International 4-H Youth Exchange

Greetings from the 4-H Camp in Östersund, Sweden,

This past week was a very busy but very fun week. I traveled all the way from Töre to the 4-H camp in Östersund and then spent a week meeting new people, living in tents, freezing to death, sitting around campfires singing a wide variety of songs, and getting as little sleep as possible. This camp experience has been way different then any camp experience at home but has been just as fun if not more fun!

Every morning about 7:00am we were awaken by a very loud bugle playing the normal military camp wake up song. By the time camp was done I got very used to that but the first and second day I thought "What the heck is that?!" We would then eat breakfast cafeteria style and gather around the flag poles about 9:00am to hoist the Sweden, Jamtland county, United Kingdom, 4-H, and IFYE flags while singing the 4-H song for Sweden. The rest of the day was filled with games, meetings, and talent shows or presentations depending on the day. During the whole week at camp you were in competition with the other counties to win the 4-H flag. Campers were judged on a variety of things including theme for their campsite, design and cleanliness of campsite, participation in the various activities, presentations, singing, acting, talent show, etc. All of the games, except volleyball, were new to me.

The first full day we played Jamtish games. Those were some small miscellaneous games that we could play. I would explain the games here but they are a little hard to explain in the newsletter. If you would like to learn some of them let me know and I would be happy to show or explain them to you. One of the events we did though was ax throwing. Watch out! I can be pretty wicked with an ax. The first time I threw it I released it way too soon and it went right over the target and landed in the grass behind it. On the third try I managed to hit the target dead on. I guess I just needed to warm up.

The second day we had Triathlon games. These contests were counted for point for the competition between counties. We played three games, which included sorting recyclables, throwing lead balls into a potato sack, and moving two loads of wood in a wheelbarrow through an obstacle. Those were fun and it also warmed us up because it had been cold that day, and all week. We, maybe, had a 1&Mac218;2 day of sun the whole week and the wind was out of the north bringing cold weather and plenty of clouds but lucky for us it didn't rain! (It sprinkled some).

We also had a "Kanonrudan" which is a hike with questions to answer and events to do. I met 4 new people who I didn't know before. What was really nice was when I could answer some of the questions about Sweden where the others couldn't. I thought I was of some help in that way thanks to my previous host families and plenty of reading material.

Another game, that is very common in Sweden, was a game called Kloter. The IFYE team managed to take 4th place in this game and we had never played it before. We were pretty proud of that. We had a very rusty start and managed to hit two or three people but by the time we were done playing we were pretty good. I will post the rules to the game out at my web site if you are interested in learning how to play.

One of the days at camp was activity day. You could choose several different activities for the day. They included touring museums, fishing, boat ride on the Storsjon Lake, a day in Östersund, or cave exploration. I chose to go cave exploring but thought they would be like caves at home like Crystal Cave. It wasn't. We were exploring giant holes in the side of the mountains. We did get plenty wet because of the waterfalls from above bring water back into the cave. Exploring these caves was ok but I think I would have chosen something else if I tried it again mainly because of the distance we had to travel to get to these small caves. We also got an opportunity to see a very large waterfall. That was beautiful.

The final day of camp was one of the nicer days of the week. We actually saw the sun from time to time and it was a lot warmer. Because the volleyball teams were arranged boys and girls I had to join another county just to play. I joined Gotland along with United Kingdom because they didn't have enough players either for a guy's team. We only won one game out of seven but had fun playing.

The competitions that I have mentioned above were totaled into one large number that was compared with the other counties. At the end of the week whoever had the most number of points on the board won the 4-H flag. Kronoberg was the top county and the IFYEs placed 10th place and received a small flagpole with the 4-H flag on it. We were really proud of our placing because of the fact that we knew nothing about this contest, the speeches, talent show or anything before we got there and were not prepared at all. I think if I would have known a little bit more about this camp I, maybe, would have brought a small amount of supplies or at least some ideas. That was our challenge for the week was to come up with things at the last minute. Our group worked pretty well together. Not one person had all of the supplies needed. We all had a few supplies and when we put all of our supplies together we had enough supplies to make or do what we needed to do. I would say that is true teamwork. Looking back at the camp I really enjoyed being at the camp, even though it wasn't the best weather. I am looking forward to go back in the future when I am in Sweden again. I thought this was a great experience for the young and the old alike and would recommend it to anyone who would like to attend.

Jason Fouks