I decided to break my tradition of writing nightly about the day's events to hang out with everyone before leaving. I mean, only a limited time to see them and such a long time on a plane with not much better to do than write...

Yesterday was Helsinki Day, which I had been looking forward to since getting the schedule. Because who doesn't want to get to see a really awesome city?

In the morning, we boarded the buses and took off. Once we arrived, we had a wonderful tour inside the bus that allowed us to at least get a glimpse at most of the major landmarks of the city. That includes THE SIBELIUS MONUMENT!!! (For anyone who doesn't know, he's a famous composer. Go listen to Finlandia.) Then, we had a short amount of time to sight-see with our groups. We got to check out another part of the University of Helsinki and some of the nice parks and statues.







Lots of water, lots of trees. I like it.


Next, everyone took a short ferry ride to Suomenlinna. It's an island (actually multiple islands), which probably doesn't tell you much since Finland has a lot of islands. Only a ten minute ferry ride away, it's a picturesque island with an old fortress on it. Rather than just sight-see, we did an Amazing Race around the island. Yep, another race. Groups raced to complete various tasks that took them by major sites on the island such as the church. While my team did not win, we really enjoyed it. Plus, there was a little rain!





Playing soccer after finishing the race.


After a short lunch, we returned to Helsinki and had time to do a little more in the city. Team Applied Mathematics joined forces with Urban Planning and bought souvenirs, went to a grocery store to get some food (where food = candy), and just walked around the city.

If you ask me, the weather was nice and the scenery was absolutely wonderful. There was no way we could have covered all of Helsinki in such a short amount of time, but I'm glad we at least got a glance at everything.

After returning, there was a Closing Ceremony * cue sadness *. Everyone received some formal awards, some nice pictures, and some nice informal gifts from their group guides. The guides made nice speeches for their groups, and it made many people teary-eyed. How sad that everything is ending! The group work over, the guides no longer our daily companions! There was a camper speech done by Sruthi and Zhilin, which was great as well. I could give more details about the whole thing, but I don't want to ruin the surprises for future campers.




Campers and Guides hanging out. I actually don't know when this was taken, but I don't have pictures of the closing ceremony yet and I needed something to put here.

Afterwards, the formal schedule of the camp was over and the "after party" began! Everyone had lots of fun, said lots of goodbyes, and gave lots of hugs. Some people, particularly those with early flights (myself included), pulled an all-nighter.

Special thanks to everyone who was a part of this camp - campers, guides, organizers, media team, behind-the-scenes people, and so on. I won't mention names here, but these people know who they are. Our amazing experience would not have been possible without all of these wonderful people.