ALMOST FAMOUS

I've seen lots of different reality shows where a panel of judges decide the fate of a stage full of hopefuls. The judges are usually famous or at least well-known faces in the spotlight. This morning in Tena, Ecuador, Joe and I were those judges. I'm not sure if that reflects how well known we are here, but it was pretty cool. And the fact that we were judging an eighth grade spelling bee doesn't make it any less cooler.


We were at National High School by 9am this morning sitting at a table with bottles of water in front of us, just like real TV judges. The kids would be spelling in English words like boat, milk, shorts, apple. There were about twenty contestants in clean uniform mouthing the words as we pronounced it to them. Some spelled the words quickly as if they had gotten the word list the night before. Others had us repeat the words several times over and still had no clue what we were saying, even after putting the word in a sentence. Maybe it would have helped if they understood the sentence. 


Carlie sat behind us and I could feel that she was shocked that such easy words were being given to eighth graders. I knew she wanted to get up on the stage and spell all of those stupid words backwards. A confident smiley girl ended up winning and I didn't get to see her receive her prize, because like a true TV reality star judge, I had to run out and take an important phone call on my phone. It was the internet company calling me. They weren't going to install our internet since we weren't home.