80th National Spelling Bee begins in Washington

At this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee, 13-year-old Samir Patel is trying to avoid becoming the Dan Marino of spelling.Samir, a Dallas Cowboys fan from Colleyville, Texas, knows all about Marino's 17-year Hall of Fame career as the Miami Dolphins' quarterback, in which he set records but never won a championship.This week, Samir is one of the favorites to win as he makes his fifth and final appearance in the bee. The 80th annual contest, featuring 286 competitors from the English-speaking parts of the world, opens Wednesday with the preliminary round and concludes with a prime-time finish Thursday night on ABC."If I had to predict who's going to win -- which is a very dangerous thing to do -- I would guess that Samir has a very good chance," said James Maguire, who profiled Samir in the book "American Bee." "If another bad stroke of luck comes along and he needs to go home without the trophy, yeah, I think there would be sort of a bittersweet feeling."Samir charmed the country with a stunning third-place finish as a super-confident 9-year-old four years ago, demonstating a vocabulary beyond his years and charisma to match.Then, in 2004, he stumbled on the word "corposant" and finished tied for 27th. He came close in 2005 but was flummoxed by "Roscian" and placed second. Last year, the audience gasped in shock when he failed to spell "eremacausis," forcing him to settle for a tie for 14th."I feel I've been trying my hardest for the last few years and it hasn't worked out," Samir said. "But life is not completely about the spelling bee and I've learned to realize that. But I will be very disappointed if I don't win."Samir, a home-schooled student, is the only competitor in this year's field returning for the fifth time. He's not the oldest -- there are plenty of 14-year-olds and even a 15-year-old -- but he will no longer be eligible after this year because he is completing the eighth grade. His reputation is such that the bee's director asked him to speak at the opening assembly Tuesday night."Because he's known, the pressure is more on him," said Jyoti Patel, Samir's mother and coach. "And if he doesn't perform, it causes disappointment. But being in the bee for five years we've realized there are so many surprise words, and you don't know who's going to get them or when they're going to come up. There is a lot of luck of the draw involved."Samir shrugs off questions about pressure. He and his mother agreed that she feels it more than he does. She gets so nervous that during the actual week of the bee she turns over the coaching duties to Samir's father, Sudhir."He's the calming influence," she said.Samir is taller, more mature and better able to handle disappointment than the little boy who needed a hug from his mother to ease his tears four years ago. He is well-rounded -- piano and swimming are among his regular activities -- but lately his free time has been devoted to words."As it comes closer," he said, "I'm trying to scrounge every possible minute to study spelling."Next week, whatever the outcome, Samir will be done with bees. But not with challenging himself."I plan on entering other competitions," Samir said. "Math competitions and debate, hopefully. I'll still be busy."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Work Out My Tiny Muscle

Today, I go to our fitness center of CGU, well, maybe it is smaller than the others, but there are fallicities as possible as we need to work out, whatever, to my dismay, only one treadmill that we can use, this time I exercise my biceps brachii, inner and outer head as I used to do, frankly, I work my feet little in my house, so, I work my muscle of my feet hard in the hope that I can jump higher than I did, by the way, before I got the fitness center, the physical experiment make me languid, the lectuer kept talking, talking and god damn talking, making me feel boring, boring and boring, he just treat us students by affliction, well this is just a brench, just forget it, to sum up, I feel happy much than sad, so in my eyes, this is my day.

God Damn Midtern-Exam

This month I post little articles owing to the fact that we students have lots of exams, actually, these exams are important to us, so we prepare for them carefully in the hope that we can win good grades instead of faiure, but the truth is not always smile to me, to my dismay, I do my worst in my exam of biology, whatever, I know the reason why I make this mistake, when everybody burn their oil out, I play games; when other people concentrate in the class, I sleep, as a consquance, I get a grade I think I should not have.

To sum up, I must memory it forever.

Arenas-My Favorite Basketball Player

Some people consider Kobe the best player in NBA, the other say that the LB James, or some other say Nash is the best one, but in my eyes, Arenas is my best.

"Arena"is one word means a place in ancient Rome where gladiators fought with lions, but I knew this word from the NBA. Actually, Arenas is not choosed in the first round draft but the second one, so then, nobody thought he can play well in NBA but himself, wihtout hesitation, he did not only concerntrate on power development to work out the mucsles, but also the skill of playing basketball, and finally, he did it, to everyone's surprise, he becomes the superstar in Wizard.

Whatever, he makes me realized that "Nothing is impossible."

This Ball Game

Whatever, we lose this game finally, but in my eyes, we should overcome something bad in the hope that we can win the other games next time.

In my opinion, our SF and PF all have no arm-twisting to the fellow, actually, we did not use the Jockey for position, Give and go, even the cut without ball, in the overtime, maybe the ambience makes us nervous, then all we have done is shot, shot and shot, but we did not notice the field goal percentage, the 3-pointer percentage comes to ten percent, and the pecentage of 2-point is 66.7 percent, in the key time, despite the multiple foul has come to five times, we still did not focus on their forbidden zone, maybe we notice that, but we passed no ball to the forbidden zone, in other words, it means the strategy did not work out.

To sum up, we have done our best in the most time, but we got into a flap in the overtime. Anyway, the promotion smiles to us or not, I am deeply convinced that under no circumstanced sould we fidget to excess.

