Wonderful Weekends Episode 4

This weekend was probably my favorite weekend since I arrived in Sverige.  Of course I say that about every weekend, but this one really topped all else.  I was invited on an overnight camping trip with the scout troop from Sunnersta.  How? Well my third family is very involved in scouting and they know I am a girl scout in the USA, so they thought I would enjoy being a scout in Sverige.



Now, this wasn't just any hike, there was our troop from Sunnersta of 7 people and about 30 other people from other troops.  We had to split our troop into 2 teams because you could only have a maximum of 5 people per team so we had a team of 3 and a team of 4.  You are probably wondering why the heck we need teams for a hike...well it was more than just a hike; it was a competition.  Along the path there were 7 or so stations that we had to stop at and do some activity.  Each team was given a meter tape line thing that we used to show how many points we had.  If you failed one of the activities of did not complete it in the designated time x number of centimeters were cut from your tape.  The goal by the end of the weekend was to have the longest tape (the littlest amount cut off).

Our first task was to decode a message that gave us instructions as to how to get the next clue.

We then hiked a little ways to get to the next station where we had to identify different herbs and spices.  I knew quite a few of them...except that I knew them in engelska and they needed the names in svenska. Haha so I wasn't much help here.

We then had to construct a contraption that could hold a bucket on the end, 2 meters from a tree.  The bucket was filled with water until it fell off of the contraption.  The goal was to get it to hold 10 liters of waters.  We only got it to hold 3 liters of water so we had 7 centimeters cut off of our meter tape at this station.

lunch break

These next pictures will look really strange if there is no explanation, so here:  One of the stations was orienteering.  They gave us a map with 7 points that had clues at them, an hour and said go find these points.  The clues were a theme and we had to take a picture of ourselves acting something related to the theme.

Clue 1. steam engine...

We decided to take the hard (adventurous) way to the other points by veering off of the path and going bush waking...And swimming in mud.  There were some hidden swamps that we ran into a couple of times and we were all soaked up to our thighs.

2. Birthday party (he's unwrapping a present)

3. Fish

4.  Squirrel

5.  Hair salon

 

 Our swamp swimming made us take a couple detours and made us have to skip a couple of the points.  Even then we ran out of time and came back late. But hey, we all had fun and we were all laughing about the mud and wetness instead of being bad sports so it was all good.

Here, on this bridge, we had to match pictures of tree bark with the leaf that belonged to that tree.

 Our mud baths set us behind by quite a bit so the other group had time to prepare dinner for us as soon as we got there and got the tents up.

Swedish fancy hiking

 

When it was totally dark all the troops came around a camp fire and we sang camp songs.  Most of the songs were in svenska but I was able to recognize the tune and hum along with them.  Others were in engelska so I could understand and sing along.  The one thing that I found really cool was that the scouts were leading all of the singing and anyone could pick a song to lead.  There were no leaders or main organizers of the event that seemed to take over.  So a boy with a Ukulele and a girl with a song book led the campfire.  Afterwards I was talking to the boy and he said every since he started scouts and sat around a campfire, he always wanted to be the person to lead the songs.  Seeing him so enthused and excited to be singing and sitting around a campfire made the experience that much better.

In this challenge we had to canoe out to a little floating fireplace, start a fire and pop popcorn!

The Sunnersta gang

The final challenge was to use a whisk we made and whip up cream to frost a cake.  This was how our cake turned out (our team name was the Krux)

Snazzy Swedish Scouting outfits :)

And of course we made a team handshake...

Each team that placed supplied a family in a third world country with something they needed.  Coming in 3rd we supplied and family with, I think, 4 mosquito nets.  Coming in first enabled them to give a family a goat.