Can you see Jake up there? He's right there! The best looking, best-dressed one.
There he is! Jake was a semi-finalist for his school's National Geographic Geography Bee. We would have been more thrilled about his selection had it not meant a big packet of geography factoids to study over the Christmas break...but what are you gonna do?
I ran into Jake's teacher at the exchange over the break, and assured him Jake was studying the packet hard, and that he had also busted out all of our home school resources dealing with geography. His teacher said that wouldn't be necessary, that the questions were coming straight out of that packet...so he should focus on that.
I returned to Jacob with this bit of intelligence...and he set his mind to memorizing the whole thing...and he did.
Here he is about to take his first question...
And he answers it correctly! And again...and again. He breezed through all of the first 7 rounds.
Here's an example...isn't he cute?
Well, he and 5 other kids didn't miss any...and two more only missed one. Then those 8 advanced into the final round...which was "sudden death" (meaning everyone answered every question {in writing}, and anyone getting a wrong answer was eliminated). Oh, and NONE of the questions were in the packet...and they were HARD. It went from zero to 100 like that. The first several questions no one could answer correctly. Some of them left me asking myself, "Did I EVER learn that? Anyway, they kept asking questions until they asked one that 3 of the kids got right, which eliminated the other 5 instantly (including Jake). Then they said, "Wait...there's four trophies...we need a 4th winner" so they did another question which one kid got right to get their four placers.
Jake fought a valiant fight!
And here he is accepting his certificate.
He was SO bummed out he didn't sweep the whole thing. He really thought he had it in the bag. He was devastated, actually. I tried to point out that he was in the top 3 of his class to get selected to begin with, and then was in the top 6 of his whole school...but it fell on deaf ears.
So, I took him home and let him change out of his fancy duds, took him to meet Dad for lunch at the Ocean Breeze (which just happened to be having Italian buffet...Jake's favorite), and then took him back to school (after practicing how to graciously accept his classmates' condolences and good wishes).
It was a good thing we had an informational meeting for his trip that night (in the very same room, no less), because by the time he was watching slides about all the fun things he was going to get to experience, while visiting a neighboring island (living with a Japanese host family for a week)....he forgot all about those pesky mountain ranges, foreign languages and random customs.
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