As My Wish?

I am a undergraduate, which has written in my profile.I have been dreamed about my life in college for several years, but the life in college is not what I thought about.

In my eyes, the college is somewhere we can learn how to control and use our life, however, I cannot smell any flavor of freedom, all the things are under control by school, for instance, we can not choose the class we attend or not, even, we can not choose the sport we like to play, actually, I am not so angry about it, but we must have foresight.

Not to mention the best college in the world, we just only talk about the best one in Taiwan-NTU, it give her all students freedom instead of selfe-indulgence, on the cournterpart, we are tied up by our school, whatever, our school must think anout us, but we have to think it deeply, if this kind of education can improve us, why is not the Chinese Military Academy the best school?

Blessedness

In my eyes, women want their boyfriends do something tiny for them is just hoping us show our love to them.For instance, when she is lazy to move, buying her lunch and giveing her a glass of water is what she hope,if we men are not glad to do, they may think this person is not worth loving, but we do it happily, or do it with complaint, actually, they all feel it warm.

In truth, something easy that they women can do it by themselves, nevertheless, when the one they love just arround them, they wanna be l little lazy abruptly, they just hope if they say what they want, and then someone serves for them, despite the tiny things, they would be satisfied.

Many men thought that the acquirement for blessedness is high to women, but in fact, women all think it simple, in their eyes, it is needless to say any words like "I love you forever." and "die for her", all the things they care about is when she does something tiny and sweet for us, and we can give it back to her,

because it is not only thoughtful, but also a momentary felicity. Whatever the eyewink,women will never forget.

Therefore, when our girlfriend say"Would you please ties up my shoelace?", and we keep down to do it, this moment is for keeps.

This Memory Will Never Fade Away

I went to the Tai-Zoo-Ker with my classmates, Yo-Gyo and Ge-Wei, was held yesterday by Shou-Ker, to my surprise, we had a plenty of funs there, just like hitting the baseballs with diffirent speeds, or shooting the basketballs to win the scores, pratically, the facilities there are amazing, especially the"Baseball Hitting", which just like the reality that the player throw balls toward your side, it also makes feel I am professional.And the other one is the bowling, but the size of the owling is official, whatever, we still have good time, after all the races finished, I did not win any prize, but I will never regret attending this party tonight.

To do my justice, Tai-Zoo-Ker is somewhere can relax our mind, but it is not at a low prize.....

Nothing Special

I am too tired to say more than ten words.

The Selfless Love

I like to make a psychological evaluation with my friends, once, talking with my friend on phone, I ask a psychological evaluation about weather she is with a single eye or not...

"If you wanted to pass a wide desert to find out your Mr. right, how many shoes would you carry?" I said, "Two, one for me, another one for him." she answer without hesitation, then, I was touched deeply. Actually, the same quation with diffirent people, and some of the answers are one, some other choose five, even, some other choose a dozen, but the same thing is no one wanna carry one for their true love.

Perhaps, love is just like this way, it is needless to explain and modificate, whatever, all the things we can do is cultivate it with our enthusiasm.But, how many people could sacrifice with a selfless heart in this world?When we are slumping in delimma, how many people could care the one they "love" as my friend cares?

When we have to pass a desert to find our true love, how many shoes will we carry?

The Calf Love

There are too many things we must do in our lifes, and one of them is the calf love.When we fall in love with the isomerism for the first time, which also means that we have to take leave of our naive childhood, steering for the next station of our lifes, with more gentle and melancholy.

Do we rember the feel about like? In my eyes, it is just as a electric shock that makes us rubicundity and extinct. Besides, do we still rember the colf love? To me, the colf love is pretty and a innocent feel. When my colf love comes, I did not consider her wealth and background, and all the thing I think about is the feeling with her, and I use my heart to taste instead of talking, because once I talk it out, it may become vulgar.

Everyone all have their dreams about the colf love, including our grandparents and our parents. Merely, the colf love is beautiful and romantic, but most of us can not have a happy ending, due to our age, we may realize the diffirence between the love affairs and nuptial, most of us may launch to seek the helpmate that can suffer and smile together, which is little romanticism. Finally, we become a realist, and the colf love becomes the nutriment of our mind.

Although we might meet our first lover several years ago, and we may find her disadvantages, but we all do not regret falling love with her, because we do not love this person, actually, we love the feel of the navie colf love.

Today is not my day

Today is not my day, I get a cold without any signs, finding out that after my class. whatever, despite my sickness, I still have to work for my family, which is not good to me, because somehow I just thought this world has turned it back on me. After the work, I still did not see a doctor, in my eyes, it is by this that I thought there comes a earthquake, what a terrible feeling! as a consquence, I drive my mortorcycle as fast as I can do to gat home earlier, after taking the medicine, I felt a little better.to make things worse, my homework were all not lived up to , which is a horrible tiding to me, anyway, this is one of my worst experiences.

My First Time to....

Well, this is my first time to post the first essay. I am, John Wu, a fresh man. Actually, I live in my house instead of the dormitory, but somebody may say that live outside is not convenient than the counterpart, in my eyes, I can do so many things that they cannot do in the dormitory, for instance, If I wanna have a drink, I would go with my friends, or if I wanna have a part-time job, I could do it after class, so, living in my house is better,but...why do I say this? OK, whatever this is my first time.