Photos from Sunday, May 10, 2015

Today we said goodbye to our mothers bright and early and headed out for Bradley Airport. Everyone cringed as security tore apart the bubble wrap and padding we carefully wrapped around our posters. (Don’t worry they all arrived safely in Pittsburgh and look amazing!). After a painless flight of about an hour we had arrived. We all had a late lunch at the hotel. The table was very noisy, as everyone was buzzing with excitement for the coming week but when the food came… silence. It was that good.

The main activities of the night were setting up our posters and the pin exchange. After much anticipation the new slide up posters, unharmed by the travel, have a great presence and the change in format definitely payed off. After a quick impromptu photo shoot (the lighting was too good to pass up) we were on our way to the pin exchange. Each person, armed with 30+ pins, set out to trade pins, talk, and eat with the contestants in this year’s fair, which includes 68 countries. I imagine ISEF is one of the only places were you can trade pins with someone from Samoa, eat with people from France, and take a bus ride back with contestants from Germany.

Once everyone had traded their Connecticut pins, we walked around the park outside the hotel with a beautiful fountain (which also lent itself to a photo shoot), and an echo chamber (its effect was necessary to document with a video).
I’m sure everyone will sleep well tonight from this jam packed day, and we are all looking forward to the week that lies ahead.

Olivia Hallisey
Sophomore at Greenwich High School