This is Friday’s blog (18 July 08), but because of running out of internet minutes and low battery power, it is being posted on Saturday morning.
On Friday, students went on an excursion to Visegrád, the first “capital” of Hungary. Mentors and guests visited there in the evening. This is the place where the Danube narrows and bends and has high, rocky terrain. A castle existed there in the middle ages and portions have been rebuilt to celebrate the town’s cultural heritage. A group of men reestablished the order of knights that protected the castle millennia ago and put on a spirited show for the crowd. A king (mentor from Slovakia), queen (from France), and jester (from Sweden) were chosen from the crowd and crowned with appropriate headware. The king then chose someone to punish (from Austria) and this man had to sit in a chair of nails for the entire presentation. Afterwards, the audience had the opportunity to try out two of the weapons demonstrated earlier. Dr. Lynch’s fearless, younger daughter was a natural with the death star.
Earlier in the day, mentors corrected the students’ exams using the rubric from the organizers. Because most of the questions were pretty straightforward, scoring the exam went relatively quick. Dr. Lynch, JL, and I were able to complete a quick geocache between the scoring time and lunch. After lunch, we had our 3rd jury meeting. The best part of the meeting was JL giving a short speech before he was elected to be the representative for the Americas on the International Chemistry Olympiad Steering Committee. This is a great honor for JL who was nominated by the Ireland delegation for this two-year term. After the meeting, the new steering committee decided that JL would be Secretary of the Steering Committee (the only other “titled” member of the committee is the Chair).
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