Monday 23 March
Our train took off at seven o’clock in the morning. We had a direct train from Weert to Schiphol. When we were at the airport we walked around, showed our passport and boarding passes. Our airplane was scheduled to depart at five to eleven, but there was an hour delay.
Once we arrived in London, we had lunch and went to Buckingham palace. Yasemin and Huib had never been in London before. We also visited the Houses of Parliament, the M&M store and the restaurant Vapiano before going to Tonbridge.
In Tonbridge we went to our room, played a game, drank a cup of tea and went to bed.
Tuesday 24 March
We had breakfast at a quarter past eight in the pub next to our hotel. We met the boys from Asten and their teacher just after breakfast. We then left the hotel for Tonbridge Grammar School, where the Team Math Challenge took place. As you have read in the earlier article, there were four rounds: the group round, the cross number, the shuttle and the relay. Around three o’clock the prices were handed out to the winning teams. There were thirty-three teams and we were ninth.
After the TMC, we went sightseeing in the rainy town of Tonbridge. There wasn’t much to see in Tonbridge. There was a main street with some shops and there was a castle, which was actually a wall.
When we had seen everything, we went back to the hotel where we had dinner and played some nice games.
Wednesday 25 March
We travelled the whole day, because we had to go back to the Netherlands. We travelled together with the group from Asten. After breakfast, we walked to the train station. Only one train departed each hour and because we did not know when the train departed, we had to wait for fifty minutes. Luckily we left really early and still had plenty of time to get on our plane. At the airport we had lunch, before we boarded the plane. In the Netherlands, we said goodbye to the group from Asten as we travelled by train and they travelled by car.
The trip was really fun and it was a great experience. We are really happy that we were the runners-up last year and Mrs Engbersen took time to arrange the trip.
Huib Baetsen, Suzanne Hendriks, Yasemin Kaya and Pim Rietjens (2 and 3 TTO-VWO).
Pictures can be found in our photogalery.