Between 26 – 29 March, the European Schools Science Symposium (ESSS) 2023 took place in Varese, Italy. From our school, there were 9 participants presenting four projects from various domains. We were accompanied by two teachers. On the first day, there was the opening ceremony. On the second day, all the junior and senior project posters were displayed. [Ioana Nicorescu S3E]

This day was arguably the most important of the whole trip as it was the day of presenting. We all presented in front of the judges and then we were allowed to relax for a while at the JRC in Ispra. [Stanley].The best five projects from each category were chosen to be orally presented the next day in front of quite a large audience, including judges, teachers and students. Even though no group from our school was selected for the final oral presentation, it was still a nice and interesting experience. All the participating projects were good and well thought about, including all types of science. Additionally, there were also nice activities like ice skating, astronomy presentations and workshops about robotics. We also had the opportunity to visit the European School Varese (ESVA) with the help of the ESVA staff members. [Ioana]

On the second to last day of the trip, we woke up early to catch a bus from the hotel to JRC Ispra for the presentations of the junior scientists and the seniors. After the presentations, we got the bus to a village called Angera, where we were presented with, in my opinion, the best part of the whole trip which was that we were going to get a ferry to a small island in the middle of a lake. The ferry trip was long but the beautiful scenery, including the Alps surrounding the lake, made up for it. Once we had reached the island, we had 45 minutes or so to explore, and do whatever we wanted to. In this case, I went with a group of four people, and we grabbed some pizza and took pictures of the surroundings. To end this day off, we went back to Varese and went to the cinema to watch a talk about things that are involved with space. [Stanley Johnson S3E] From our point of view, this trip was a great experience having the opportunity to gain a lot of science knowledge and meet many new people.  

Ps. Special thanks to the Parents’ Association for sponsoring our beautiful jumpers.