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| Photo credit to Odyssey of the Mind FB page |
In recent times the event has gone back and forth between Iowa State and Michigan State University. This year it was held at Michigan State University. The opening ceremony event was on Wednesday evening and closing ceremonies were on Saturday night.
We drove to Michigan so our team transported our own props. This saved us a couple hundred dollars in shipping expenses. But it left me making an 8-10 hour drive across the country, with just my daughter for company. I say "just my daughter" because she was in the back seat watching movies. But I listened to a couple of books on Audible so it was all good.
One thing I would do next time is to write something on the car windows. We passed lots of other teams headed to Worlds, on the road - which we knew because it said so on their windows - so I think it would have been fun to be displaying a message of our own. I'm sure the cars that passed each other with messages had fun with it. I've never actually written on my windows before but I see you can buy glass chalk or window markers so if we ever go back again, that's what I'll do.
We left Tuesday after school and spent the night in Ohio. We pulled up to MSU early afternoon on Wednesday. My daughter and I happened to stumble onto the MSU Dairy first thing. Because I had lived at MSU for a couple of years when my parents were going to school there, I was familiar with the dairy and excited for a visit. It's a good thing we visited the ice cream shop right away because it turned out to be very popular and subsequently the lines were always long. We never managed to sample any more ice cream.
We did try the special Odyssey flavor "Odyssey Brain Storm Blast". Yummy!
The opening ceremonies were a lot of fun. Each team sent a representative to walk in with their state's/country's contingent. First all the foreign countries walked in, then the states in alphabetical order - except for Michigan who, as the host country, came in last.
They had video intros for each of the problems. The kids loved that. At the end, this happened:
We stayed in Phillips Hall. They provide you with two towels, a sheet set, a pillow and a thin blanket. They suggest bringing a fan, as there is no air conditioning but in our case, bringing an extra blanket would have been good.
The other thing that caught me by surprise was that we were given an actual key. In fact we got two keys - one for our room and one for the showers in the bathroom. Plus we had a key card to get into our wing of the dorm. If you lose a key, there's a $75 fine so I was nervous about it. I ended up buying a lanyard and attaching my key but if I had realized before hand, I would have brought something from home.
On Thursday our team had spontaneous. This is the reception the kids get, when they come out of spontaneous:
But the thing the kids discovered that day - in earnest - was pin trading. Each kid brings representative pins from their state or country. Every year (I assume) there are a couple of popular sets that the kids are all eager to get their hands on. Not to mention, I think international pins are always popular. One nice thing for Virginia teams is that we have a Medusa pin every year, which seems to be a popular pin. I don't think our girls quite realized quite realized the value of this pin, at first. But diving in and figuring it out is part of the experience.
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| I took a photo of a teammate's Medusa, after my daughter traded her last one away. She was sad about it so I told her I could at least take a photo of one for her. |
People will set up their pins in common areas and then others will walk around and check out the various wares and suggest trades. This was a highlight for the girls on our team and they were willing to pin trade any time, any place.
I discovered that some teams and/or regions make their own pins so I thought that was kind of a neat thing to consider doing. People will also trade t-shirts and hats - particularly after closing ceremonies - so that's fun too.
I discovered that some teams and/or regions make their own pins so I thought that was kind of a neat thing to consider doing. People will also trade t-shirts and hats - particularly after closing ceremonies - so that's fun too.
That evening was the float and banner parade. Again, each team sent a representative. The Virginians dressed up as one of the Virginia pins. (This year's Virginia pins had a Dr. Seuss theme.) My daughter was our team's representative.
Team Virginia's entrance.
On Thursday we volunteered at the Virginia booth at the Creativity Festival. The kids were all given tokens to use at each state's booth. And of course there was more pin trading.
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| Colorado had a Jenga style game |
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| This state had a Twister game |
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| There were other entertainers and booths to visit as well |
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| Virginia had a cool booth |
In the afternoon we watched a Division IV team compete in my daughter's team's problem. Check out their handmade, paper costumes!
