A great time over at the boot camp! (Cajsa)

Dragonbane Diary
Friday, July, 2nd, 2006
Älvdalen, Sweden

Timo asked me to write some thoughts concerning my time here in Åsen, which I most co-operatively do. I have been here for almost two weeks now, but it seems like a much shorter time. (Which is a positive sign, I think) When I, in company of two friends and a dog, first came to the boot camp I didn’t quite know what to expect. It was in the middle of the night and I was very tired. The next day we started to work immediately. That was rather rough and I thought to myself: “Oh no, what have I got myself in to this time?!” But pretty quickly I found it very fun and interesting.

I won’t lie and tell you that it is easy over here. We work quite long days, about nine to ten hours per day. And it’s hard work, I say. Climbing rooftops, carrying planks, painting long-houses, cutting down big trees, nailing walls, setting housegrounds and so on. After a day, you are very likely to be exhausted. But now you may get the picture that it’s terrible over here, which would be an absolute false statement. I like it here, very much. There is a very nice, funny and overall amazing set of people here. The days are filled with humour, laughs and smiles. We have people from three different countries. At the moment we have sort of a Spanish invasion going on. There are nine people from Spain here, which is more than all the other people together! I have started to learn a bit of Spanish, some phrases that are useful over here. Like “Can you pass me the water?” is “Puedes darme agua?” (I really don’t know about the spelling, though.) Everyone is learning words on every language. When the Spaniards are trying to say “Kan du skicka vatten” (swedish) it sounds very funny. But I guess that I am sounding equally funny when I speak “Spanish”.

So what is a typical day here at the buildingcamp? Well, we wake up sometime around nine o’clock, eat breakfast (usually something like porridge, bread, yoghurt and müsli). Ten o’clock we start to drive up to the game-area. (In a heck of a speed, the first time I held my breath all the way.). The one/those who has/have slept at the building-set often has/have made coffee, so some of us drink a little bit of that, before getting to work. We work hard until the lunch arrives, sometime between 13-15 o’clock. It is very good food, I must say! We have maybe a half an hour lunchbreak, and then back to work again. The next break is a little coffee break, six o’clock. Well, some days the “little” break turns out to be a quite long break. When you are sitting around the fire, eating biscuits and fruits, having a great time, you are not so tempted to get back to work… But sooner or later everyone is working again.

The day usually ends somewhere between eight and nine o’clock. Then everybody (except for the poor guy whose turn it is to guard the game area over the night) heads back to the school to eat yet another very tasty meal (honours to the chef, Antti!) And if we are very lucky, there even is a dessert. Like today, we had 500g of strawberries EACH! Yummy! After eating there are many who goes to the sauna and to the swimming pool, or just takes an ordinary shower. After that you have some activities to choose from: You can either go to sleep early (highly recommended, but very rarely followed) play Gran Turismo at Anttis Playstation 2 (I sucked at it the first week, now I am pretty good). Surf around on the internet for a while, play boardgames with the Spaniards (Felix is really bad at Zombies, or was it just that everyone else gave him a hard time?) play guitar or just sit and chitchat the whole evening/night. Anyhow, (like Esa would have said) sooner or later (sooner) you go to sleep, satisfied with what you have accomplished for the day.

We have a lot of job still to be done, I tell you. The whole temple is still un-built and the ground needs a lot of cleaning. But we are a bunch of time-optimistics, so there is no panic...yet. We really hope that so many of you players would come over here and help us. Every man and woman counts! I have really enjoyed my time here. It’s a beautiful place with amazing people. And oh, I forgot a rather important thing: We do have some days of rest too. Not as many as we’d like to have, but anyway, we have them. Tomorrow is my second day off, and we are going on a trip to Älvdalen City to eat some pizza. After that we come back to the school to play a game of soccer: The Spaniards against everyone else. Let’s see how that turns out. I am looking forward to it very much!

So, in short terms; come to the boot camp and have a really really great time!

Cheers,

Cajsa