The International History Bee and Bowl (IHBB) is an off-shoot fro the National History Bee and Bowl, a history-based quiz competition founded by David Madden with money he won from his 19-day streak on Jeopardy.
I’ve written about my participation in these events before. Last year we managed to qualify for the Asian Championships, which were held in Hong Kong (pictures here!).
This year, there were two competitions in Dubai, and our team participated in both of them. We’d been practicing as a team every other week for a few months, which was good because we had some new small kids that made up a middle school team, and they did awesomely. I’m so proud of those baby history fans.
At the first competition we did well, coming in second place in the varsity division. Our middle school team got first place automatically, because they were the only middle school team there, but they also beat some teams higher than them, which they were super excited about. The varsity team (my team) got creamed at the second competition by the two other varsity teams, but then creamed the two junior varsity teams we played. I felt bad. The middle school team won everything, though. They rock.
The plan, now, is to go to the first-ever International History Olympiad instead of this year’s Asian Championships in Thailand. The Olympiad is going to be a week-long event held in July at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This event is going to have different kinds of competitive and non-competitive activities filling an entire week. Most of the participants are staying in the dorms, so I’m going to be completely surrounded by history nerds for a whole week. This is fine.
Here’s the most important part about all of this: at the Dubai competition last year, there was this awesome giant cat hanging out in the office of the school we were competing at.
Well, it was still there this year.
This cat single-handedly made getting up early that morning completely, 100% worth it.
Daisy M. Hall 