Our Missouri college-shirts hang over a chair as a silent testimony.... On the airport our family together with a Canadian friend as a bonus stood waiting, and after we had good strong coffee we drove home. Everything is definitely smaller here I noticed on the way to Nijmegen... Our neighbors welcomed us home, including instructions on the pavement how to get to our door, we had a good meal and then we caved in! Before you fall asleep there is this film with all these images that keeps playing in your mind... Now it's the day after. I am still grinning! Did this all really happen? It did! Thank you all! Thank you Saint Louis! Wow, thank you for the ride....
....it hit me like a sledgehammer. My kid is called a geek back home, like apparently the other kids in his group as well, I never realized that, it was never an issue. But here he apparently is amongst his peers, they all get each-others jokes, they only need half a word to understand each-other. As we are in this huge stadium-ballroom waiting for "some adult people to stop talking" ( as the kids see it), these talking heads are actually starting to make sense to me. They, the FLL, tried to make science look hot and happening, and it actually worked. Here in this giant dome, with thousands of people into this robot-stuff, the biomedical engineering and robotics-challenges are considered "über-cool". Here the ability to compete at a cerebral level is celebrated. From Kinder-garden to college, four competitions, from all over the world, kids in all kinds of weird outfits, having a ball, because they live, love and learn. It is pushed to the level of grand sports here, with the most powerful muscle possible involved: the brain. Here the ability to think and possibly improve other peoples lives is seen as important. Wil-I-Am and the Black Eyed Peas performed here last night...not my cup of tea but not even the Superbowl had that privilege! Next year the challenge in bio-engineering will be about food technology, how to prevent contamination for instance, which is also meant to keep people safe. I was not sure if I would do this ever again, not that my son has these doubts...and ideas are already bubbling up, so if he and his team pull this off once more and he wants to go...I will comply.. Besides: I am so humbled and amazed by my kid! Here my kid is part of a bigger thing than just being smart and a little bit shy. Here he is considered a significant part of the future. As our kid is considered a nerd back home, here he is part of a cult, a phenomenon. This whole show...it is all very American, very OTT, but I am falling for it like a log, I now actually even think it all is "kind a cool"....
But this could all still change, for now 78th place is...well...not last place! Worldwide 17000 teams competed, these are the Worldfinals, we shouldn't take that for granted! We didn't come to win. A perfect score is around 400 and the team had an average score of 100. Not bad! Not bad at all! But if we win anything it is confidence, language-skills, friendships and a lot of good will! I was amazed to see how my kid walks up to the guy with the jojo-act, he was pretty amazing!, his name is Patrick and my kid shook his hand, telling him how awesome he thought that was. So there's confidence. We made a lot of friends with a lot of "dropjes", apparently licorice is popular, even though it is "an acquired taste", but many americans have dutch ancestors and the luggage is a bit lighter, thank heavens for that, after all the licorice we left behind! The kids are fluent English by now! Good will hopefully for our coaches which is a mother and son team, ever percevering, boldly going where noone and so forth, it is such an effort for them to pull this off! The games are more or less finished, we now hang on for the rest of the show and the amazing finals of the highschoolteams. I am still a bit of a nitwit when it comes to robotics, but I love being here, in the big-boys-pits. Dedication, concentration and the ever present gracious professionalism. Truly magnificent!
So two days into it all, time flies by with the speed of light. All around us tornadoes cause havoc, this time people are in serious danger and there are casualties. But is is around us... We are safe and sound, so the homefront needs not to worry. I understand that the national newsprogramme for kids mentioned us once more in this context. All these impressions are a bit much to take in at times. It is so overwhelming, more than a thousand contesants, times three leagues, small lego-robots and huge contraptions that resemble tanks and rise up far above me. My son is running around on adrenaline and candy, normaly I would not aggree but in this case : "when in Rome do as the Romans!" . Or here we would have to apply Saint Louis in to that sentence, so there you go. The whole world is here in this arena! From South Korea to Toronto, Taiwan , Israel, and ehm well...The Netherlands. It's like a giant antfarm in here.... The sequence of practice runs, Body Forward-presentations, the actual competition is getting familiar now, though the kids are very very tired. And there's two more days to go.
