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To the top of Scandinavia!

The Zambia/UD Team set off to conquer the highest mountain in Scandinavia on Thursday 21 October.  An early start at 5 in the morning meant they were on the mountain by 10 a.m. and climbing for the next few hours.  The whole team powered up the mountain, with a few making it to the top and everyone else driving themselves as far as they could go.  It was a crisp and clear day, the weather couldn’t have been better,  the view of the snow-capped Norwegian mountains from the top was spectacular and well worth the final trudge.  Some sliding made for a speedy descent from the snowy peak, and the team was happy to be back in one piece, despite wet socks and aching joints.  If you’re looking to lift your mood, try climbing a mountain.
 

Hitching a ride to Heaven

Saturday and Sunday 23 and 24 October saw the Angola/Mozambique Team and the Zambia 6/UD 5 team disperse for postcard selling, or magazine selling for those in Sweden.  Destinations were Helsinki, Umeå, Sundsvall, Växjö, Karlskrona, Kristianstad and Jönköping, with a brief collecting period in the port of Varberg.  Two weeks of ups and downs in results and moods, but two weeks of valuable learning experiences too.

Most of us tried our luck with hitching and there were some great experiences.  Sleeping en route varied from under the motorway (covered, at least),  on  picnic tables, in trucks, in hotels, in sorting centres, with families, friends and in railway stations.  There was a lot of walking and cursing, but most agreed that hitching was the best part of magazine selling, and  even preferred the great outdoors to hotel beds.  There may be a vacant beds at the school if this enthusiast continues to prefer the fresh night air under the starry sky at Hornsjø.

Magazine selling was quite erratic.  Some really good results and some not so good ones.  We can blame it on the weather, the town, the people and the circumstances but we’ll learn from what didn’t go so well and try to do better next time.  There are definitely a lot of good things we can focus on.  Marie, in Helsinki for two weeks remembers sitting on the tenth floor of Hotel Socos, eating a breakfast with caviar overlooking the skyline of Helsinki.   Joel wants to recreate the sleeping bag worm race with Petra in the gi gitsu club in Umeå.  Dominic can tell us all how easy it is to hitch hike with a moose cushion.  Richard could tell us a lot about how it is to spend time driving and living with the minibus when it’s not sounding too good.  Dave Sweeny isn’t too happy about the boot he returned with - it would be far more useful if the other one had come back with it.

Food clunsing was successful in many places and there will be some delicious meals to remember.  The bread and jam wasn’t too bad either, and at what other time do we get to eat so much tasty potato salad?  Accommodation was variable, from five star hotels, to cottages and even comfortable wooden palettes.  Which would you choose?

We all lived to tell the tales.  Only another three weeks until these teams hit the streets again!  CAN’T WAIT!
 

What is a Good Life?

Have you ever asked yourself this questons?  Jørgen put it to us on Tuesday evening at the IBM (International Brain Meeting).  We put our international brains together and came up with some ideas.

Romina from the Canary Isles sees life as an ocean.  It is always moving along towards something we cannot see and on our way to this uncertain future we have to battle against waves and get thrashed about on the rocks,  But there are also clamer waters and clamer periods in our life.  May be we are doing so well that we are surfing along the crest of a wave.  Susan from Northen Ireland demonstrated that life is full of lows points and high points, like a wave.

Andrew from England defined a good life as being satisfied with the way life is and Bz from Holland seconded him on that idea.

Dalila from the Czech Republic said that since everyone is different, each person’s expectations of a good life are different.

Dave from England said he thought a good life is indefinable.

We concluded that we all have relatively good lives, on what ever criteria we chose to base our judgement.