Red Cross Youth Camp

 I was there

 With my friends Jonas and Edward, and upcoming delegate Ida

And my Red Cross Youth accomplice Dasha

Inbetween homecoming seminars and going back to Tromsø to attend weddings and the youth camp, I managed to hold on to my head cold a full four weeks, and they sent me home from the camp after I'd been there one day. Anyway, it was nice to be back in Norway, working with "my" Red Cross and seeing all the other delegates again.

The latest photos I took with my Nikon

 are over one month old (here: Maria, Stephania and Linda)

 and from the Global Forum of Resilience here in Cali

 with participants from 78 different Red Cross National Societies

talking about how to create resilient communities in face of disaster

And then... I don't really use my own camera much, since we have a "work" camera from the Red Cross, and I'm already carrying around too much stuff to add an extra weight to my backpack every day. It feels odd, because even while working in completely unrelated jobs in Norway, I usually used my camera more, at least to photograph my family and friends, but here I really don't use it. It might be some of the same reason that I am totally neglecting the blog - there is too much blogging, computer work and photography in my day-to-day work already, and when I'm at home I just feel like doing other things to unwind. I'll have to see what I can do about this.

Co-delegate

 This is my brilliant co-delegate Johanne climbing into a tree

And this is after I used a chair to get up there with her

It always suprises me how quickly you get to know people when you spend a lot of time with them. Johanne and I met for the first time in June, spending a little less than 24 hours together, and then again now, two or three weeks ago, and have been spending the days with ten others, getting to know them as well. This coming year will have us closer than most relationships, and I'm looking forward to finding out how that will work. For now, my hopes are fairly high.

My weeks through phones

 I present to you: Team Colombia! Johanne, me, Franco and Silvia (photo: Franco)

 Team Colombia working very hard on solving some task or other (photo: Silvia)

 One Maja-visit at the hostel (photo: Maja)

And one tea-in-a-bowl at the cafè where my friend Ingrid works

These past two weeks have been so ridiculously packed that I don't even know where to begin. In daytime, there's been Organisational Development, First Aid, Security, Photography, Signing of contracts and so much more, and inbetween these courses we've had long lunches, rushed lunches, energizers, stretches, and getting to know one another. This has also continued on in the evenings, since I've been staying in a hostel with the international youth delegates and two of the Norwegians, and we've been making food from Nepal, Colombia, Lesotho and Norway, and often a bit of a mix. I've met other Oslo friends (including Maja) in the weekends and evenings, but also stayed in or gone out with the other delegates and getting new friends.

Next week is the last week together, where we will be trying to cram as much information into our heads as possible, and at the same time having as much fun as possible with people we will meet again in nine months.

YOUTH DELEGATES TO COLOMBIA

 Sunniva and Johanne, take one

Sunniva and Johanne, take fourteen or thereabouts

So, this is us. We are going to stay in Colombia nine months, from September 2014 till May 2015. We are going to work together, live together, eat together, and be together about ninety percent of the time from the departure brief in August until we return to Norway next May. We met for the first time last Saturday.

This was after almost three weeks of Facebook messaging and feeling like we were preparing for a first date. Only even scarier than that, since we already knew we'd be spending all this time together, and there was no real turning back. I worried about my hair, what to wear, what to say, and so on. And then I spotted her in the food hall on the Red Cross Youth Summer Camp and I ran over and hugged her and everything was normal and easy.

I'm looking forward to this year.