Abingdonian 2018

71 www.abingdon.org.uk Summer Term do. The hall was set out like a UN summit, with each team having their own desk with a little flag. After all the bronze medals had been read out, our thoughts were a mix of hope and dread that we’d all missed out on any medal. Once all the medals had been read out, the hall fell into chaos as the speaker tried to keep the ceremony going while every team celebrated with their jury and took pictures. We were ecstatic with our own performance, winning three golds and a silver, and sung all the way back to the hotel, including a biology-themed adaptation of Three Lions’ “ Bio’s coming home ”. Dinner afterwards was where everyone got together one final time. That evening was quite melancholy, with teams gradually leaving and everyone saying farewells at regular intervals, packing up the many gifts that we had been given by all the nations we had talked to – from the Aussies to the Danes to the Finns to the Icelanders, to name just a few. Patrick McCubbin, 7KL Cup final, sitting with the Croatians to share in their pain at their loss to France. The next day we went on an excursion to Sa’dabad. This is a large complex with many museums, galleries, and palaces, including a splendid collection of artworks and a room walled entirely with mirrors. In the evening, we had the opportunity to view a limited selection of the equipment that would be used in the practical exams the next day; this was to guarantee all students were familiar with it, as equipment varies throughout the world. As a team we spent the rest of the evening second guessing (incorrectly!) what practical would come up based on the equipment we had seen; this did at least focus our minds on the challenges that lay in wait for us the next day. To top it all off, just as we had got ourselves an early night, the entire hotel suffered a late night call-up telling us to hand in our electronic devices for the week. The time had now come for the practical exams. Collective opinion was that the exams were notably tough and time-pressured, although they largely ran smoothly. After the last practical we walked to a university sports ground for a cultural evening. This allowed us to let off some steam playing football, eating Iranian food and socialising with many teams we had got to know quite well by this point. The following day we had a rather odd excursion to a western-style shopping centre, where we seemed to be the main attraction, with TV news crews and photographers following us everywhere. The afternoon excursion was postponed, so we had time to prepare for the next day’s theory test and get an early night, which by this point was much appreciated. For the theory exams we sat in columns facing each other, which sometimes made it difficult to concentrate. The theory tests were very tricky, with no-one feeling confident afterwards. In the evening we visited the Milad tower, the sixth tallest freestanding structure in the world. The highlight was going up in the tower’s lift looking out over Tehran, and the guide delightfully reminding us 260m up the tower just how earthquake-proof it was. From so high up, the imposing mountains that provide a dramatic backdrop to Tehran, dominating the skyline, were especially clear. We were then reunited with our juries over dinner and talked about the previous few days. The final days, with the exams out of the way, were great fun. We were taken to several exhibitions, including of Neolithic tools found in Iran, Islamic artworks and calligraphies, and a photographic exhibition featuring people looking at paintings in the Louvre. In the evening we returned to the university sports ground for another cultural night, where my archery skills were shown up to be less than adequate, getting back to the hotel at midnight. In the morning we visited a beautiful mosque, where the ceiling was completely covered in mirrors. Men and women had to be separated, visiting different sections of the mosque. After a brief walk around the mosque, we visited the adjacent bazaar. It was extremely busy, with small alcoves filled with spices and carpets lining the narrow streets; unlike the previous shopping trip, this was something we could never see at home. After a late lunch, we got back in the coaches to go to the closing ceremony. The whole team was nervous, with the consensus being that any medal would