samantha's 1st district spelling bee

i'm so proud of her! 
this is the first district spelling bee she has been to and she did really great.

so here is the summary of how the bee went for her.
she is in 6th grade(we actually don't do grades here at our house but this is what age she is) and she competed against kids who were as old as 8th grade.

1st round there were 28 students at the beginning.
her word was rucksack
26 kids made it into the 2nd round
her 2nd round word was rehearse
25 kids made it into the 3rd round
her 3rd round word was parfait
20 kids made it into the 4th round
her 4th round word was chronology
15 kids made it into the 5th round
her 5th round word was megalopolis
12 kids made it into the 6th round
her 6th round word was terrapin*
9 kids made it into the 7th round
her 7th round word was gynarchy**
7 kids made it into the 8th round
her 8th round word was visceral-  she spelled it viceral and immediately after saying the "c" realized. 

*she had never heard of the word terrapin.  she had trouble hearing what the lady said so asked for her to repeat it a few times. 
**she(and i) had never heard of this word before either.  but once she asked for the language of origin and the lady said "greek" i knew she had it.  and i also knew it probably had to do with women in a leading governmental position.  i figured gyn is like gynocology and misogyny having to do with women. 

anyhow- the last two guys battled over words for a bit.  the runner up misspelled a word samantha could spell.  tremulous.  and the winner spelled that right and then went on to spell innumerable.

right when she came off the stage after missing her last word she said "i want to do this next year".
:)  she has learned so much in her quest to the district spelling bee.  i have no doubt she'll be back at it next year- pouring over her lists and learning words from many different languages. 
chris and i both agree that we would have been out in round 6 when a boy correctly spelled roodebok(a redish antelope- from dutch).