By Gabriella D., Yr 9
Waking up before the sun when the whole city is still flooded with street lights on a weekend is never normally easy. However fueled by passion, determination and fear of the day ahead we all arrived at the host school Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau school, commonly known as “The home for the army of monkeys”, ready to take on the world (or at least for the weekend hundreds of other scholars across Hong Kong and China) ! Despite the ungodly hour, excited chattering spread as everyone crammed for the busy day ahead (even though we had all learnt from the “Memories” section in the science syllabus that cramming is the least effective way of studying). Whilst arriving in the auditorium, the Y7s and Y8s who were new to the competition were entranced by the seemingly endless rows of stuffed rainbow alpacas scattered all across the stage.
The Opening Ceremony consisted of half our students freaking out that the timetable had been rescheduled, whilst the other half scrolled mindlessly through Mr Williams’ website as though it would bring us good luck. We huddled in our teams around the tables eager to find out the persuasive writing motions. After a mini panic attack from the inoperative Wifi, we raced to finish our essays in time and then swiftly moved onto the Scholars Challenge, an intense multiple choice test of 120 questions. Starving, our teams sat on the basketball courts to devour our lunch. The sunshine was short-lived as we migrated back to the school classrooms for the debates. Each team would have 3 debates on topics related to this year’s theme “An Entangled World”. Along with being able to show off and practise our public speaking skills, we made friends with scholars from many different schools and we remembered the true essence of the WSC competition.
After an exhausting Saturday, we were relieved to have a slightly more chilled Sunday. To start we had the Scholars Bowl (a team multiple choice test). Halfway through was “Alpaca Distribution” which resulted in a black market for scholars to exchange their alpacas. Following this was the Debate Showcase, where Emilie L. from Y8 was an adjudicator after ranking 3rd in the whole of Hong Kong for debate! Finally to conclude our perfect weekend was the award ceremony. Our true sense of School pride was hard to miss with everyone squealing in excitement whenever a student from FIS would proudly strut up to the stage to collect their medals.
The weekend was definitely a success with every student qualifying for globals, 5 of our teams making top 20 and a total of 69 Silver and 43 Gold medals gained! Many individuals in FIS were top scholars in HK and this will definitely be one of the highlights of this year! Kuala Lumpur here we come…….
World Scholar’s Cup website