Day One: (Wednesday)
Waking up at 4:45am was not a blast, but luckily at that time security at the airport was easy to get through! After a two and a half hour plane ride, we finally landed in Nashville, Tennessee. A three hours drive later, Don't Pet the Buffalo arrived at the University of Tennessee, where all the fun began. We stayed in Hess Hall, a dorm on campus that we shared with the teams from China, Alabama, and Montana.
Later that night was opening ceremony! It was such a blast. They had speakers from National Geographic, and the creator of Destination Imagination even had a little speech! Armed with our MNDI glowsticks, our team rocked out to some heavily sponsored music (a song about Duct Tape? Subtle, 3M.) and at the end, there was a ton of confetti! I told our team manager that it was the coolest thing I had ever done in my entire life. She laughed at me.
After that, we headed straight to bed to prepare for our performance early the next day.
Day two: (Thursday)
Another early start, not fun. But after a couple of hard hours of trying to wake up, we did it! Our team prepped a little, then headed to the performance site. We are in the improv category, so we basically have 6 minutes to come up with a skit that incorporates all of these scored elements. Literally the entire outcome lies on how you are feeling that day, and it doesn't matter how much you have prepped or practiced. In short, I was kind of freaked. We have to come up with a scene that is about how a group of people adapts to a dramatic change. Our dramatic change was "Farmers Have New Jobs". It was so weird to have to come up with a 5 minute skit around that, but we pulled it off. We scored really well for our very first time at Globals!
After (most of) the stress was over, we got to walk around and explore campus. At World's Fair Park, they had this expo meant for the little kids that had all this really cool stuff from 3M and NASA. We explored and tried some pretty weird things (have you ever tried a frozen graham cracker? It's cool, trust me.) but had to go back to Hess Hall to prepare for the GloBall!
Even with it's dorky sounding name, the GloBall was a blast. Only for the secondary (high school) and university level teams, a huge outdoor dance party with two DJ's and unlimited glowsticks was a lot funner than expected. Since my team is all freshman, it was a little awkward because we were basically being squished by the older kids, but hopefully when we get older, it will be a lot more fun. Even then, I think I can speak for all of us and say that jumping up and down and trying not to get squished was something we would definitely do again.
Day three: (Friday)
Friday was the only day we had for the sole purpose of exploring. At DI Globals, they do this thing called pin trading, where you trade the pins that your city, state or country makes with teams from all over the world. We pin traded a ton (I'll show you all my pins at the end...) and it was kind of hectic, but really cool. Having an excuse to talk to kids and adults from all over the WORLD isn't something I get to do every day. Also, I got some pretty cute pins.
Friday night was something called the 3M Passport Party, which they advertised as being able to experience cultures from all around the world. In reality, it was pretty lame. On the plus side, one of my teammates, Julia, made a chinese friend who called himself Romeo (Romeo and Julia...get it?). After that was fireworks, and then we went to bed so that we could get enough rest for our instant challenge on Saturday.
Day four: (Saturday)
Instant challenge day! For those of you who don't know what an instant challenge is, it's basically like an arts and crafts project, but you only have about 2 minutes to complete a task and it's way harder (all I can say, is Google it.). Another early morning, which we all hated. We played some fun charades type games to get our brains moving. I rocked at it, just saying. When we finally got to our instant challenge, it wasn't like anything we had ever done before, and it was super hard. Basically there was this obstacle course and we had to build a vehicle that would transfer ten rocks (one at a time) to the other side in five minutes. It was really hard to find a loophole, but we did our best.
Saturday night was closing ceremonies! This is where they went through all the awards and we got to see who won in which category. It was really long, and they messed up when it was time for them to announce our category! We ended up getting 21st place out of 72 (IN THE UNIVERSE, I MIGHT ADD) which I think is a very good score for our first time at Globals. After that we headed over to the afterparty, which was kind of lame. They played country music which everyone on our team hates. On the good side, we did end up making some friends with this other really cool Minnesota team, and I really hope we have DI buddies now...
Day five: (Sunday)
On our last day in Knoxville, we FINALLY got to sleep in! But we had to get ourselves situated for the long drive to Nashville and the plane back to MN. We stopped at the Grand Ole Opry, which is across the street from a huge mall, so definitely not what any of us expected. It was kind of disappointing, but at least now I can say that I have been to one of Nashville's greatest tourist attractions.
After a long flight back with highlights like an annoyingly passive flight attendant and turbulence that convinced me that I was about to die, we finally landed back home. Since the weather in TN was fantastic, the icky Minnesota-ness was a huge bummer, but I was glad to be back with my family (mainly my dog oops). And I was probably a little too happy about being able to actually sleep.
Well that's the end of it! I really hope that you guys enjoyed this post, because I really enjoyed living it! Since this was really long, I'll make a post about all my pins later, because I really want to show them off because they are super rad.
Stay groovy,
xo Camille
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