On Monday, 17. March, we were honored to take part in the Finnish FLL Championships.
We started our journey to Finland at 6a.m in the morning by taking a train and then heading onto the ferry. Sadly Karl Joonas couldn't come so it was only 4 of us. On the ship we started with the fun stuff - exploring the shops and gaming areas. But after fun comes work, so we then started practicing our presentations. It was quite a job to talk in English in a way that everything important would get mentioned, but it also improved our English skills a lot. In addition, we were filming a vlog the whole day (we were asked to do that from the Finnish organizers as well because that they want to promote the competition through social media).
We arrived in Finland at 9.30am and headed straight to the Heureka Centre where the competition took place. The welcome was very warm - we were introduced the organisation of the day, they gave us the lunch tickets and neckbands. As we arrived quite late, we had to quickly unpack our stuff before the opening ceremony. We were very surprised by the fact that the Finnish competition was so quiet and calm, whereas Estonian ones are always very, very energetic, with loud music and cheering and screaming public. After the opening ceremony we had a 10 minute practice time but as we arrived so late, we decided that Oliver and Romet will go to the practice table and Mirtel and Greete will clean and decorate our teams table - which ended up being a very good time and role sharing. Fun fact: The Finnish organizers had translated our timetables into Estonian:) This was so sweet of them.
Next we had our robot design judging which was a bit different also because it took place right at the robot game table and basically we just had to show all our run's to the judges instead of doing a presentation. Sadly our robot wasn't in the best condition and we couldn't really show anything good. We gave them our robot design file and talked about our gearbox too. We then had a few practices and in the meanwhile we were putting candy and stickers on all of the team's tables for a surprise and chatted with a Finnish team Superfast Unicorns. They had a very beautiful team table as well.
Then it was time for lunch in the Heureka center’s cafe. We were served potatoes, meatballs, beetroot cutlets and salad. It was very delicious but it was interesting that the Finnish milk was so sweet. During lunch we were discussing about our feelings from the day and how to make our robot game stronger.
Our day continued with the project and core values presentation which went quite well. We managed to speak about everything we had planned and got good feedback right away. "It was almost perfect," said the judges, which made us think why not entirely perfect =D They also asked us a few questions and we gifted them some Estonian candy, our project flyer and team stickers.
The robot games started at 13.15 but our first game didn't go as planned. We got 175 points which is much less than we hoped to get. Before our second game we decided to change the strategy and removed the 2nd run (the trident one) because it didn't work at all and took away time to do other better working missions. Our second game was the best today, we got 210 points. Before the 3rd game we had a 5min practice time too. The practice times were very short as we are used to the 20min practice times in Estonia. In our 3rd game we got 185 points. Luckily we still have 2 weeks til our Estonian final and plenty of time to fix our robot game (which will be our priority starting from our next meeting).
After the competition part was over, we packed half of our stuff together. Then we went exploring the Heureka centre as we had some free time. It was very similar to the Ahhaa centre in Tartu, Estonia. For instance, we got to ride a bike very high in the air, under the roof. There were many cool installations, like a dancing robot-bird, a robot hand for rock-paper-scissors and a huge woolly-mammoth. We had much fun and took a team selfie with the mammoth.
Then began the ending ceremony. As a first thing everyone received a medal for participating. And then it was time for the trophies. It was quite a surprise when the first trophy (Heureka special award) was given to us! We are very happy for that. But it was an even bigger surprise that we also got a 2nd trophy! This time it was the “Motivate” trophy. We were very shocked about our double win but at the same time very, very thankful. We are very happy for our friends Superfast Unicorns too, because they also won 2 trophies! The robot performance trophy and the Finnish Champion trophy! Huge congratulations to them, we are so proud! Lots of luck for their future adventures! If we are lucky, maybe we’ll meet them again in Greece;)
If the ending ceremony had finished, we thanked the organizers by gifting them a box of Estonian candy. We talked with a few judges - they complimented us for our robot’s gearbox and wished us luck in our Estonian finals. We also had a chat with one of the team's teachers who was very fascinated by our website, decorated table and project flyers. We shared our knowledge about making a website, different website bases and possibilities. He said we had done an amazing job and that he definitely shares our ideas with his team:) We shared our contacts for further communication as well.
After packing all our stuff and visiting the Heureka gift shop, it was finally time to get going again. We headed to a shopping center to get some medicine for Greete’s illness. We parked our car in some random parking lot. It was a little adventure to get out of the parking lot (garage) because as it came out, it was an apartment's private one. But we managed to survive. In the center we all had about an hour of free time for shopping and eating. We all ended up sitting in Subway (Greete and Mirtel were eating) and talking about our emotions from the day. Everyone was very satisfied with the results.
Fun fact, throughout the day we had this “Gru and Minions” system in our team: One person (switching every 3 hours) is Gru and gets to have control about everything and everyone. His/her job is to share tasks for other members. Everyone else are Minions and their only job is to listen to the Gru. This prevented everyone from being like headless chickens.
Our ship back left at 19.30. As it was quite stormy outside, the ship rocked uncomfortably. We sat down and started working with our research file. There's no time to waste, our finals are waiting!
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