That evening there was a graduation ceremony, followed by the coach costume competition. What we didn't realize is that the graduation ceremony is open to 5th graders, 8th graders, high school seniors, et cetera. It's not *just* for high school seniors. So our girls could have attended but they were probably just as happy to be pin trading! In fact, I'm certain of that!
A couple of us *did* attend the Coach Costume competition. The rules were that the costume could touch the ground but not be supported by it. The costume could be worn by multiple people. It was encouraged that your costume have some sort of "reveal" once you reached the end of the "runway".
This particular costume was one of my favorites. Please ignore the obnoxious screaming. *hehe* What you don't see is that there was an "applause meter" on stage (two people holding a big red arrow) so we had to cheer loudly for our favorites to make the meter go up.
On Saturday our team competed in our longterm problem.
That night we attended the closing ceremonies.
After the closing ceremonies there parties for the pre-teens, the teenagers and the coaches. All of us took our girls over to the pre-teen party. It was great in concept but the reality is that the lines for the food and moonbounces were pretty long. There was more pin trading going on but the party was at an outdoor park so it was a little dark to do that efficiently. Our girls enjoyed trading hats with other teams. There was dance music and lights so the atmosphere was a lot of fun. The party was supposed to go until 12:30 am but our girls headed back to the dorm around 11pm. At that point the head coach and I went to check out the coach's recovery party. As soon as we arrived we bumped into our state reps so we had a great, lengthy conversation with them. We didn't stay too much longer after wrapping up that conversation. It was getting pretty late and we both had long drives in the morning. We donated our drink tickets to a table with two first places trophies sitting on it. They were happy to get them and we were glad to help them with their celebrations.
All in all, a great time and we hope to make it back someday. Our team is getting split up into two middle schools so we're not sure whether we'll stay together next year or not. But hopefully we'll be able to continue with Odyssey and this won't be our one and only time attending Worlds.
P.S. I felt that it wasn't an honest post to not mention the other parents. I ended up having a lot of fun myself, at Worlds, and this was 100% because our team is comprised of awesome parents. I had so much fun hanging out with them. I'm pretty sure there's always an annoying person in every group of people, so clearly I must have been that person because they were all great! (Yikes!) We spent a ton of time together and had a lot of laughs. So no pressure but when you form a team, hopefully the parents are just as awesome as the kids. I have a feeling that could make or break your experience as a parent, tagging along at Worlds. Fortunately the Odyssey community in general seems to be pretty cool so I think your odds are good.
Anyway I wanted to include this special thank you to the parents on my team for being such good company. I wish I had a picture of the fantastic big people that came along with the fantastic little people. But take my word for it - we *were* awesome! And we share a love of potatoes, shuttles and rain! That is all.
All in all, a great time and we hope to make it back someday. Our team is getting split up into two middle schools so we're not sure whether we'll stay together next year or not. But hopefully we'll be able to continue with Odyssey and this won't be our one and only time attending Worlds.
P.S. I felt that it wasn't an honest post to not mention the other parents. I ended up having a lot of fun myself, at Worlds, and this was 100% because our team is comprised of awesome parents. I had so much fun hanging out with them. I'm pretty sure there's always an annoying person in every group of people, so clearly I must have been that person because they were all great! (Yikes!) We spent a ton of time together and had a lot of laughs. So no pressure but when you form a team, hopefully the parents are just as awesome as the kids. I have a feeling that could make or break your experience as a parent, tagging along at Worlds. Fortunately the Odyssey community in general seems to be pretty cool so I think your odds are good.
Anyway I wanted to include this special thank you to the parents on my team for being such good company. I wish I had a picture of the fantastic big people that came along with the fantastic little people. But take my word for it - we *were* awesome! And we share a love of potatoes, shuttles and rain! That is all.
