Kyla Chen: EGMO 2025 Report

When I was chosen to be part of New Zealand’s first European Girls’ Math Olympiad team, it felt unreal and in the three months following, I was filled with excitement for this event and the opportunity to visit Kosovo, a country I knew little about. In the mock exams I did in preparation, I was consistently getting bronze and even silver so my hopes of getting a medal was high. Spoiler alert: I did not.

A loooooooong way from home

Spending around 24 hours in a plane with the limited leg-room of economy class with over 30 hours of travel time and an unknown source of a crying baby is an experience of its own. On the 8th of April, the EGMO team met Josie at Auckland Airport where we would partake in such a perilous journey. I had the privilege of adding an extra 40 minutes to my flight time, being the only team member not from Auckland.

After a possible system malfunction, the Istanbul airport security being fascinated by our mascot Kauchy the Kiwi (that is, Cauchy with a K), Sophie’s bag being stopped at every airport, Sophie being stopped for her Hong Kong passport, and me becoming sick from overpriced wonton soup at Hong Kong airport, we finally touched down in Prishtina, Kosovo, on the 9th of April.

€2 breakfast for six?

Once in Prishtina, we met up with our deputy leader Brena, who had travelled from Australia. In the two days before the official arrival day, we stayed at an Airbnb with some incredibly hard to open locks, possible foreshadowing to the team’s experience in a horror escape room.

My first thoughts of the city was: wow it’s so different, holy moly food is cheap ha take that New Zealand prices - OH MY GOD THAT CAR IS TRYING TO RUN ME OVER. Between escaping being run over by reckless drivers, the team had a lot of fun eating local food and playing games (except for the cup game which was a source of great anxiety).

During this time, we also sat day 2 of the 2014 EGMO as a mock. We sat day 1 before our trip, in which I scored 7-0-0, already meeting the bronze cutoff for that year. In the day 2 exam, I spent way too much time making no point-worthy progress on Q4, which seemed deceptively solvable due to it being the first question and being number theory, my strongest area. Then, in a last-ditch effort, I attempted Q5, a combi question, which I actually reached the solution in 5 minutes. Unfortunately, with me having zero self-confidence, I didn’t write down the full solution which means in the end I got a score of 0-2-0, despite having a solution capable of the full 7 marks.

Moral of the story: WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING.

Everyone loves Kauchy the Kiwi

On the 11th of April, we parted ways with our team leader Josie and moved into Hotel Parliament. There we met our guide Aria, not knowing the huge role she played making the rest of our time in Kosovo truly remarkable. We introduced Tony Wang styled mafia, featuring everyone’s favourite roles the pig and the ice cream man, to the guides at our hotel and the Kyrgyzstan team. Already, New Zealand was cementing our title as the most sociable team at EGMO.

The following day at the opening ceremony, we had the opportunity to meet many other teams. This includes conversing with the Chinese team in Chinese, saying ‘bonjour’ to the French team because three years of French at school has apparently vanished out of my mind, and speaking in English with our country’s coloniser the UK team, as well as the fellow colonised Australia, Canada, and the formerly colonised US teams. There were also many other teams we talked to; again, New Zealand was very sociable and dare I say, everyone’s favourite team?

I discovered that the point when waving becomes awkward is roughly after 20 seconds, which is evident in the video of New Zealand at the opening ceremony where I made an attempt to stop waving only for it to look even more awkward. Another discovery I made was after Citadel, one of the sponsors of EGMO, gave a girl a brand new Airpod just for answering when the company was founded, where I realised that the film The Wolf of Wall Street was most likely NOT an exaggeration and finance bros just rolled like that.

These minor discoveries aside, the biggest take-away from the opening ceremony was definitely the vast range of different cultures, yet all of us was able to come together through our love for mathematics (except I felt like an impostor as I was probably the only one there who is not planning to study a maths-centred subject at university).

Day 1 - I face my greatest foe: my bladder

We arrived bright and early to the Klan Arena on the day of the Exam, only to wait outside for over an hour due to a delay. The rest of the exam followed the same theme, with distractions, a tiny screen with the time, and to my worst nightmare, a veryyyyyy loooongggg toilet queue to the point where I had to declare it was an emergency and cut the line to the bathroom.

The exam itself also went terribly. I solved Q1 within the first hour, however, as Brena informed me later, most people who solved it my way did not get the full mark because of the last step. I managed to make the most progress on Q2 out of the team, and scored higher for that question than the girl who got gold in the Ukraine team. I had a lot of the right thinking needed for a full solution so I am quite sad that I didn’t solve it. Q3 was geometry which I didn’t even attempt, which in hindsight I did make the right choice because it was an extremely difficult problem, even for those good at geometry. My score for day 1 was disappointingly 5-2-0.

But as I have come to find, maths was only a small part of EGMO. The exam’s chaos was quickly forgotten and replaced with absolute awe as we entered the venue for the Citadel dinner, appropriately named ‘Grand Events’. Our jaws were dropped to the glass floor over the water, leading us into the entrance of an even opulent interior. With the amount of free money Citadel has on their hands, I think I’m allowed to say that the food was not good. I mean, considering the lavish venue, you’d think the food would be at least finishable right?

Spirits were high on the bus ride back, as we got everyone on the bus to sing their national anthem. We performed the NZ national anthem quite poorly, and the Maori words confused the Kosovo guides as they did not realise we had two official languages.

Day 2 - I don’t cry over boys, I cry over Turbo the snail

Isabelle’s hear me out is Turbo the snail (because she loves combi so much).

