Month: March 2008

Mia’s report from a Harry Potter scout camp she and Gwen went to at the beginning of March

Gwen and I went on a scout camp with a difference, it was about Harry Potter. We were separated into Slytherin, Huffelpuff, Ravenclaw and Gryffendor by the sorting hat. I was put into Slytherin with my best friend (after Gwen), while Gwen went into Huffelpuff. When everybody was separated into houses, we went outside to play. We had a mini-brush and a ball and you had to brush the ball across the ground, the first house to finish was the winner, and Slytherin won – yippee! After that we went inside some watched films and others were allowed to other things before we went to bed.

Next day we woke up and we only had about 10 minutes to get up and dressed and go out to the flagpole. Then, when the flag was raised we had to go for a run. But the run was only about 100-150 m. Then we went inside to have breakfast. I had oat flakes and Gwen had cornflakes. There were different places that we went around and did different things, for instance made wine gums or made your own magic wand. Well, in the end we went around doing different things the whole day. In afternoon we played Quiddich and Huffelpuff won but Slytherin was second in the final. Then we had our dinner and it was nice. We had meatballs and potatoes and some sort of sauce, an avocado dip and last you could also have a pea dip. Then we went to see a Harry Potter film (the first one). After that we went on a trail in the dark, where we had to do different tasks. The first one was where there were lots of strings tied between trees and we had to go through the strings without touching them. The next task was to throw flaming balls at spiders and when you had killed the spiders you were led into the forest where a horrible troll attacked us. While Katja was distracting the troll’s attention, the rest of our house could sneak past. For the next task we had to eat blue beans and multi-coloured cake cream, taking some beans with us. Then we met Sirius Black who we had to help out of forest, but then the dementors came (that was scary!). We had to do expecto-patronum to get rid of the dementors, but the first many times it did not work! At last we got away without them touching us (if they touch you, you were not allowed to move for 30 seconds). We had to light a fire in the middle of a forbidden zone. We couldn’t come nearer than 1.5 m on all sides, and all we had was aluminium foil, household spirit, cotton wool, a cigarette lighter and a piece of rope. Would would you have done? The final task took place in a circle of fire, where you had to persuade Lucius Malfoy to eat the blue beans you had brought. The beans were supposed to make good people stronger and bad people weaker, so of course Malfoy got weaker. As he got weaker, we could steal the medal, but Malfoy grabbed me hard and I couldn’t get free. Eventually I pulled hard and got free and ran as fast as I could. Then we went to bed.

Next day we woke up, and had 10 minutes to get to the flag pole. During breakfast we had points and got points taken away from the houses, and finally the winning house was announced. We all got prizes, three big chocolate bars for the winning house, Slytherin. Hoorah!

The picture shows a duck sweet dispenser and the packet of some Norwegian fruit gum type sweets in the shape of ski-ing men. Only in Norway?

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Gwen’s diary of the trip.

We started travelling on Saturday. We drove to Hirtshals, a town nearly at the top of Denmark from there we took the ferry to Oslo. At this time it was already evening. We took a taxi to our hotel, even though we could have taken a bus (no Norwegian cash – Ed). After settling in we went to find the station so that the next morning we would be able to find our way. A Chinese restaurant was to be the place where we filled our stomachs. Lovely: but too much for our sweetie-stuffed tummies! We did indeed find the station, although we had been tired when looking for it. After a few hours on the train we finally arrived. For lunch we had bread rolls with cheese and ham from the little local supermarket. Even though we have been there before, we had a little poke around to decide which slope to ski on and check for anything new. Dinner was a lovely buffet.

 

Up bright and early next morning. Well, nearly… Breakfast was also a buffet. Uhm! Luxury! Then it was off to the ski slopes. After hours of aching calves and wrists we stopped. I had finally gathered the courage to try a longer, bigger and steeper slope. Much more fun and more challenging! In the middle of the day we stopped for lunch: pizza buns and cakie-things from the bakery. Back at the hotel we had tea and played Cluedo. The dinner buffet was even better than the day before: prawns, smoked salmon, gammon, etc.

 

The day went almost as the first on skis. Even the lunch was the same! At this point, Mia had fallen 5 times, said she would never ski again and got back on her skis smiling!

 

The next day we got up at a leisurely time, had breakfast and went to the station. Mia was wearing her new boots that she had bought after skiing the day before. On the train, Mia and Mum played Cluedo, while I read a book. When we got to Næsby the train stopped and we waited for a good half hour before we were told that the electricity was down between there and Hønefoss. We waited another hour for the busses which would take us to Hønefoss. At Hønefoss there was a train waiting for us. We got to Oslo 2 hours late. We went shopping but found nothing of interest. We took a taxi to the ferry. On the ferry we had dinner and went to bed. The next morning we got off the ferry and then drove home.

We’re back! No broken bones, just more personal challenges met. There should be no problems viewing this video taken at great personal risk to the cameraman. Please also understand that in the interests of safety the girls were ski-ing much more slowly than they normally would in the interests of cinematic licence.

The picture shows some strange habits Tony picked up while he was in China. Apparantly the food was excellent. Tony led students up to their knees in mud in an attempt to show them how to work out what geese eat and how much energy they get from what they are eating. How? Don’t ask! It involves picking goose poo and counting how many times each goose pecks per hour for which video film is invaluable because they peck too quickly for the human eye to keep track of. The geese in question were the very rare lesser whitefronted geese and not the usual and even rarer (sometimes) Greenland Whitefronted Goose.

Tony got back late last Thursday evening.