Recently, my daughter, Aryan, placed first in their school district’s Spelling Bee at her grade level, she is currently at the third grade. She competed with third grade students from other elementary schools in their district and she came on top. She was selected to represent her school by besting other third graders in a Spelling Bee held in their own school.

Aryan is really good with words and her memory is really good too. She is able to memorize the theme songs from her favorite Animes just by listening to it. She may not know what it means since its in Japanese but she can sing it with clarity. Sometimes, I would just ask her to sing to me a Visayan song (Visaya is one of the main island group in the Philippines and it is also one of the major dialects used in the country) which she learned by listening her Grandfather who sings songs in Visaya. It’s always fun to hear her sing in Visaya even though she doesn’t know what the words mean.

Anyway, her preparation for the District Spelling Bee was really hard. Her English teacher trains her everyday right after school. She also practices at home supervised by her mother and her training continues even at weekends.

It was not an easy win for her because the teacher who was giving out the words to spell pronounces the words differently. When the last words were spelled, she was tied with another student. Both of them were asked to spell an extra word to break the tie but this time, the weird pronunciation of the teacher worked against the other student who was not able to spell the word correctly.

Now, she is preparing for the division level where she will compete against the winners from the other districts. My wife and her English teacher are again training her. Last year, she also competed at the Division level but wasn’t successful enough to get into the top 3 spots. Even though she didn’t win, her attitude about it was really mature. She wasn’t sad or anything. She even told us that she’ll do better next time. We are really proud of her.

This year, no matter what place she gets, she will always be a winner to us!

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