The regional spelling bee was this past Saturday at Juan Diego High School.
Zach was very nervous so I didn't want to make him pose for a picture since he hates having them taken. Craig got video footage of each of his words but I need to have him send them to me so I only have this picture. This is putting his number on before it started. He was number 1. He wasn't happy about this since he wanted to be somewhere in the middle of the group. There were 79 kids competing. We figured close to a third didn't make it through the first round. Zach made it to round 7 where he was the first one out since he was number 1. There were 11 of them at the beginning of round 7 and one other boy got eliminated in round 7 also. His word was mynheer (sounds like minehair) he spelled it mynheir. The hardest part was this was a word that he hadn't seemed to have any problems with at home. He did great I couldn't have even spelled my own name let alone any of the words that he has had to learn.
This is a picture of the 1150 words that he has been studying for 2 months he has spent a minimum of an hour a day working on these. There were a lot of other kids there that had spent a lot of time studying as well. They all did great but I was a little partial to mine. And in case you are wondering most of the words were pretty crazy they were words that came from 14 different languages and I still can't spell most of them even after practicing with him every day. He had it down to about 12 that we went over on the way to the school that morning so next time you see him feel free to ask him how to spell mihrab, vorlage, gourami, diphthong, sevruga, weimaraner, scherzo, gymkhana or blitzkrieg. You know them they are those words that we all use in everyday conversation :).
After it was all said and done we all agreed that it was a fun experience and Zach is hoping to be able to compete again next year. Thanks to everyone who has supported him while getting ready, all the well wishes and congratulations did a lot to boost his ego. Thanks also for all the positive support for the great job that he did on Saturday.
