World Scholar Cup at Yale University Update Day 3 + 4 + 5

Day 3: Sunday November 10th

We had another early start this morning and caught the buses after a hot breakfast to the Woolsey Hall at Yale. Today was the Scholar's Bowl - also known as "the clicker round"! We scrambled for seats, tested our clickers and off we went - this was a comprehensive round  at 3.5 hours which covered all of this years syllabus on the theme "A World on the Margins". However, we were kept entertained with a special WSC movie that they'd made based on the Christmas Carol and the event was of course punctuated with the handing out of our ToC alpacas! We now have a 3rd mascot to add to our collection this year! We had lunch with all the other scholars then went to watch the WSC talent show and then Ms Claire treated us to a trip to the historic Peabody Museum where we saw giant dinosaur fossils and then navigated our way home.

Day 4: Monday November 11th

Wow what a special day! We left very early for our official day-off to go out of Connecticut State on a very special tour of Boston, MIT and Harvard today! We learnt a lot about the history of the United States in the morning on a trip around the Freedom Trail. We started at Boston Common, saw the beautiful golden roof of the Massachusetts State House and learnt the story about the Boston Tea Party. We chose our own lunch in the historic Quincy Market, some of our students were adventurous and tried the traditional New England clam chowder - yum! In the afternoon we felt inspired walking around MIT on a guided tour with a real student there, he told us funny stories about being a student there, including all the "hacks" (pranks) that they play, including somehow balancing their own police car on top of the dome and putting Captain America's flag on it when the Avengers movie came out (he never got caught!). We also learnt about academic life and got to walk through the 220million dollar Stata Building which was funded by Bill Gates and develops artificial intelligence technology and then we walked the "neverending corridor" and went inside a real classroom. After this we just had time to wander through the beautiful grounds of Harvard University, where we learnt about it's origins and the famous people who have studied here. We saw the very famous statue and learnt why not to touch his famous foot for good luck! After dinner we headed to the World Scholar's Cup Cultural fair, where we met Scholars from all around the world and they introduced us to their foods and traditions. A very long but unforgettable day!

Today was the closing ceremony of the WSC Tournament of Champion. We came here with great excitement and left with joyful memories (and a lot of of medals and alpacas !! )