Three weeks with FK at Hadeland

It was 18th May 2009. Started my journey with FK. Left apartment around 8:00AM and reached the bus station at 8:45. Jobaer dropped us till bus stop. It is to be mentioned that Jobaer is the person who is helping me a lot to adopt myself to the new place. We had to wait in the bus till 9:05. We had a break at Airport to collect more participants. We reached Hadeland around 11:20. Hadeland is a good hotel to live for the 3 weeks. We have got double room. Me and Nahian got room no 113 which locates at the front side of the hotel. We took lunch at 12:30 and it is the usual time to lunch here. I took Rice,Fish, Vegetable,Dessert and some more items. It was not bad to have lunch with. Taste of fish was good. There were 3-4 types of dessert along with some fruit item.

We had an Introduction session of Fk preparatory course. Finished the introduction at 5. At 6 we went for dinner. It was really good to have dinner with almost 60 participants from around 10 countries. I was put into social group and had a very interactive meeting where we have made the plan of event management for next 3 weeks.

Everyday the training session starts at 8:45 and go till 5:00PM. At 7 there are some more event occurs which is optional to attend with and it last around 1 hour. After these sessions we play Vollyball,Footbal and Some indoor games like Table tennis, Pool etc.

I am enjoying the lectures. Its great to share experiences with 60 participants of 10 countries and highly qualified lecturers.


Its a course conducted by Fredskorpset(Not exactly but means like Peace corporation) and Its main aim to improve our knowledge about coping critical situation at a new place with new people.

Thanks for your patience. I am happy to share the complete experience of the stay. Let me update the experience daily basis.

1st day 18th may 2009

Left home at 8:20 am from 5 Hansteens gate, Oslo, Norway with Jobaer. Jobaer dropped us till bus stop and went back to office. I was also acompanied by Nahian, another colleague who came to Norway with me. Later-on Per Einer another Norweigian colleague of Escenic(The company I work for) joined us. Nahian and Per Einer sat together in Bus. I was alone in a double sit till Oslo airport. The activity of one friend attracted me and lateron she became one of my best friend of the group. I will write about her later-on in this article.The bus stopped at Airport for half an hour. This half an hour was great as I got opportunity to meet new friends. I meet Hosea , peter, cris , cao and some more friends. Few friends joined us at Airport.

Jeanette, sat beside me and she was the first Norweigian friend I meet in the course. She was very much friendly , I had a great tour with her until we reach hotel Hadeland around 11:40 AM.

The first impression of the hotel was excellent. The hotel is located in an excellent natural environment. The whole hotel is made by wood. Two of us had to share the hotel room. Me and Nahian was allocated room#213. At 12:30 we went for lunch. Its a really new experience there. Lots of items but very few was lucrative to me. I like most of the fish items.

The most interesting exercise for the day was to draw friends picture. We were splitted into two group. And both the group was sitting in circular way in front of participants of other group. And we have drawn the friends picture who is sitting in front of us. We had to move to next person after a certain interval of time. At the end we came up with good photos of each other and it was excellent to introduce with each other.

My photo was the most perfect among all others.







After finishing the classes,dinner and discussion among social group we have spent around 2 hours at party hall with new friends, played pool, table soccer etc.

We ended a great day with lots of new expectations and challenges. My most challenging thing was food.

Day 2, 19th May 2009

The topics for the day was Being a change agent- Personal & institutional change within FK framework.

The session was excellent. We started with a power point presentation and an excellent exercise of drawing the life line and important event of life. It was really very good to frame the whole life and expectations. We had to share the life line with other friends which helps us to know different perspective of life.

We had some different exercise to express ourself about changing our attitude to adjust to the challenges. We ended up the session with great pleasure.

The food experiences of the day was good but I was missing meat(chicken). I have reported the problem to authority of the hotel and they have promised to do better next day.

