arriving at worlds

Well, I know it's a little belated, but I thought I would post about some of our experiences at world finals.
O wow, there's a lot.
When we first got there, we discovered that you had to use a card key to do anything. So after we get the keys, but before they were distributed, we got in the elevator only to discover that you needed a card key to push any of the buttons. Unfortunately, the doors had already shut and the card keys were with the coach who was outside the elevator. so some poor kid on the fifth floor calls the elevator, and when it arrives, there we are, jammed tight into it. so then it goes back down to the first floor, where we frantically tell the coach (before the doors close) "Give us the keys!" and she does. Unfortunately, we weren't specific enough and the keys she gave us were the regular keys for our doors. So then, we get called up to the fifth floor again, and that same poor kid is standing there. then, we decide to get off on the next floor we go to, no matter what floor it may be. it turns out to be the second floor, and we think "Thank goodness, it's our floor" and we get off. Well, the coach had apparently gone up to this floor and pushed the call button, which was why we stopped there; but after doing that she went down to the first floor; so we had to send someone after her.
This whole experience would have been much less stressful except that we had all been up since 4:00AM, since we had a 5:30 flight; and so we were all sleep deprived (and I had not gone to bed the previous night, and so had been up for 24 hours).
and this is when we've been there for less than 20 minutes.
-bob

Memories of Yesterday

ok, i was just looking at the old performance pictures from this year and i almost blew out a gut when i saw the one of Galen with the beanie thing on. there's just this huge blue thing on topof his head and all it does is call attention to itself! i guess at the time it seemed like a good idea, but i'm glad we decided to do something different....

anywho, the rest of the pics are great. hope to see you guys soon!
-juliana

Video

Hello all, if you look to the sidebar to the right, under "links" there is now a link to our worlds performance, and a link to my web album, which I have uploaded TONS of pics too.

even more pics

This is our home-stay team, john got a mariachi band to serenade them.

This is our home-stay team at the beach, they had a lot of fun. (Although micoli got a massive sunburn)


This is our buddy team in front of a shop at north padre. They loved to shop.

Yum a pic...

sorry galen but this is a better pic of us and our buddy team.

More pics

This is before spontaneous, the rest of the team, (excluding Katie & me) stayed up until 4AM the night before, so yeah, they were tired, and I just started putting grass in juliana's hair.

This is us in D.C., in front of the archives


This is us in front of the white house (no, Katie didn't break it)

And this is us in front of the Washington monument.

This is us with our buddy team from Singapore, they were really nice and spoke excellent English.

I'll post even more soon, but blogger will only let me put 5 pictures per post.
-bob

Pictures

This is us ariving at the airport, it was pretty cool, and completely unexpected.

this is us in the dorms.

John gets his nails painted.

Ellie in the dorms

Opening ceremonies.

I promise I'll post more later, but right now, I gotta go.
-bob

summary of plot

Glory glory and hallelujah, worlds is over. This means that I can finally post about our script, ideas, and technical gizmo's!

Our plot is thus:

A narcissistic marshmallow preppy peep goddess (M.P.P.G.) has acquired the help of an alien race known as the mustachiens to try and abduct the dinosaur race (She wants the dinosaurs to be her subjects).
Thus begins our story. When the MPPG lands on earth with two mustachiens, they do not see any dinosaurs, so they begin trekking. After some time, they come upon a peaceful clearing (our first required technical element accomplishes the scene change, I'll go into this more later) Once in the clearing, a big ominous shape appears, in the form of a t-Rex, and the MPPG orders one of her cronies to go make it bow down to her. When the mustachien attempts this, he is eaten, and the dinosaur leaves. After unconvincing mourning (The dead mustachien was a jerk while alive) the sinister party (now down to 1 &1/2, going by I.Q. levels) decides to look for other subjects. after more trekking, the sinister party finds a pompous *** of a dinosaur, and a sloth. after some talking, the MPPG convinces the Dino (Who's an anlkosuars, by the way) to accompany her on her spaceship (flying saucer and TEACUP, excuse me) and the Dino heads off. (Technically the sloth goes too, but since he's so slow, stays behind) Then, the MPPG begins discussing the details of her plot to abduct the Dino's (Which involves an escalator) The sloth (named brad) overhears and is greatly concerned for the Dino's (Alec) safety. He starts trying to stop them from abducting Alec. But alas, they had arrived... The MPPG whips a sheet off of a "Stupendous escalator of doom" And thus begins our extinction event. Our second required technical element turns on some lights on the escalator, and starts "stairway to heaven". Then, the escalator starts and the Dino goes up it into the spaceship (Flying saucer and teacup). then there are some closing remarks, and that's it!
That is our theory as to how the dinosaurs became extinct.

