Triplex

The first day involved breakfast in the Fincent mess hall. The food was hot, filling with lots of it.

Day one and two involved seminars in the morning and then training sessions in the afternoon. The first day had me finishing off the training materials for the rest of the group and I was to help out with the VOSOCC training session. Unfortunately, with an hour to go; I was dragged out and was asked 'so how is the team building exercise?' - my first thought was; 'what team building exercise?'

Checking the time table, there was indeed - 'team building exercise at 18:00 to 19:30'. Hmmmmmmm. Then barbeque thereafter.

Looks like I had to get my skates on - the information I had was even more sketchy. Something about the delegates have to navigate some set GPS points around the camp. Some of the waypoints also had some 'events' in them: first aid scenarios and 4x4 tire changing. All to do with team building or so I am told.

The next hour had me and SG fix up some old Garmin12 GPS, check out the given WPTs and then set the exercise with a quick tutorial on how to use the function. Luckily, we had the required cable to copy over the 24 odd waypoints to the 26 odd GPS units we had available. This was something that I am sure that the organisers didnt think about. The exercise proceeded well; the 'actors' who were scattered about did a fine job too. Some were quite enthusiastic too and it all went well in my view. At least no-one was lost! The end waypoint was the UN camp (one of two; used for peace keeping training) and this was the venue of the barbeque. One thing most Scandinavians do well, is the fresh meat. T and I managed to grab a fire and set some meat on the fire. There were beers and snacks and plenty of meat. The salad section was pretty limp to be honest. Wonder what the veggies will do? It also started to rain too so I got soaked. At least I was fed and beered up.

The socialising was a lot of fun with me catching up with some friends from a year back, when I was in Kuopio.

Day two had some good lectures, with the best one about the reforming process in the UN and humanitarian law.

Also, we started to get a hint as to what the three day exercise would entail.