Let the Journey Begin!

Better late than never, so let’s kick-start this blog post!

Hello Everyone, a warm welcome from Team X-Cube! We are excited to share with you what the team has experienced in the last couple of weeks. We will show it in a quick summary.. Are you ready? Lets gooooooo!

We flew out of Melbourne on the 2nd of November for a total of 22 hours flight. We had a stopover in Dubai, and then we arrived in Geneva. Fun Fact: Did you know that Emirates Airlines offered to take and print out instant Polaroid photos for free? Well maybe it was for kids, but we were closest to the ages of kids.. so yeah, we got it, too! weeee!

We were in Geneva, Switzerland, for about two weeks or so. We were residing in an apartment in St. Genis Pouilly, France, while we had our workshop at CERN IdeaSquare in Geneva. It was known as the two-week intensive program, and you can guess it sure was intensive. Teams from Germany and New York joined us, too. It was really fun too as we had lots of games, talks, sharings and teamwork within ourselves and the other teams from the two countries.

Team X-Cube was also in charge of facilitating an energiser game. The energiser game is an activity in which all the groups, including the teaching team, will participate at the start of the day. This was a way for us to be energised and “Wake up” to start the day. As a team, we decided to play a game of Human Knots where everyone was asked to hold on to each other’s hands from any direction opposite of them in a circle. They were not supposed to hold the hands of the person next to them. We feel we did decently well and had smiles and waves of laughter throughout, so it was a success!

We went on trips to the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at CERN, did some Cloud Chamber Experiment and to the United Nations, too! We felt fortunate to be able to take part or be there to experience. It was such a privilege to be given this opportunity which we can proudly say we were there to witness them. 

Not forgetting our Fondue Night! Living the life of the Swiss people! Such a cheesy night, although for some of us… it wasn’t the right amount of cheese… 

In the final week, the focus and attention went to the opportunity and technology cards we created before heading to Geneva. It was pretty nerve-wracking as we had teleconference calls with researchers and scientists when we were just students studying to be designers. It was an experience as we tried to break down the scientific terms and understand them in our ways. For some technology, it was much easier after the call, but for some, we still struggled and also tried to think of it as creativity. We had to do our final presentation and present two ideas that we liked and felt had the most potential that we could work on. It was really challenging as we only had 24 hours to work on the ideas, slides and all. Eventually, we decided to work on E-Waste and Agriculture Farming.

And… that was how our two weeks went at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The experience and memories formed at CERN will forever be treasured. From strangers to friends to family, this was how the 2 weeks intensive brought us together despite the 101 sorts of emotions we experienced.

Catch you guys in our next post! Bye for now:D