My memorable Hanoi trip (Vietnam)!!!

On June 25 last, a team of 14 students, including me, along with two teachers and our beloved school trustee, started on our journey towards Hanoi to take part in the 10th Global Round of World Scholar’s Cup (WSC), 2017, scheduled to be held from June 26.

The WSC is an international team academic programme with students participating from over 50 countries. The WSC aims to build a “global community of future scholars and leaders”, and it allows participants to ‘discover strengths and skills you never knew you had’. It focuses on bringing students from different cultures together to discuss issues and ideas relevant to today and the future.

We reached the hotel in Hanoi at around 9:30 a.m. (local time) on June 26, after travelling from Guwahati to Kolkata and then to Hanoi, via Bangkok. As our WSC registration was scheduled for the same day, we reached the Vietnam National Convention Centre at 4:30 p.m. and completed the
formality.

On June 27, the opening ceremony started at the Convention Centre at 7:30 a.m. Daniel Berdichevski, the Chief of the WSC and Bruck Wang welcomed the gathering. The keynote speaker enlightened us with a valuable speech. Right after lunch, we had the Scavenger Hunt. In it, the original teams were divided to form a large team of 14 students from all over the world. We were taken to a beautiful park and given some fun challenges like – playing Pokemon Go, acting like King Kong, etc. Through this, we got the chance to make international friends and communicate with them.

The next two days were the most crucial for our WSC campaign, with all the academic competitions ahead. The theme of this year’s event was – “The Unlikely World”. The first important event was the Team Debate, for which we were taken to the VIN school. We got some interesting topics. The next event was Collaborative Writing. In this competition, the competitors were given only 20 minutes to prepare a topic with the help of the internet. The Scholar’s Fair organised at the Convention Centre provided us an opportunity to get introduced to the different cultures of different countries.

The next day, the first event was the Scholar’s Bowl, an MCQ-based quiz competition. The last event of the day was the Scholar’s Talent Show, where we could see some awesome performances by a number of talented students from all over the world.

The next day, the WSC arranged for a local tour of the Hanoi City. We firstly visited the Confucius Temple, which hosts the Imperial Academy, Vietnam’s first national university. We then visited a museum which exhibits Vietnam’s culture, a factory where artisans were making patterned designs on plates and bowls, the Parliament of Vietnam and the historic Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum is the final resting place of the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. He read the Declaration of Independence here on September 2, 1945, establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

We ended the tour programme here and rushed to the Convention Centre to join the Scholar’s Ball. It was a DJ night where we danced our hearts out. The award-giving ceremony was held on the last day of the WSC, where the successful scholars were awarded with medals. Our school won seven gold medals and 12 silver medals in all, including one gold for me, too.

On July 2, around noon, we checked out from our hotel and started on our journey back towards Guwahati. We reached Guwahati airport the next morning.