Back from Berlin

Energized by the connections and ideas we got at the World Cup the Flagler SIFE team has been plowing away. The general meetings have had very strong attendance and ideas have been flying about new projects. With these new members come new connections and many new opportunities have come up for Flagler SIFE to work with other school clubs and community groups both in St. Augustine and around the country. We have had weekly think tanks for each project, these think tanks have been well attended and progress is being made on many of the new projects while old ones are getting a face lift.

Yesterday we had a SIFE bonding adventure at the beach! We went to The Beach Comber to talk and eat and then played on the beach, we event made a SIFE sand castle.

This Wednesday is the presentation team auditions, next update will include a listing of the new presentation team. Good luck to those of you auditioning!

World Cup

The Internet access throughout our trip was sporadic at best, so once again I apologize for the lack of blog updates. I will rectify that now.

As you might have guessed we did not make it to the semi-final round at the SIFE World Cup. As we mentioned in the last post we did everything we could and have no regrets. One of our Business Advisory Board (BAB) members send us an email after the results were aired online and said that it is not the destination that matters but rather the journey to get there. For us the journey really did make this entire experience spectacular. We met incredible teams and made friends with people from every corner of the globe, we were supported by fantastic alumni, parents, and faculty and we represented Flagler College to the best of our ability. Most importantly, we had fun through every minute of it.

After watching the rest of competition I truly believe that if anything this has motivated the team to work harder. I cannot wait to see what we do next.

Love,
Jessica

Monday In Berlin

Sunday:

We changed hotels from Checkpoint Charlie to the Estrel Hotel and Convention Center where we will be competing. Last night was the first night on the competition schedule, which kicked off with the SIFE World Cup Cultural Fair—it was worth coming to competition just for that. Each country set up a booth to represent their country with food, dancing, jewelry, etc. Each team also wore native garb from their respective countries. We represented the U.S.A by bringing Oreos, Flagler college key chains, and Mickey Mouse bookmarks. To represent American attire and our area of the United States we wore Mickey Mouse ears and Mickey t-shirts. It was amazing to see other country’s excitement about our Disney theme. Each Flagler SIFEr was probably photographed 100 times with people wanting pictures with the “Mickey team.” It was absolutely incredible seeing teams from every corner of the world come together to celebrate the diversity of our cultures.

After the cultural fair we went to the opening ceremony where each team paraded across the stage with their national flags. We were told later by a Flagler parent that the opening ceremony was broadcast live online at www.sife.org/worldcup. I am not sure if all of the award ceremonies will be broadcast live but if you are interested they would all be on the aforementioned website. The competition schedule is on a previous blog post; please do not forget that Germany is six hours ahead of Eastern Time.

Aside from introducing the competitors the Opening Ceremony was also the first time competitors were told the pairings for our first round of competition Monday. We were the second to present in a room competing against: Singapore, Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, and Swaziland.

Monday:

We have been working hard on practice presentations and Q&A practice; we apologize for not getting Sunday’s blog up until today. As a result, we can also use this blog as an opportunity to tell you about our first round this morning. We presented second at 10:35, to a panel of approximately 25 judges from around the world. Although the competition results will not be released until this evening at the 5PM Opening Round Award Ceremony we all feel like the presentation went extremely well. As Donna, Barry, Dr. and Mrs. Abare, and our other supporters all said there was nothing that we could have done to improve the presentation or Q&A. Now we just have to wait for the results…

We will update later this evening with news about whether we are moving on to the semi-final round of competition tomorrow. For immediate status updates look to our Twitter at Flagler SIFE.

Love,
The Flagler SIFE Team

More touring!

The group split up today, Hannah, Shelia, Jessica, Chris, Victoria, and Morgan (The SIFE USA Representative) went to the Bauhaus early in the day. It was beautiful. We looked at two exhibits, one was on the Bauhaus its self and the other was on a famous French architect. The Bauhaus is a modern art museum, but it used to be a school and some of the most famous modern artists in the 1920s. None of us really knew what the Bauhaus was until we went to Berlin, much less the impact that it had on modern art, architecture, clothing, and furniture. Almost everything that we consider "modern" today was originally designed by Bauhaus artists in during the 1920s. It was incredible! When we left there were lines literally wrapped around the building with people waiting for a chance to see the largest Bauhaus exhibit in history. Good thing we went early!

We walked to a brautwerst stand and got currywerst, a specialty in Berlin. The stand we went to had a line around the corner thank goodness we had Chris or else we would have never gotten our food.

After lunch we tried to get into the Unification Celebration but the celebration was so crowded that the police were forcing people to leave to make room for the event. The other group: Katherine, Kameron, John, and Jaclyn were able to get into the festival earlier in the day and said it was incredible! The group was able to get stamps from all of the countries represented during the Unification Celebration-including the United States and France. As Katherine said the day was incredible but "unbelievably crowded," yet worth it.

For those of us who were unable to get into the celebration we did get to experience a bit of the Unification Celebration. We followed a German marching band dressed in red, white, and blue as the played the American National Anthem and other traditionally American songs. Then we walked to the Holocaust memorial, what a beautiful yet somber place. There we met a group from SIFE Puerto Rico. It was incredible to learn that SIFE Puerto Rico celebrates their champion by sending representative from all of the other teams in the territory to support the champion. This was one of the support teams, they were excited to meet us and we spoke for a while.

As the group rushed back to the hotel for our practice presentation we were able to see another aspect of the Unification Celebration. A theatre group from France brings giant puppets-one from East Berlin and the other from West Berlin- which unite on Unification day at the Brandenburg Gate to celebrate France's roll in uniting Berlin after the WWII. The entire team was able to see and talk about this unique event. The streets were teeming with people from countries across Europe all celebrating this momentous occasion. How lucky were we to be here?!

After a practice presentation we went to an alumni dinner with two alums ate venersnitzel and pasta with truffles We also had our first taste of German chocolate in Germany...fantastic! After dinner we met a German girl who just returned from two months in Jacksonville. For those of you who know about our team superstitions with signs we agreed that this was the second sign for the World Cup. (At Nationals we thought we had "signs" indicating that we would win: a fortune cookie, hat, and others that the team couldn't quite agree upon.)

We will spend today practicing and will also move to the competition hotel. Tonight is the culture fair, opening ceremony, and introduction of the teams. We are all so excited to start the World Cup and meet teams from around the world. That's all for now, we will update this evening after the events.

Thank you for following our blog and supporting us.

We miss and love you,
Jessica, Hannah ,and the Flagler SIFE Team

BERLIN!

This is a picture of us with some of the refugees from the Suruwat project we ran into in the airport

WE MADE IT!
Busy day! SO COLD!!! My parents told me I didn't understand how cold it would be and they were right! Met up with our translator/alumni Chris Gassner in the airport and immediately put his native tongue to use getting taxis and navigating our way through Berlin. We wondered around downtown, toured one of Berlin's famous churches, Parliament, and Brandenburg Gate! Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and is marked by the Unification Celebration. That means that we will not only be able to tour the city tomorrow but will also be able to celebrate one of Germany's national holidays. Tomorrow evening we will also be doing a presentation and dinner with Flagler alumni. More details to come...

Victoria and Jessica-


-Victoria
A cute video we took before getting on the plane to Berlin