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India / Indes 2nd International Young Mathematicans Convention
November 29th to December 6th 2006

Canadian International School of Egypt.
Come and see who we are!



From November 29 th to December 6 th 2006, eleven students and three teachers from the Canadian International School of Egypt attended a Mathematics Competition in Lucknow, India.

We flew to Mumbai with Egypt Air and had the chance to visit the city for a day and a half. I was surprised to see so many squatters along the river, and so many people sleeping on the streets. I spent many months in India in 1998, but forgot how poor this country is. We visited Elephantine Island and students had great fun buying & bargaining for souvenirs. Monkeys stole chips and Coke bottles from our students! It was amazing!

On December 1st 2006, we flew to Lucknow (click here to see where is Lucknow) to attend the Second International Mathematics Convention at the City Montessori School.

19 countries, 86 schools, 178 teams participated in this event.
The event was extremely well organized and bigger than I had expected. The opening ceremony lasted 4 hours and looked almost like the opening ceremony at the Olympics!

For four days, our students participated in team contests, individual quizzes, workshops, team relay activities and one wonderful cultural presentation. This competition was the perfect occasion to learn new mathematics skills, develop problem solving skills and enlarge social skills.

The level of difficulty of the competition was beyond what we had anticipated. There was little time to prepare as we learned about the competition only a month before. Nevertheless, our students tried their very best and achieved satisfactory results, but we didn't win any medal!

The day after the competition, we’ve toured Lucknow and I was very impressed with the old monuments and mosques dating from the 16th-17th century.

Lucknow is NOT a tourist destination, so we were in real India amongst holy cows,
chickens and millions of east Indians...

Where is Lucknow?
Click here to see a map.

Who came on the trip?

 

Our T-Shirt!

Come and see sample problems solved during the convention.
(word file)

List of participating
Schools


We flew with Air Sahara from Mumbai to Lucknow and 4 pieces of luggage were lost. You can probably imagine student's faces when they learned that they would have to spend their entire trip in India with no clothes... Here is a complaint letter I sent to the airline:


To whom it may concern:

Last week, eleven students and three teachers (including myself) from the Canadian International School of Egypt attended the mathematics convention at City of Montessori School, Lucknow, India. We flew from Mumbai to Lucknow with Air Sahara and were highly disappointed by the quality of the service provided by your airline.

On December 1st, computers were down at Mumbai Airport, so luggage had to be checked in manually. Bags were not tagged properly and the lady at the check-in counter was responding to our concerns in a very poor manner.

During the flight, my wife (who is another teacher) was served a molded omelet. Luckily, she didn’t get sick.

Arriving in Lucknow, four pieces of luggage were missing. We waited over an hour for the bags and then had to claim the missing luggage. Many bags came out of the airport without any identification tags, so we didn’t know which suitcases were missing. The working staff at Lucknow airport continuously blamed us for the bags that had no ID, but theses tags were taken away while on the aircraft.

The man at the airport systematically refused to write down names or numbers, mentioning on several occasions that everything was in his head.

Two students were lucky enough to receive their bags 2 days after our arrival, but two students received their bags only on the last day of the convention, which means they were wearing the same clothes for over 4 days. You have to realize that the loss of luggage put extra stress on our students and I have the feeling that some of them underperformed during the mathematics competition because of this.

We went shopping with these two students on the third day, to provide them with basic clothes and hygiene products, but this extra cost had to be paid by the students as your airline continuously refused to give us some sort of compensation.

We paid 315$US per return ticket, so we gave your airline an approximate total of 4400$US. I do not feel we received proper service for this amount of money and therefore, I am requesting financial compensation for these unfortunate events. We kept the bills for what students bought in Lucknow and this adds up to about 150$US only. I can send you the bills, if needed.

I hope you understand my frustrations, and will consider my request promptly.

If you have any comments or questions; please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely

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