It is even more unreal than I thought. Being here is like a dream, it looks familiar but everything is so much larger than life. The coffee, the pizza, the views...My kid has the time of his life! He never flew before, and he is slightly apprehensive about the whole experience of being in the States, but manages to bluff his way through it all... We "did" the Arch today, and the most spectacular Saint Louis Zoo. We also saw the storm damage from last weekends tornado that touched ground and blew away whole housing blocks, factory walls, trucks, powerlines and trailer-parks, a very daunting sight... Back at the hotel more and more teams are arriving, and conferring their strategies and tactics for the games, whilst our team is enjoying the hotel-swimming-pool, which counts as preparation as well in our humble opinion: Work hard, play hard! Tomorrow the kids are off on their exchange with the American team, that just delivered twenty pounds of candy for the kids from Nijmegen!, and I am off on my mission to buy records if all goes well. Or I wake up, and I am not sitting here in the hotel-lobby, with a huge Starbucks caffee-latte, next to an open fire... Somebody pinch me already!
"A tornado you said? Now?Uh....I see....Well...uh...ok, thank you..." I forgot about that...never mind earthquakes and tsunamis!, serves us right for having our fingers crossed because we didn't get a wild-card for the finals in Tokyo, but for the nice and most of the time dry city of Saint Louis instead. I was applauding to soon. Straight through tornado-alley we go and Saint Louis been hit! There's bad and good news, and usually I'd like to hear the good news last, but I am not so sure it is definite good news in this case...because here it is: good news is that that has happened and what are the odds it will happen twice in a week?! However; as it happens those odds turn out to be quite big, but that is our secret, ok?, because my son is already a bit apprehensive about it all, after watching storm-chasers... The bad news is that Lambert Airport is well trashed, and KLM is still figuring out what to do next...but the KLM-lady also said they would get us there somehow, and that was in fact good news... And if all happens to fail and we get stranded in Detroit...well...at least we are over there, somewhere. I believe in Karma, sometimes, and I suppose all will be well. Weird thought though...
Nearly there, zero hour: take off! The team has had it's appearance on national television, and all grandparents are well and truly chuffed! The bags are packed (yes, insane, two days ahead, but it would be good to have a quiet day before the havoc starts) and all there is to do is...wait once more. And decisions to make, important ones as to what snacks to bring on the airplane and how to fit them in our hand-luggage. Or minor ones like what to do with twelve hours of sitting in a chair: adults should be fine with a book and mp-3's, but what if you are a bouncing kid, who can hardly finish it through a normal meal without running around the house at least a few times? We'll see...
These two months flew by. There were test-results to consider and kitchen-sink-dramas, there was work and all the rest. Somehow America always seemed far away, another level. And now it's only a week before my son and me embark on a trip we will hopefully enjoy and memorize step by step for the rest of our lives. Friends and family around us are getting excited as well, if it were up to them I am busy writing postcards, emails and text-messages to them all day for a week. It's lovely though, that they all are as giddy about this as we are, I wish I could bring them all along on this journey, that would be something... And it's so much fun to see how serious and thoughtful my son is about us traveling together, just the two of us for the first time. And though it will be a bit lonely without the other half of our family, he so much looks forward to the hotel (never been in such a great place!), the hot-dogs and the diners (he brings all his pocket-money to treat me on a real American meal!), the taxis, the sounds, the smells, the people he will meet... Traveling expands the mind. Long before the journey starts.
So I teach but I also study, and I had a big test this week. I have some more time to look around after a week of locking myself up with books, I catch my breath now and see that it's seventeen days before take off. Seventeen days! That's....soon! What else is going on. Oh! There's an art-auction this weekend, to raise funds for something, that should be good! Maybe we could go there... Oh! Hang on! My son is supposed to show up there and I am supposed to do something usefull as well in the prologue! Wake up! Ok... Time to land and get back to reality. Seventeen days....
Built one hundred years ago by a man who traveled to The Netherlands. He build one himself, after careful study and a lot of drawing! It's a bistro now, popular as a wedding-venue. Maybe a good idea for a meal... Not that we never saw one, but it is quite remarkable...to see one over there! It's near Chippewa, a part of town were eastern-European immigrants live and a large brewery attracted business and provided work in earlier days. It's also not far from Cherokee Street (I think) and if there's a chance of time to spare (as the team is away for a day with their mates from Saint Louis) I would love to take the metrobus and drive there: good record stores, mexican restaurants and vintage clothing... Anyone care to join me?
Steadily the machine is in motion. Designs are made for cards and leaflets, idea's are born and deserted, texts have to be translated, a robot needs to be built. Practical stuff, but also questions are raised like; who's sharing rooms with who, who will be carrying all the decoration-material with which we hope to dazzle, will it be a roman circus (including lots of costume-drama) or merely a modest display... The kids are playing it cool. Well....at least my kid is: "What was that? Dentists-appointment? No sorry, I am not available that week, I'm in Saint Louis that week!...". It's almost comical, it seems he's actually growing faster these days...
