Day 2, which is actually Day 1 at Destination Imagination Globals Finals 2018 in Knoxville, Tennessee! The weather is great. Dry so far, but warm. If you missed Day 1, click here to read more. And here is what we did today:
8:00 AM
Luckily it was not that early this morning to get up, which will be a different thing tomorrow morning. The girls slept well and it was hard to get them out of their comfortable bed. After meditation and a shower we went downstairs to have breakfast. Scrambled eggs, biscuits, gravy, oatmeal and fruit and so many other fellow DI-ers eating their breakfast.
10:00 AM
We’re getting on the bus. The next step was getting our props, backdrops and costumes to our prop area. First we dropped the high school team off, which was on the other side of campus. Our performance and prop area was at the convention center or KCC. The bus driver had a hard time getting around Knoxville. Sharp curves and narrow streets made the trip difficult. The bus had to go underneath the convention center to get to our prop area. Great security system with K-9’s and everything and everyone is sooo friendly.
Nothing seemed to be damaged or anything. It was getting time for lunch.
12:30 PM
I was wondering how they manage to get 15,000 kids plus team managers and chaperones fed for lunch. But this is how the Destination Imagination organization organized it: Outside in the park were several tents and buffet tables with food (and this was not the only park they used for lunch tents). Other tents had bottles with drinks and there were even tents with popsicles. They made several lines where you could get plates and get your food, buffet style. It went fast and smooth. For our first lunch outside we had hot dogs or hamburgers, corn and potato salad.
1:30 PM
We went back into the Convention Center. There was a lot to do and it was tough for the team not to get distracted. The EXPO hall was right next to us, which is a hall full of STEAM activities (even NASA had a booth). Pin trading was in the tent right outside, which is another huge activity for kids supporting connection and communication between the different teams from different countries. Not to mention the foods and snacks like Dippin’ Dots and cotton candy. But…wait… we had to prepare the things for tomorrow!
3:00 PM
The event depicter (the lights) of the teams challenge needed its daily check to see if all wires were all connected and working properly. The least fun thing, but very important, was the paper work. This took a while, but luckily we had some time left before we had to get back to the bus, to see two other performances in our genre. One performance was from a school in Texas and one from North Carolina. We looked at their structure, their back drops and acting skills. It was fun to see them perform. One problem: the acoustic was very bad. I hope our team is going to do something about that tomorrow:0)
4:00 PM
We’re in the bus, heading back to the hotel.
Time to meditate, putting our orange Illinois shirts on and have dinner. Today we had noodles, salad with croutons and olives, lasagna and cheese cake and tiramisu for dessert. Not bad at all! One lady from another Illinois team asked me from where in Illinois we were from. And I said:” Actually we’re from Iowa! We are very grateful that Illinois let us compete in your state.” You can read here more about our school in Iowa and the Destination Imagination program.
6:45 PM
Back on the bus to go to….the OPENING CEREMONY!!
It took some time to get into this huge stadium, because this was the first year we had to go through a metal detector. We ended up having a nice view from all the teams from the USA and other countries coming into the stadium. It was a little like a mini Olympic Games. Singapore, Guatamala, Australia, India, Portugal, Mexico, Brasil. Just to name a few. Lots of kids, noise and fireworks!
I case you missed some days or if you’d like to read the rest of the trip. Here is Day 1, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5
Here is the video from today.
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Hello everyone,
Welcome to my Crafty Dutch Girl blog! Grab a cup of “koffie” and browse through fun blog posts about our Dutch family expat life in the USA, Dutch history, Dutch recipes, Dutch things to do in the USA and all kinds of crafts and activities. Don’t forget to connect with me for new ideas! “Groetjes en tot ziens”.