We got a chance to be NOVIDA participants in SITRA project camp in Norway. The camp was organized by Maere landbruksskole. 

Two Novida agriculture students, Tomi and Ville, travelled with us. You can read later about their experiences in Loimaan Lehti.

We started our journey early Friday morning. We took our own car to Helsinki airport, so did the students. We tried to arrange one transportation for all of us, but it was a bit complicated, so we felt happy with this arrangement..

The flight to Oslo departed 7.30, in Oslo Gardemoen we changed the plane and flied to Trondheim. From there we continued to Steinkjer with a train. 

A funny thing happened in Trondheim when using the ticket machine for train tickets.  The students got their tickets, Mervi got her ticket but not the receipt. Kirsi got nothing!! Well, we just wondered what to do, until some nice local gentleman came to buy a ticket. And well, he did not get his ticket either. When we were waiting for the train in the platform, this same man came and gave Kirsi her ticket. It had just stuck somewhere in the machine. Mysterious...

We arrived in Steinkjer in the afternoon around 15.00. Our hotel "Quality Hotel Grand" was very near the railway station, about 100 meters. Finding it was very easy. A  nice lady in the reception guessed right away who we are. She gave us a letter from Steinar, telling us to wait until 20.00 for a gentleman called Stig, who we could recognize  for not having much hair. He would come and pick us up for a"traditional Friday night meal".

We thought we would be served codfish and brown cheese, but we got tortillas with common international fillings. Yummy!

After a well slept night and a plentiful breakfast Steinar came to pick us up with a minibus and drove us to Maere. Our program there was to get to know each other.  There were participants from Norway, Island, Latvia, Netherlands, Germany and Finland. The students had partly their own program. They also guided us older ones some fun activities, in which we got to know each other more closely and had very much laughing!  One of the activities was especially fun: we were given a white piece of paper. You should NOT crunch it! With eyes closed you had to rip the paper to a shape of an elephant.  There was about three minutes to do it. Kirsi´s elefant looked considerably more like an elefant than Mervi´s, which was mostly like a combination of a trunk, a dog and an akward lump.

We had a tour around the school observing the spaces and functions in them.  The school has about 150 students. You can study for ex. farming, taking care of animals or forestry. We also saw a forest machine simulator, which was unfortunately not managed to start for testing. They have also animals at school: pigs, sheep, horses!, cows and also some small animals, like rabbits and hamsters.

For the afternoon program all participants had to make "tapas" in style of their own country. We all went to a grocery store, from where we were supposed to find the ingredients for the Finnish tapas. And that was not easy!  We wondered for a long time, what the Finnish tapas would be like. Reindeer meet, special Finnish cheese "leipäjuusto", rye bread, cocktail sticks with grapes, meatballs and cheese and so on.... We ended up with a conclusion, that we will see what we can find from the store. We found cocktail sticks, meatballs (Swedish), cheese and grapes. And for our surprise also cloudberry jam "lakkahillo",  rye crisp bread and blue cheese. You can find pictures of the Finnish tapas called "sapas" in the picture gallery.

This day was dedicated for the outdoor activities. We could in advance choose from fishing, activity with horses or dog sledding. Kirsi choose the dogs and Mervi, Tomi and Ville the horses!

And we had such a great time and fun! You can find pictures of dogs and horses from the picture gallery. So much fun for all the day. The students of Maere had planned the hustle and bustle with the horses.  We had a playful competition, in which the  riding ring was split in two areas.  Both sides had a similar track with tasks, both teams had three riders. The team, who crossed the finishing line first, was the winner. The most important thing although was to get to know the students.

The ones, who chose the dog sledding, were driven to Ogndal, about one hour away. The journey went fast admiring the wonderful scenery. When we came to our destination, there were three dog sleds and four Sporbyter guides waiting for us. You can find them here. 

At first we watched when the dogs, wonderful Alaskan huskies, were taken out of the transport wagon one at time and attached to the harnesses of the sledges .  This happened with a very loud barking!  The dogs seemed to be very excited and eager to start running. We were shown how to guide the sledge, actually how to use the brakes.  The dogs are so wise and used to do their job, so you do not have to do much else but watch out that the speed is not too fast and that you have enough space between your dogs and the sledge going before yours. 

We spent about three hours dog sledding, either sitting in a sledge or "driving" them by standing behind the sledge. Meanwhile we could go inside a cosy tent to warm us up and fry sausages in campfire.  Before leaving we fascinated clients hugged both dogs and our guides and of course took hundreds of photos.  

After the activities we all gathered back in Maere and went to a local pizza house to make our own pizzas. The owner of the place fried our pizzas in a huge oven and they were delicious! After enjoying the pizzas we enjoyed the presentations the students had made of their own countries and schools.  

Even before the journey we got instructions how to dress from Steinar. Below here there are some quotes of it.

Information before going to Norway

To focus on dressing warm, I've made some tips for you: I would recommend that you rather not will wear clothes from cotton. And absolutely not cotton as base layer. When cotton gets wet you will be cold. Wool keeps you warm even when wet.

Outfit recommendation:

For base layer: Long underwear, or tights og leggings from wool, merino wool, silk, polypropylene. NOT cotton!

Middle layer: Wool, Fleece, Flannel. Sweater, button-up shirt, sweatshirt, easy to remove if you get too warm.