-bob

The End Of Wolrds

so now that worlds 2008 is over i have no idea what to do with my free time. actually i'll most likely be catching up on my geometry (curse ye).

but i greatly enjoyed the Worlds experience; in some ways it was better than last year.
the food for the most part was better; at least the salad bar was good. as our buddy team from Singapore put it," You guys are like rabbits, just eating vegetables!" they were really sweet though. they were much easier to communicate with than last year's team.

we had a lot of fun spending time with each other (even though we've been seeing each other since September of last year!) as katie said we came up with quite a few inside jokes and catch phrases which i won't explain since it wouldn't make any sense and then it wouldn't be an inside joke anymore :)

the night before we had spontaneous (i think it was Sunday night) we ended staying up 'til 4:00 AM! none of us were really that tired and then of course ellie started getting hungry (i did too). we also had the fortunate coincidence of finding a chinese menu in the lounge which only increased our hunger, so instead we circled all the meals that we wnated to eat. we also tried to order a pizza at 3:00 but found out the Dominoe's (i'm allowed to use their name right?) onlt delivered 'til 2:00. we ended up eating Sunchips and pretzels with non-salsa and disgusting jalapenos.


yes, it is true tat i was holding a box-cutter behind my back while we were receiving the unfortunate news of our dino costume. i didn't really notice anybody elses emotions, but i do know that Galen was very distressed and i was just shooting daggers at everybody and almost committed bloody murder. luckily Galen took the knife away before i could commit said crime; which is good cuz that action probably would've gotten us eliminated. i was told later by my team mates that i had this horrible look on my face the whole time. in case you haven't figured it out, i have a horrible temper...

anywho, after performing the rest of the time went amazingly. we went into D.C. on Monday and had a great time there. we did walk for a very long time, but i think that it was all worth it. i love Washington D.C.

i am sad that it's all over, but it was a terrific experience and i know that i will never forget it. i think other people will post pictures seeing that i can't do it.

thanks for listening (i think).
-juliana

I'm the first one to post about Worlds!

ha. Ya'd think it would've been Galen, but no, I got to it first.


Anyways, Worlds was awesome! Of course. Our buddy team was great, they were so sweet. Unfortunately we didn't get to spend much time to spend with them (they weren't in the same dorm with us *mumbles under breath at whoever arranged that*) but the little time we did spend with them was really nice. They told us all about Singapore. Did you know that to get a drivers liscence (sp?) in Singapore you have to be 21? They seemed jealous of us, some of whom already have their permits.
Speaking of buddy teams, we did get to talk to some members of last year's. We found out that Some of them were on a team competeing against us (as soon as we learned this, we all thought "we're dead!" as anybody who saw their machinery last year would understand). Kuba-not-Cooper had split up and joined a different team (Wonderful Muses) but Schimmon, Julian and Woitech (sp?) were on the team competing against us. Woitech was their coach (!!) and they came in second AND won a Rentra Fusca. Of course none of this was surprising. If any of us were surprised, it's that they didn't win first. We got to talk to Kuba, Julian and Schimmon. Julian and Schimmon have both grown taller. I know it's hard to believe.

Now I'll actually talk about US. We had been having a good time, all ready to go and give it our best, when in the prop holding room (where we were before going on) two judges came and told us we couldn't use the gift card picks as creative use of materials.
You should have seen our faces.
They went on to say that since Alec was already being judged on "quality of appearance" he couldn't be judged as creative use of materials in style.
I was almost in tears, John was clenching his jaw so much it hurt for the rest of the day, Juliana had a murderous look on her face and was opening and closing a box-cutter behind her back.
That wasn't the half of it! Apparently the humor of the flying saucer and teacup couldn't be judged because the entire performance was being judged on humor. Same case with our second free choice, the humor of the MPPG.
AGGGH!
So they helped us twist "humor" into "irony" for the spaceship (I think we bent the rules a bit there, but hey, the judges were fine with it. They gave us the hints that led to it.) and humor of the MPPG we changed to the artistic quality of the dino on a stick. DURING all this there was a much ado over nothing as to whether or not Juliana's flip-chart-small pages thingy was a prop or not. (artistic quality of a prop in the Mesozoic Era) The time-keeper had to go get the problem captain, who, thank goodness! said that it definitely was a prop. phew! So then, after what was practically the most stressful half hour of lives (yes, it actually took that long!) we performed. "Uh-oh, a bunch of kids who just had to restrain themselves from breaking down in tears and/or comitting murder had to put on a humorous performance? ouch"
No, actually we did great! We all gave the best perofrmance we had done so far, everything worked, and the audience seemed to love it! Thank goodness for our buddy team, they gave us a standing ovation before we even started. They all stood up and shouted "GO BUDDY TEAM!" when the time-keeper announced us. I don't know about everyone else, but that definitely made me feel better.
Spontaneous went well... I suppose. It would've gone better if we had found out that there was a Starbucks in the same building as spontaneous BEFORE going in there than after. We did find it afterwards though. mmmm!

The moment you've all been waiting for...
We placed....

11th!!!!!!!!!!! Out of 46! WOO! Pretty good, if we do say so ourselves. Technically, in long-term we were only nine points away from first!
Another fun fact, the first place team was from Irondequoit, NY!
Of course nobody understands why that is so fascinating to me. I lived there! When I was like five. Fond childhood memories and all that jazz.
And yes, at the awards ceremony I cheered for every team from Connecticut who placed.

That's about all I have to say that relates to how we did and our buddy teams, past and present. There's more about the actual experience, the annoying things the boys did, the inside jokes that developed, etc. but my grandma is probably wondering why I'm taking so long on her computer so I should get off. I have no pictures, but I'm sure everybody else will post more pictures than can even load on the page.
ttfn
Katie