Watching the sun come up from one of the many hillside cell towers is one of the simplest pleasures to experience in Switzerland. On most mountains in Switzerland, one can find publicly-accessible towers to climb, yielding views nothing short of amazing. On the day following the first ZAHW graduation party since COVID-19, a few students were awake at 5:30 a.m. to view the beautiful sunrise atop of a nearby cell tower.
Inside the classroom, groups spent time finalizing the design of their robots. Half of the teams had their line followers functioning well, while others faced various challenges. Hardware was not siding with the students today, resulting in two line-sensors to go up in smoke—literally.
While some teams programmed line-following algorithms, others debugged motors. Michael was the superman of the day, helping students who had ridiculous questions all while maintaining a smile on his face. A line sensor was even fixed by him on the fly for one team.
Getting out of bed is hard after a night of exchanging cultures with local students and working on design is even more difficult. We all felt the burden of this travel-fed exhaustion and several of us took a restful lunch break in the shade. Some students were even caught napping while working on their robots.
Though the day was long, it was received with a revitalizing dinner at the Wuethrich residence. Michael and his family graciously prepared a grilled meal of specialty sausage featuring a dessert prepared by Michael's children, Noah, and Mila. Their house was a short train ride from Winterthur, located in a beautiful rural area. We played soccer and spike-ball with Noah and Mila, resulting in loads of fun and an injured toe.
The train back was a well needed rest after a long day. A student was challenged by a local man with an Australian accent to put on a festive piece of headwear.
Upon returning to the hostel, students could be found packing their bags for an early bus-ride to Geneva. The upcoming trip was hoped by students to be relaxing, even though some still had much work to do preparing for the upcoming robotics challenges.
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Shane S.