First introducing:The other dutch team! : NXT. Not so elusive anymore, it's on their website now, so I suppose it's on for them as well. These people are very experienced, and will most certainly be fierce competition! Well...good luck, guys, see you around! And since we are busy introducing other teams to the home-front: This is our buddy-team from the States! Is that what you call it? It is in any case the team that we get to hang out with while over there! A Missouri-team, so I suppose they probably know their way around town. Which is a good thing: they know the best ice-cream, food, things to do... Yey!
"There's a few things you should really do! You should go to a game, or dine outside on the riverbank. You sure could go shopping!, the town is definitely bigger than Nijmegen, it's warmer, you'll like it..." The more I think and read about Saint Louis, the more I anticipate. I knew it was the Gateway to the West, were the buffalo's were traded and riverboats domineered the inland-trade. I knew it once hosted the WorldFair in 1904. It was where the largest Hooverville was, but that is probably not what the city boasts about, though I have to say that to me that is as fascinating as any tourist attraction; Historian, go figure... Friends visited the city before and showed me pictures. It's what you expect from a town that grew extremely fast; long, straight, broad streets, high square buildings, some sort of Capitol in the centre of town... I wonder if there are many bookshops, what the people are like. We are going to America. The America of Toddlers and Tiara's and fastfood. But also the America of Jazz, the Melting Pot, of a nation of nations... Even if for all I care the whole event could take place in a town near to here, because I will not be outside a lot, the whole idea of being there in a few weeks time is none the less pretty powerful stuff.
...that's what they already experienced after the regional-finals and in Kerkrade. On their website Team WIT! they pasted most of the articles in which they feature. And today the local newspaper was there once more, probably an item for tomorrows edition. They'll let you know. In the meantime it is a bit quiet, silence before the storm. The first rush has cooled down a bit and everybody is busy doing...stuff. Going to school, work, learn, wait until the end of April. I am getting restless though. Shouldn't I be painting something?
...turned out to be not Team Infinity, as of this moment I don't even know if there is another dutch team, just rumours about one, an elusive team then... In the meantime the team here is working hard to get it all organized. We are thinking of good ways to present ourselves and the region we're from, which is historical "river-country", just along the German border. In this time of year it is beautiful around here, with loads of flocks of geese flying around either leaving or returning, some storks nesting in nearby countryside, the first oyster-catchers are spotted between the rest of the waterfowl, and all around spring is seriously in the air. At the same time I realize that it is probably more or less the same in Saint Louis, from the air it looks a lot like over here: forests, water... You guys use Fahrenheit, we Celsius, I still haven't figured out how that works exactly. So we have to check the conversion tool to see what to pack in a few weeks. But so far this is fun!
Core values are a complicated , however good, concept for a ten year old to grasp. It was hilarious to be honest, I tried to explain, what these "kernwaardes" were, but it seems the FLL did a pretty good job with that one, because my son was already able to recite them perfectly.
* We are a team * We do the work to find solutions with our coaches and mentors * We honor the spirit of friendly competition * What we discover is more important than what we win * We share our experiences with others * We display gracious professionalism in everything we do * We have fun!
He knew them all; maybe not precisely in these words, but he was close enough to show me he understood! They maybe will not travel to St Louis to win that contest, but they will certainly go to St Louis to grow, share and enjoy the interaction with everybody they meet. My son is over the moon, he is so looking forward to this, he's infecting me now...
As far as we know there are two dutch teams: us and Team Infinity from Hillegom and as soon as I know where exactly they are on the net, there will be more information about them as well, it will be great meeting them again. So...a dutch team... I hear you think...tulips, cheese, wooden shoes, all things nice... But maybe we can do even better : Romans, old celtic tribes, oldest city in the Netherlands (well, at least it's what the city claims, the debate is still out on that one), the Van Limbourg Brothers who lived there in the 14th century, the famous early 16th century legend of Mariken van Nimwegen; I love the history of this town, and hope to bring other people in touch with it as well. Work in progress, there's more where this came from. I can't believe it, this whole insane idea is actually no longer an idea...
In English, needless to say... A few months ago a group of dutch kids, ten years old, from Lent (near Nijmegen) entered a contest. For the fun of it. They had a great time, won the regionals and therefore competed in the Benelux-finals, and ended up somewhere around the twentieth place. So far so good. Never in a million years did they dream it would take them all the way to the United States. They are entering the finals in Saint Louis on a wild card. They heard the news a few days ago, So now they are brushing up their language skills, rebuild the robot (which was already dissembled) and walk on clouds. If all goes well, they will be meeting you all in a few weeks! This is what they see every day! (click)
