Macedonia is Buzz-ing

The last month and a half of my life has been filled with work for the National Spelling Bee. You know you are working on a project way too much when your dreams involve kids spelling words and when you hear a word you think to yourself, "oh, that's on the x grade's word list" (or at least I usually think it to myself- Phil has, however, had to put up with a whole lot of NSB talk).

This year's National Bee, on April 13th, is expected to have between 800-1,000 kids in attendance, along with their teachers and about 80% of Peace Corps Macedonia (including PC staff). This is by far the largest project done here in Peace Corps Macedonia as we have already had over 2,500 kids involved and numbers are still coming in. There are close to 100 Local Qualifying Bees happening in March this year, which is a big increase over last year and we are getting more and more teachers and communities involved. This is definitely a project the kids remember. In September this past year, on the first day of school, I had a 6th grader come up to me and ask when the word lists would be out so he could start studying!

Rather than keep talking about this, I will let some pictures from my Local Qualifying Bee give you a better idea. You can also feel free to check out our Facebook page or our Blog.

An 8th grader trying to qualify- she was spelling "counterfeit". Other 8th grade words include- "admiration", "embarrassed", and "poultry".

Two 8th graders just qualified. I decided this year to make paper bees as the invitations instead of just printing out a half sheet of paper with the information. I was up half the night making them, but it was definitely worth it when the next day there were excited kids "flying" their bees around the halls in between classes. I also gave each student a fun pencil and an eraser (courtesy of the Target Dollar Section and my parents!).

Three 6th graders who qualified- typical Macedonian smiles. I promise they were actually quite excited and happy.

8th graders

6th graders who qualified- again the serious faces.

Group of 8th graders who studied hard and qualified to go to the National Bee!

More 6th graders who qualified. The 6th graders had to spell words like- "university", "tarantula", and "national".

Some of my 5th graders- these girls rock!

Half way to qualifying...

....and he spelled all 12 words correct!

More 8th graders (if you couldn't tell, the two girls were quite proud of their bees and wanted their picture taken over and over again).

6th grader focusing on spelling those words right.

5th grader spelling- They had words like "cake", "basketball", and "family".

 Best Peace Corps project ever*.

 *This statement reflects my personal opinion at this moment.