Day 2 was worse than day 1. I opened the exam to Q4 being geometry and immediately I knew I was screwed. Q5, the Turbo question, in hindsight was do-able… if only I had understood the question before the exam was over. Somehow I scored a non-zero mark on that question. Later, Turbo and Q5 will become the bane of the coordinators and markers existence. For some reason, I had the delusion I could solve Q6 because of a previous NZMO workshop problem that looked similar, and actually submitted 4 pages of a ‘solution’ only to get a big fat 0 because even though I had the right construction in my rough work, there was no way anyone could understand it. So in the end, my score for day 2 was 0-1-0… yay.

I resorted to drinking away my sorrows with a raspberry mocktail and gossiping with Brena. At some point, I even got interviewed by the local news, which did not go so smoothly due to some misunderstandings. We then headed over to the Jane Street Hub at Hotel Sirius where the team made matching bracelets. At night, Bella and I stayed up late and played Avalon with members of the Norway and Poland team and I became great friends with NOR4.

I discover my new passion: go-karting

The first of the two excursions was a trip to the second largest city in Kosovo, Prizren, where it was a steep climb up to the Prizren fortress. Stupidly (another common theme here), I decided to wear the worst possible outfit one could to climb a mountain: leather shoes and a skirt. I found the excursion to be culturally enriching. On the way there, each country on the bus played a song from their country and it was interesting to hear music in different languages that were not English. After much debate, New Zealand played both Lorde and Stan Walker, it seemed neither of which was very popular - honestly valid in my opinion. In New Zealand, we don’t have any old sites like castles and fortresses due to the country’s young history, so being able to witness the ruins of ancient buildings like the fortress in Prizren is what I think makes any trip to Europe so enlightening.

The following day, our second excursion was at the Prishtina Mall, the biggest mall in Eastern Europe. After much deliberation and waiting, our first activity was the escape room with the NZ team and two members of the Norway team. We were then told that all the non-scary rooms were full, leaving us with the only option to choose the least scary sounding one, a room called ‘haunted mansion’. Also the worker specifically told us that this room has no jump scares.

Liar.

We didn’t even make it to the first jump scare of a dismembered hand popping out of a cabinet before we lost a group member, Isabelle. Earlier, I said that our experience with hard to open doors was foreshadowing to this escape room. Well, this was because I managed to solve a puzzle that was supposed to unlock in the next door except the door was stuck and needed a large force to push it open. However, all of us were too terrified and too busy screaming to touch the door for more than 2 seconds so we spent a good 20 minutes screaming in a corner before a worker had to come in and open it for us. Eventually, we managed to escape because the puzzles were pretty easy for five EGMO participant’s brains (don’t ask what happened with the coloured dice puzzle) and after the traumatic crawling through a hole in the wall and another few jumpscares, we made it out into the light. All the grasping onto each other and screaming made the escape room a 10/10 bonding experience.

Next was probably my favourite thing of all the activities: go-karting. Just before we went in, Aria told me how to drift on a go-kart, which I managed to do a few times against the instructions of the safety video which said we must slow down when turning. Call me fast and furious because I am speed. I think I enjoyed karting the most out of my team, probably because I had the experience of driving a car (not nearly as fun) and they were slow-pokes who kept crashing.

Goodbye Kosovo

At the closing ceremony, the rest of my team who got either bronze or honourable mention, sat on one wing of the hall while I sat with Brena and Josie on the other. While I was disappointed to be seated away from my team, feeling like it was a physical representation for my glaring failure, the feeling soon dissipated as I harnessed my attention to UNK's closing ceremony bingo, which entertained me greatly. I also enjoyed yelling out Isabelle’s name as she received her bronze medal (go Isabelle!).

It was at the party after the closing ceremony where I learnt something about myself. I actually do enjoy partying under specific circumstances. In fact, this whole trip made me see a side of myself that likes socialising, is extroverted, and oddly patriotic. There was something about being with like-minded girls all around the world that brought me out of my shell and showed me that making friends doesn’t have to be hard.

Faleminderit (thank you)!

Originally, I had my heart set out for bronze, or even silver, and while it was disheartening to return home empty-handed in terms of awards, I certainly did not return empty handed overall. The real award of EGMO is truly the people you meet and the experience itself. In that respect, everyone really is a winner (as cliche as that sounds).

I’d like to thank my team: Sophie, Isabelle, and Bella, for being the best team ever and for embarking on this journey with me. Josie, our team leader, and Brena, our deputy leader, for making NZ’s first year at EGMO possible, for fighting for our marks, and for always being there for us. Thank you Aria, for being more than just our guide, but a friend for life. Thank you to my dad for introducing me to maths olympiad and always helping me become better at maths. Lastly, to everyone who I met in Kosovo, thank you all so much for being a part of what makes this experience unforgettable and life-changing, I hope I get to see you all again someday.

It feels like so long ago when Kosovo was just another country in Europe and other participants in EGMO merely a name on the website. But now, I share so many experiences of joy, sadness, disappointment, fear (mainly from the escape room) with them in that country, and for that I will be forever grateful.

More group photos

Jane Street Questions

How has attending this event demonstrated greater knowledge of available career paths in science and technology?

By the presentations from Jane Street and Citadel, I was able to see where maths can take you. Also, talking to other participants about their future gave me more insight into available career paths.

How has attending this event enthused or inspired you to pursue science and technology careers?

My heart has been set on studying Psychology at university since before I even began my maths olympiad journey so this event has not really changed my future plans.

Has attending this event changed about how you feel about science or technology?

I have always had a deep appreciation for science and technology so no.