J+M+J
Today I won the geography bee! There were only five people I was competing against, but the questions were hard. I got three wrong, and I was asked around fourteen to fifteen. There were several questions I never thought I would get right. The first was, “Persian rugs are often decorated with flowers and ornate geometric designs. They originated in which present day country?” I knew that the empire of Persia turned into Iran, but I thought maybe the empire was so vast that it expanded over one of Iran’s neighbors, and that the rugs originated in that part of Persia. Iran was my best answer, though, and it was correct. The other question was more difficult, and I almost said the wrong answer. The question was, “India is bordered to the north by two landlocked countries. Name one of them.” I almost said China, but I remembered it wasn’t landlocked. Nepal was a tiny country that bordered China to the south, but did it border India? It did. The other answer I could have given was Bhohal, another tiny country, of which I have never heard.
To prepare for the bee, I played computer games on a site that I have in my blog roll. I practiced being able to see the outline of a state and knowing what state it was, and where it was at. That came in handy more than once, not only when we were given a map to answer questions about but being able to visualize the state in my head. I listened to a song that had all the capitals of the USA, but I never needed to know that. I studied rivers, lakes and mountains in the USA, and I used that twice. It is very hard to prepare for the bee, though, because the field of Geography is extremely broad.
Sometime between now and January I will take a test, and if I get higher than a certain score, I will go on to the state bee. I am reading lots of books on countries!
A+M+D+G