The Spelling Bee

This is one of those all-American events that I wouldn't have missed in a million years! Although still burdened with the consequences of my recent Spring Break road trip (more info on this later) and still jet-lagged despite the low time difference between the east and the west coast (3 hours)...well, I had to go!
First of all: what the heck is a Spelling Bee? Easily explained: it is a spelling competition, usually for kids. However, in my case, it was a yearly-tradition spelling competition for adults meant to raise funds for locally organised educational projects. Basically, different teams of adult spellers alternate on the stage proving their ability to write various words, which are pronounced, defined and used in the context of a sentence by an official reader. A board of judges, then, decides who stays and who goes. If this were to be all what happens on such occasions...well, that would be way boring! The fun part comes with the manner teams present themselves.As a matter of fact, each team not only has a name that features the word 'BEE' (most of them, at least), but they also dress up accordingly (or just in a funny, unflattering way...like we did!!). My team, 'the bamBEEnos' (we had to come up with an Italian name containing the sound 'bee') saw Fabiana, Laura and myself competing with all native English speakers. I must say we did our best...but we went down at 5th or 6th word ('ZIGGURAT' was the nasty word!!). It was a lot of fun nonetheless: it was truly impressive to see how a whole community could get together and put such a show up for a good cause.