Socks, woolen, two pairs, one outside the other. Wool, merino wool, NOT cotton

Footwear: Boots, waterproof. Be sure you have space to wiggle your toes even with two pair of socks on.

On Sunday, when we came back to the hotel, we asked how we should dress tomorrow, whether we will be in or out during the day. Steinar answered that you can dress how you want, "COTTON" is now allowed! You can just guess, how much laughter followed....

For the first workshop day we then dressed of course in cotton. The day started with the presentations of Germany and Finland of their own countries, education systems and schools. Our students did their own very well. After the presentation they served all Finnish  licorise candies.

Following that was the traditional giving of presents. All quests had brought gifts to our Norwegian hosts. We think that they liked very much the "kuksa" we gave each of them . To our Latvian trainers we gave scarves, which our textile students had woven. And to all attending countries we gave notebooks made by our craft students. 

The subject of the day for teachers was to tell about our own culture, attitudes and customs, and by turn learn from the ones of the others. Our trainers Tija and Saskia from Latvia made our very nice.  We did some nice activities. One task was to write down things which in our country are allowed and which are not.  We were thinking of this for a long time, because we think that there is not always very strict rules anymore, and things usually have two sides.   We listed the following: 

We learned a lot of new things about each others and each others cultures. Nice day!

Before leaving to our hotel, we talked with our students, Tomi and Ville,  how everything has went this far and what could be done differently or take into consideration in the future. One thing came specially up, brief people more clearly before the camp.

The second workshop day we started with an activity task,  in which Ineta gave us the word "culture", and everyone had to think what words it brings to our minds. We had one minute to write the words on Post-it papers. After this we formed groups of four and compared our words, if there is a same word in everyone´s papers. For surprise only in one group all had just one same word. We did the same with word "entrepreneurship" and none of the groups found a same word in their papers.  We discussed the reasons why this happened, differences in persons and cultures... This we will for sure try with our own students too. 

Helen told about her own experience when attending a meeting in chinese culture.  It was very interesting to hear in how different ways we can act in cultures, even completely opposite. That reminded us once more how important it is to learn about someone´s culture before visiting.

Tija went through time management skills. (Booth 2014) There was 30 different things asking in different ways how we deal with our use of time and the reasons, Which make us act like we act. We also got tips to time management.  In groups we talked over and listed the things that are a)urgent and important b)urgent but unimportant c)not urgent but important c)not urgent and unimportant. 

In the afternoon we learned things considering entrepereurship. We formed two groups, one group wrote down things in a point of wiev of studying, and the other in the point of wiev of working life.   

For the end of the day the Dutch delegation´s Heleen told us about their plans of the next camp. It will be in Neatherlands 20.-26.9.2019, likely in an Island called  Ameland. It seems like there will be cycling, surfing, boating, swimming!? and surely hard working with the project of course.

Entrepreneurship day...

We had quite a day! First in the morning the students presented their ideas of how to enliven the farms in rural areas. On the first day of the camp they had been divided into two groups in which they had worked with this task until now. One group presented "a Dream Farm" -idea, in which they had come up with a solution how to use the farm´s many spaces and experiences for different kind of target groups. The other group presented "a Modern Farm", in which they focused in ecological ideas, like producing and using biogas and solar energy, and even selling the produced energy.

After the presentations we had a visit to an old farm called Maurtuva. It is owned by two nice ladies, Kjerstin Heggdal Grimstad and Ida Stene Tangstad and they have set up a social enterprice on the farm.

The name Maurtuva means "anthill", which pictures well the versatile and active actions and activities on the farm. They have for example a care home for demented old people. The farm was very homely. Their idea has been to create the atmosphere and furnishing to be like the childhood homes of the seniors.

In the morning they pick up the seniors from their homes and then they all sit down to have a breakfast together. During the day they have several activities, like dancing, taking care of plants and animals. Their goal is that the seniors will return home satisfied and happy. The municipality supports their work and the aim is that the seniors could continue living home as long as possible. It is also possible to stay overnight on the farm. Kjerstin and Ida told us also about their many different development ideas. HERE you can read more about them. HERE to fb-pages.

Marius Vaerdal from the Proneo innovation center came also to the farm to tell us about their functions. They had also consulted in Maurtuva innovation program. In a quite short time we got a huge package of information of the main points when starting an enterprise. WOW! HERE you can find more information.

For finishing our great camp we had a farewell dinner in a restaurant in Steinkjer. As a memory we all got a mug with a logo of Mære landbruksskole and a certificate of participation. And the rest of the evening we shared contacts with each other. 

According to the original plans there was also something in the program for Thursday morning. It was then changed, so that Thursday was left just for travelling home. This was because both the participants of Island and our Latvian trainers travelled home already early Thursday morning.

Because all the rest had their flights only in late afternoon, we decided together with the participants of Netherlands and Germany to travel first on morning train to see Trondheim city. We left our luggages in the lockers of the railway station and went for a walk to the city.

Our flight from Trondheim to Oslo was late for an hour. But we had just enough time to change to the connecting flight from Oslo to Helsingfors. Actually this flight was also late because of heavy snowing, but we landed to Helsingfors only about half an hour late from the scheduled time, at 23.30. And then a couple hour´s driving home... Home Sweet Home!