This post has photos from our 2023 trip to the “Top of the World”, Utqiagvik, Alaska.  The text is the story of the Virginia spelling bee I joined last night.

Our local library system hosted an Adult Spelling Bee fundraiser last night.  I haven’t competed in a spelling bee since classroom competitions as a school kid.

I waited until nearly the last minute hoping all 30 slots would fill up without me, but while over 20 signed up, there was plenty of space left for me to nervously join.

I’m no longer used to spelling where I’m trying to get every single letter right, especially not out loud in front of an audience! 

C gave me 10 words to practice spelling out loud before I went,  Twice I left out a letter, which I would have almost certainly got right if I was using paper or a keyboard.  I also completely bungled “entrepreneur”!  Oh well, I don’t know that it would look good for a library board member to walk away with a prize.  While I didn’t want to win, I also didn’t want to fail right away 🙂 

After all of my angst before the event, once we got going it was a lot of fun!  The format was casual and $5 advantages of various types were popular.

Fortunately I did well at the first several rounds, which took the pressure off.  I hadn’t used any of my advantages yet, and was collecting more from the audience faster than I was handing them out to help other competitors.

Most of the contestants were laid back (though the top 5 were  determined).  As the words got harder, I started using advantages such as “skip a word” which gave me another chance on a new word after missing one.  At my end I mistakenly replaced the second “a” in  “lackadaisical” with an “i”.  I played my final skip but didn’t feel bad going out when I also misspelled “hermeneutics”. 

If the library does another Bee next year, I hope I’m brave enough to sign up again.

Check out one of the most interesting places I’ve ever been.  Here is a link to the first of my 4 blog posts on our memorable trip to Utqiagvik (Barrow). https://roaming-nature.com/2023/06/18/utqiagvik-part-1/