The End of The Road: Novo Hamburgo

Novo Hamburgo... I'll never forget whatever happened there...

Novo Hamburgo is a small suburb near the city of Porto Alegre. It's such a small city with barely anything except shoes; which is what the suburb is famous for.

Because I left early for a 3-day holiday in Rio de Janeiro, I only met up with Mr. Didi and Owen on the 16th of November in Porto Alegre's airport. They had a flight delay from Sao Paulo, so they only arrived in the evening. And it was already night time when we reached Green Park Hotel in Novo Hamburgo. After going out for dinner, we called it a day.

We spent the next day touring the city of Porto Alegre by hiring a driver that was available at the hotel. We went to several different places such as the building that was previously used for an electricity power source, the mall (which is a must for every traveller that wants to see everything), the science center, an art museum (which was really amazing, by the way), the church (to ask for guidance). That evening, we went to Carrefour to store up our daily needs, such as snacks—cause I get hungry often, water, and some other stuff. We had dinner after, and had a good night sleep.

When I woke up the next day, it was already the big day. It wasn't the competition day yet, but it sure was the preparation day. Bringing the huge roll of posters, we walked towards the venue (since it was near). It was weird seeing our "competition" for the first time. Honestly, I didn't think of them as a competition at all. I just felt lost in the sea of high-schoolers and what looked like college students. They all looked 20 plus, and being the only 14-year-old there alongside Owen definitely felt awkward.

Ignoring the fact, we concentrated on decorating our booth. It was a bit different from the guidelines that we saw from the Internet, and after asking a few questions here and there (with the help of some interpreters that Mostratec provided), we managed to get a board which was supposed to be the place for us to post our posters. With the effort of all five of us (Mr Didi, Owen, his dad, my mom and I), we managed to put up the posters neatly. Putting our energy into the display for a few hours, we arranged the booth: from the posters to the provided items to display. We arranged the cables' placing so that our booth looks as neat as possible.

By the time we were finished, it was late afternoon already, and we saw the other groups getting ready because they arrived later than us. In my honest opinion, our booth looked really cool and it sure stood out from the others. I'm not trying to brag, but I'm just saying that we put a whole lot of effort into the display; from designing the posters, making the powerpoint presentation look right until finding the right toys to use as our display (and we finally ended up using Lego).

Mr. Didi gave us a quick review about the physics concepts that we used for our project, and all of our hearts were filled with excitement; we couldn't wait for the actual showtime tomorrow.

Tuesday was the public visit, Wednesday to Thursday were the judging days, and Friday was another public visit day. That was our brief schedule, so we relaxed on Tuesday, wearing our activity shirts and jeans. We had a little trouble presenting, though, since most of the visitors didn't know how to speak English. It was only then that we found out the competition allowed three languages: English, Spanish, and Portuguese. It was confusing, so we just showed them a brief animation of how our project worked. We didn't expect that we'd get a personal interpreter to stay at our stand all day long.

Surprisingly, our stand was really crowded; we didn't even do anything over the top. I mean, all you have to do is smiling, greeting people, having short conversation with them with your “broken” Portuguese, but that's what kept them coming. Smile and greet. Simple stuff, really, but that made a really good impression on our booth.

During the times when the venue was quite deserted, we socialized and had some conversations either with our new friends across, beside, behind our booths, or talked to our interpreters and learned about the typical things in Brazil. We found out that Southern Brazil has a traditional drink called Chimarrão, that a president election was going to happen soon, that at that time, it was the end of spring, and yet it was still 20°C-23°C.

Following the rules that were explained during the first day, the booth was not to be empty. So we had to take turns having lunch, if not they would give us a strike. Four strikes, you would be disqualified. The rules were strict there, and it felt oddly good to be in such condition. It was different, and it was exciting at the same time.

The event didn't end at 9 P.M.—only the exhibition did. There was an opening event from 9 P.M. to 11 P.M., and Owen was the Indonesian representative. He wore his traditional clothes while bringing the Indonesian flag. It was quite a tiring day, and we had more days to come.

       

The "Environmental Management" section, which happened to be ours, had their judging day on Wednesday. The teachers nor the parents were allowed to be near us, and the hall was clear; only the contestants were there. When the judges came to our batik-dressed selves, we were pretty confident because they didn't ask a lot, and we had a peek at their copy of our project report; it all had the writings "OK!" on it. We were pretty happy with that reaction, but deep down, I kept asking to myself,: "That's it?" It just didn't make sense. It was an international competition where there are competitors from twenty-one different countries and that was all that happened. That was the climax, the part that everyone feared. And turns out what I worried about was true. That was it.

The next few days passed on just like that: smiling, greeting, explaining. My voice was really hoarse on Wednesday night. There was a Cultural Exchange, but I didn't speak much. I didn't talk much that night either. My voice was never powerful enough to go through more than half a day of talking, and I just thanked God at that time because the judging already passed, so I had nothing more to fear.

Thankfully, Thursday morning, my voice came back. Well, kind of.