Then after dinner we had excellent knowledge sharing with Sabeth(ex participant from Sudan). His presentation was excellent with interactive slide show of set of Photos. The way he expressed himself was really different and I liked the presentation so much. I have talked to him after the session personally and came to know lots of experiences about FK, his career outside his country, challenges and how he adjusted himself with different place and culture. When he came to Norway , he brought a big Jacket(Shown in his picture) but now he can survive with a thin cotton shirt.

After session with Sabeth we went to play volleyball and soccer. It was raining slightly and i was feeling very cold . The rain was really very light but the temperature was low as it was windy. i came back to play indoor games and I meet Logan , played couple of games with him and increased the intimacy with him.



Slept around 2:30 am after updating my blogg and my regular Isha prayer.



Day 3, 20th May 2009

The topic for the day was Development issues and Challenges. It was more or less theoretical class which was instructor led and power-point presentation based. We had mix opinion about his session. We had come across several issues like poverty and development. According to me it was an excellent session and he has touched a lot of important concepts but he was shortage of time as he had to cover lot of topic in a single day. We read some articles which was given last day to read. Honestly speaking i did not read it last night and we had to depend on Lene for the exercise. we have read an article written by Amartya sen. I had spend some very good time with Dan Banik the lecturer in my language and I was really excited to speak with him in my own language. He invited me to his house and mee too. Hopefully we can meet again in Oslo some time this year.

After the class I had a great day in terms of dinner. Hotel authority arranged halal food for me separately. It was really exciting for me. I enjoyed the food on that day.

After dinner I went for cycling and had spend some very good time with Friedell and some of her latin friends. We have shared some cultural differences between Bangladesh and their country. We become very good friends from the day. This is the starting of a very good friendship. she was the friend I was mentioning about in bus while coming from Oslo to Hadeland. she is different in terms of interaction with others.

Day 4, 21st May 2009

The topics for the day was Personal Challenges -Psychological approach

I did not enjoy the class much because we had lots of simillar type of exercise and where I had less to contribute but at the end of the day i have learnt a lot.
The excercises was like different feeling with different approaches. Like how do we approach to be in a network. So after all these exercises one thing was clear to us that there are no better approach then being polite and friendly while approaching other to become part of their group or family.

End of the day i have learnt some good tips to improve blogg. It was great presentation from Birgitte. i have enjoyed the tips and added good flavour to my blogg. i hope i will get some more feedback from her about this blogg.

Day 5, 22nd may 2009
The topic of the day was Media tool: Digital Story telling

This was an excellent session conducted by Birgitte Wergeland. She had taught different approches to make short story. She introduce some digital tools like audacity and movie maker. But the more important part was collecting picture, theme, story and combining them. I enjoyed the session a lot. I have created a short story which is attached here. At the end of the session we watched all the story and had great fun.




We have enjoyed almost whole night at party hall. I have learnt some latin dances and taught some traditional dances to other friends. Played table soccer, pool etc. Most of the games enjoyed as we lost most of them.

It is to be noticed that Diego, Friedell and Sonja was really good in dancing. Victo,Abede,Peter,Sara also contributed a great deal of dancing with other. Jeanette and one of the latin friend spent most of the time within themselves.

First Weekend with FK

We went to Oslo for a package tour as official weekends with FK. Some of the picture below will describe the excitement of the tour. We have visited technical Museam, Art Museam, Folk Museam and couple of parks along with river view and walk on the river. Nahuell was really great in his guide for the entire tour.

Day 8(6th) 25th May 2009
Partners day.

The best day for me at Hadeland. I have got an opportunity to know more detail about the contract and facilities provided by FK.

We have got Tom Handegård, the CTO of Escenic AS. I had a feeling that some one came to visit us from our family to Hadeland. I have spent a excellent time with him.

The day started with a power point presentation of FK facilities and responsibility of participant(me) and partners(Escenic).

We had to do some good exercises with partner representatives.


