Last week, during Winter Track practice, aliens from Mars made an unexpected visit with students. The aliens, who preferred the name “Greeners,” wanted to inquire about the school’s involvement in foreign languages as a means of communicating with other schools, such as Ursiline.
One of the track members, Bella Davis, ‘27, described the visit as unexpected but not surprising. She later went on to say that the Greeners had been orbiting the Delmarva Peninsula for a while and had even attempted a landing back in January. Unfortunately, the Greeners’ visit came during one of the snow days, and no one was at the school to greet them.
To aid in educating the Greeners, students from different language courses met them on the bleachers, where they offered the Greeners Gatorade as a gesture of peace and willingness to help. The visitors were very gracious upon accepting the Gatorade, as it is a delicacy on the planet Mars, available only within the volcano they call Olympus Mons. One of the students who met with the Greeners was Jack Byrns ‘27. Jack takes French at Wilmington Friends and has managed to teach them some common words, such as bonjour and merci.
The students then showed them to the Porta-Potty, or as the Greeners put it, the “Throne of Continents.” The Greeners were so mesmerized by the artifact that they completely remodeled the tennis courts for free. The visitors also copied the bathroom design onto a tablet to replicate the same structure on their home planet, Mars.
The Winter Track team’s students then asked about the spaceship the Greeners had traveled in to reach Earth. They called it the Zarla 2000 because it could go 2000 times the speed of sound. The Greeners brought the students on board and showed them the innovations and technologies needed to reach Earth. One of the students, Kevin Byrns ‘29, described the amenities on board the spacecraft as “extraordinary.” Going on to say how there were several different laboratories to study the different environments of space, such as the Kuiper Asteroid Belt and the Lower Earth’s Orbit space junk. Kevin also described the spaceship containing a fully stocked kitchen full of Clif bars, which the Greeners said were remarkably easy on the stomach during space travel.
The Greeners also showed the students the rocketship’s command center, where all the programs, computers, and steering instruments were operated and controlled. The Greeners also showed the students the four-function calculators they had been using for their space travel calculations. In response, the students showed the Greeners a TI-84 calculator and a Desmos computer program. The Greeners were shocked by the complexity and usefulness of these two technologies. After being shown the calculators, the Greeners quickly began incorporating TI-84 calculators into the space command system, as well as Desmos.
All in all, the students and Greeners rather enjoyed the diplomatic meeting and plan to meet again next year.