I met a lot of people, several different interpreters. It was really interesting to see different types of people all interested in science: from students who had to go around for their school assignment, to goth pairings going around the competition hall for a date, but they were all interested in science.

The simple conversation in Portuguese I had with the civilians were never different.

"Hey."

"Hey." After meeting several people, I found out that it was okay to greet people with a "Hey,".

"Do you speak English?"

"No. You speak Portuguese?"

"No," with a slight smile.

The conversation was that simple, and I had that exact same conversation with all different people. Believe me, that simple conversation was enough to get their attention to our booth for a few seconds, to pay attention to our project, and make our booth crowded. The simplicity of our project seemed to be one of our attraction points as well.

We had souvenirs: small bookmarks that had batik imprints on them. People seemed to like them a lot, and they kept praising the beauty of those bookmarks, the batiks on our shirts, and the traditional outfits that we wore. I couldn't help thinking, “If foreigners are so happy to see our culture, why aren't we?

Thursday night, my voice was even hoarser than the day before. I thought it'd be gone by Friday, so I didn't worry about anything.

I was wrong, though. Friday morning, my voice dropped into a lower pitch. It was really hoarse, and I just spent my whole day drinking water and running to the bathroom over and over. I didn't bother to greet every single person anymore; I was too worn out. I was too tired because of the previous days, and my voice didn't want to cooperate anymore. I was just really thankful that it was the last day, but it was kind of sad, too. I never liked goodbyes, and this was just one goodbye I had to pass. Being with the same people for five days, you get to know them more, you know? Most of us exchanged e-mails and Facebook names, and promised to keep in touch with each other. We still are.

Saturday came, and the awarding ceremony only started at 8 PM. To kill time, we hired a driver to tour a little 'city' called Gromado. It was basically a small German village with lots of cute stuff to see, and we enjoyed our tour. Before we knew it, it was 4 PM already; just enough time to get back and walk to the venue for dinner, and the awarding ceremony afterwards.

Wearing our navy blue and red activity shirts, we stepped into the awarding ceremony feeling extremely nervous. I had a happy and relaxed look on my face, but I was really tense inside. My emotional reactions always came late, and this was just one of those days.

After several speeches, the awarding ceremony finally started. I was really tense as they called the winners one by one, starting from the fourth places, and going up gradually to the firsts (four awards for each section).

When the time came to announce the firsts, I crossed my fingers. It was such a tense moment, since it was either first or nothing. Just then, I saw my friend, a group two booths from mine, who exchanged a cheek-to-cheek with me earlier, step up to claim first place. Being the naive person I was, I was happy for my friend, till Owen's Dad said this:

"Hey, that group is from our section, right?"

That was when it hit me. I started crying, just like that, endless. All the time I spent working on the project, all the things I sacrificed, all the things I missed, all the people who counted on us, all the people who supported me, who wished me good luck with their smiling faces... Everything flashed into my mind and it was like a huge pang of guilt that you couldn't fight back. Tears kept flowing down my face as I hid myself behind my mom's shoulder. Everything was a blur afterwards; I didn't know what was going on anymore. My mom just told me that when I was crying, Owen was silent, and Mr. Didi kept eyeing me with a helpless look on his face, slumping into his chair himself. We knew we were only junior high schoolers against all those high school and/or college people, but we did it once during the national competition, why not international?

I was mad, honestly. The judges didn't even bother to ask us thoroughly through our knowledge. They should know that we only understand to a certain point, but that doesn't mean we don't master what we understand. I was frustrated why we didn't get the same chance the other groups got. It was annoying, but we couldn't do anything about it.

After a while, I started to calm down, and I went to the bathroom to wash my face. Lucky for me, my eyes weren't that swollen, so it was safe for me to come back into the ceremony room with a slight smile on my face.

Only five minutes after sitting down, our project name was called. Not knowing what it was for (the whole ceremony was conducted in Portuguese), we went up anyway. Clueless, I expected it was the 'best project from each country' award, as it was mentioned in the information book. My assumption was right; we won that award, Best Project from Indonesia. Well, we beat some high school students (the other Indonesian contestants). It was like winning ISPO (Indonesian Science Project Olympiad; the national competition that allowed us to be the Indonesian representative to Brazil) all the way in Brazil, but whatever.

After the ceremony, there was a party, where a DJ was there to play music for everyone to dance. Honestly, I was really looking forward to the party, to just release all that tension with my new friends, but I was too tired. I walked quietly back to the hotel with the others.

Sunday morning, we were all ready to head to Sao Paulo to spend our last day in Brazil. Sao Paulo is basically like Singapore, but it's a Portuguese version. It was nice touring the city, but all I wanted was to go home. Lucky for us, we left that night. Well, the next morning, to be exact. 1 AM on the 25th of October, Brazilian time (GMT - 2). Boarding the 22-hour-flight plane (with 3 hours of transit in between), I was ready to head back to my own country, hoping to get back to my normal life with some extra experience.

Felicia Rebecca Isjwara [Indonesia]

Becky and her research partner Owen Yunaputra Kosman represented Indonesia in the 2010 MOSTRATEC Competition in Novo Hamburgo, Brazil.