We have come to some good conclusion after the discussion. Some of them are:
1. We will have evaluation in every 3 months
2. The partner(Escenic) will arrange Air Ticket in December as a vacation to go to my native.
3. Escenic will arrange a technical course at oslo
4. We will have medical insurance through out the exchange program.
5. Escenic will help us to claim family allowance(Home visit allowance) of Kr. 10000/= as I am responsible for a big family.
6. We will get some halal food at office for lunch. Escenic will discuss the procedure for the same.

The benifits which is allotted for participants(me) are as follows:
1. Monthly allowance from Home and Oslo
2. Housing
3. Departure Grant(It will be allocated regardless of the actual expenses incurred.)
4. Setup grant(It will be allocated regardless of the actual
expenses incurred.)
5. language Course
6. Proficiency course
7. Travel cost
8. Follow up activity grant(at home country after finishing the course)
9. Home visit allowance(Need to apply separately)
10. Medical insurance
11.Participant Initiated activity grants

If all these are implemented perfectly, I strongly believe that we will have great time at Oslo and we can make the exchange program successfull and show a great mile stone for next participants.

I suggest FK to keep option to extend the agreement if participants want.

9th(7th) & 10th(8th) Day 26-27 may 2009
The topic of the days was Personal Challenges: Cultural approach

This was the most exciting session of the entire course. He has proved that training is nothing but entertainment and fun. We have learnt a lot of lesson with fun and entertainment. He has taught plenty of concept without even using the presentation. Mostly he insisted us to do exercise and made us interactive to bring out the talens from us and taught us with our own experiences. It is really difficult to explain the entire sessions in this short explanation. I will write a separate article for his session if i get some time. Now I am showing some of the photos to have brief about the course:

Photos yet to publish...

11th(9th) & 12th(10th) Day 28-29 may 2009

The most important and fruitfull topics of the course. The course was about Development and Peace building conducted by Sarah Henkeman.

Her two days session was excellent and relevant to the course. She had presented her knowledge and experiences and brought our talents by giving different exercises. Through exercises and her lecture we have gained a great deal of knowledge about development and peace building.


The most interesting exercise was conflict resulotion. And i have enjoyed the exercise with two instance and acted as Victim and Mediator. I was praised for my performance as a Mediator to resolve the conflict of a Family(Typical husband wife conflict). We also had some exercise related to defining fundamental needs, poverty and develpment. We have ended the two day session with handfull of knowledge about peace building and development.

13th and 14th day-Weekend at Hadeland

There was nothing special about this weekend. We were busy for some common activity like playing, dancing, singin, gosseping, swiming. I will not write much about this now.


15th(11th) and 16th(12th) Day 1st and 2nd June 2009
We had to prepare and present a session with Norweigian school. We have prepared whole monday for school visit project. It was an excellent experience. I had to face lots of difficulty to make all the participant available for preparation and the final day of presentation. We have prepared very good presentation and the final school visit project was a grand success. We had a easy going project. We have chosen Social Development covering Bullying in School. The session was really good and we were praised for the performance by both the course leader(Henrik and Peter). After coming back from school we have participated in group evaluation of the school visit project.

16th(13th) day 3rd june 2009
The topic for the day was Physical health and security. This was the worst session of the entire course. We could not get much information about the content. The session was not at all interctive and relevant to the content. It was not an easy going session for us. I have noticed that atleast 20% participant was attentive(were in sleepy mode). Hope we can get some more information from the power-point presentation and get help from FK if it is required. Input from any participant is highly appreciated.

17th(14th) day , 4th June 2009
A great presentation about FK and media. We have learnt a lot about presenting ourself in media. We have learnt how to take good photos in the previous evening from Liz Palm. She was excellent in her presentation. I recommend the session from her to conduct in the first week so that the participants can experience their lesson during the great course.

Last day 5th June 2009
We have reached to the final day of the course on friday 5th june. we have left the hotel at 10:00 am towards Oslo to attent the Participants conference and completed a great preparatory course. I hope this will add a great value to my life. I will try to utilize the knowledge of FK course and contribute to make better world along with FK.



Thanks to all for reading this long article.

Please put your valuable comments to improve the articles.

Afzalur Rashid
afzal_01@yahoo.com