort of, 10 out of 11 people did. It seemed impossible, when 10 people finally agreed on saying A, there was still person 11 who was saying B.

We had to prepare a workshop about risk management,which meant to prepare for and either prevent or deal with accidents that could happen at camp.
 There are 4 ways in which you can deal with those accidents:

•  appearance
• reduce
• outsourcing
• accepting. 

Sure, 4 ways. The first hour was up and we still had no clue what those terms were. Well, atleast we had some sort of plan, kind of, -ish. Not really...

So it wasn't a great success. We didn't get very far and the program had to go on, but there was no reason to panic. We were told that we could also work on our workshop when we had free time.

Yes, we would work on it during our free time!
Little did we know that we wouldn't have much free time...