I am going to IOI 2013 in Australia!

For those of you who have never heard of it, The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is “an annual competitive programming competition for secondary school students”, according to Wikipedia.

Each country is allowed to take four students to the IOI and there is usually a country-wide competition known as National Olympiads in Informatics in which the best four students are chosen to represent the country at the IOI.

This year the IOI will be held in Brisbane, Australia. The official website for this year’s IOI can be found here. And here is the teaser:

Welcome to the Aussie IOI from School of Mathematics & Physics on Vimeo.

Since I’m from Portugal, I qualified for the IOI via the Portuguese National Olympiads, known as ONI in Portugal. Out of the 30 students who qualified for the finals, I finished third place and the top four are going to Australia in July (6-13th).

Going to Australia is a big surprise for me - I have never even travelled by plane. Now I have to practice hard and prepare for a completely new experience!