April 28th- Thursday Competition Day 1
SAS Pudong has had a full two days in St. Louis. We arrived late Monday night after being delayed in Chicago due to Storms. After checking in all the team fell into bed. We had a slow easy morning on Tuesday meeting for breakfast in the Westin Hotel. Following our breakfast meeting we decided to do a bit of touring and walked down to the St. Louis Arch, about a 15 minute walk. Four of our group braved the trip up the Arch. Following we walked up to the Museum and then returned back to the hotel in the early afternoon for some team planing time. We all were/are suffering from jet lag. Mr David, Mr and Mrs Boyer, Kevin and Owen braved the evening and went out to eat at a local barbecue place. The line was long, but it was worth the wait. Alex and Will had crashed and fallen asleep we brought food back for them.
Wednesday was a very full day. We were up and breakfasted by 8:30 and headed down to the tourney area. We were early in which was a good thing in that we were not rushed in setting up our booth. We met teams for around the world. We had an especially good time meeting with one of the teams from Lebanon. After setting up our booth, the team took turns walking through the pit area. We had the great fortune of meeting up with the Martins, past SAS students/parents who are down from Michigan with and FTC and FRC teams. It was great meeting up with them and discussing the tournament process. Following a coaches meeting the team headed back to the hotel where we took a 2 hour power nap then got back up to work on presentations and planning for Thursday’s competition.
Today, Thursday, we are headed down to the tournament site early. We have an 8 am practice time then begin our judging times at 9:40 am. This begins a full hour of presentations. There is a break for lunch then the team has 3 practice rounds on the boards. Our full scored missions begin Friday.
Pictures from yesterday.
SAS Pudong FLL Team in St. Louis
April 27th. The SAS FLL team undertook a walkabout Tuesday morning down to the St Louis Arch. Today the meet begins with registration and Pit setup. It will be a long day of setup and practice. Pictures coming this evening.
SAS Pudong Heads to the First World Championships
SAS PD is off To the First World Festival–Today SAS Pudong Lego World Festival Team begins its trip to the Lego World Festival Championships held in St. Louis, Missouri. From Left to Right Alex Chen(10th), and Owen Liang(10th), Kevin Xu(8th), and Will Xu (10th) have been working very hard since February to prepare for this amazing opportunity. We will be not only representing our school, but we will be 1 of three teams representing the country of China.
Together, with two other SAS Pudong First Lego Teams, this team undertook a research project that looked at the way trash is collected and processed out of SAS Pudong. They have created and shared their research findings and will be taking their presentation to show the judges at the Championship. They have completely retooled their EV3 robot competition missions and on their last practice (Saturday) they broke 600 points on the competition board. They are still madly working to complete 1 additional board mission and if they get it and all the stars align they have the potential to break 700 pts which would be an awesome achievement. They have developed and will be presenting a Lego Core Values Presentation and a Design presentation to judges as well at the competition.
The Actual Competition runs from Wednesday, April 27th to Saturday, April 30th. Our SAS team is one of three teams representing China. Yes, the students and coaches (Barbara Boyer, Kevin David, and Tim Boyer) are feeling the pressure but the opportunity to compete and see other teams from around the world in the 4 First Levels (First Lego Jr, First Lego League, First Tech Challenge, and First Robotics Competition) is something that the coaches and most of these students have been working at for the last 4 years.
The Team Activities will be out on Twitter, or you can also check out our blog posts at
- http://sites.saschina.org/pdlibrary/
- http://sites.saschina.org/pdlibrary/sas-fll-2015/
- or follow us using #SASPDFLL
You can follow on twitter @SASPDLIB. Search this #SASPDFLL to see our progress.
You can also follow the Live Feed at the site below.
The Championship will be live streamed at http://www.firstchampionship.org/watch-championship-live
A HUGE thanks to all the volunteers, Faculty and Staff at SAS Pudong that have worked to make this all happen.
Space Camp Friday Night Report
Friday Night – April 1st.
From Tim Boyer
We have finished our Camp experience. We took the students back downtown after graduation today for the afternoon and we have now returned. Students are doing their final packing and getting ready for bed. We will have a very early wake-up tomorrow morning at 4:30 am. We will get on the bus at 5:15 am and head to the airport. Our Flight out is at 8:35 am out of Huntsville. We will head to Detroit and will have a few hours layover before we start our long flight back to Shanghai.
We to the best of our understanding will be landing in Terminal 1 at 1855. We will look forward to seeing you in Shanghai. The flight arrangements for our return trip are below.
We will be flying out of Huntsville on Delta flight 3985. We will be flying from Detroit to Shanghai on Delta flight 583 which will land in Shanghai on April 3 at 1855pm.
- DL3985 SA02APR HSVDTW 0835 1129
- DL583 SA02APR DTWPVG 1628 1855+1
At present, all students are well and healthy. We do have some sniffles and some allergies symptoms due to the amount of pine in the air here. All the students have done well, but they are tired from a long week of being “on” all the time. They are looking forward to returning home and chilling out for a day before returning to school on Tuesday.
We look forward to returning to Shanghai and sharing all the pictures of the week.
PS. We hope we have a quiet night. The last two nights have been a bit interesting, especially with the storm alerts last night. The weather looks good for tonight and our flights tomorrow.
See you in Shanghai!
Friday April 1- Graduation Day
We have had a full few days here. Internet access has been poor. Students graduate this morning. Then we will head out down to the mall area through supper. Last night at camp tonight the we start out trip back very early tomorrow morning. We land in Shanghai Sunday April 3 at 1855pm. We should land in Terminal 1. I will have students text you all when we land. I will send out a longer post tonight. With a recap of the last 2 days activities.
BoyerBookends 