This past weekend was Katie's (and my) first Quiz trip with the IBC Quiz Team. Lots of people had told us how much fun these trips are, and that it would be an inspiration to Katie for continuing to memorize so many verses-- and they were right. It really was a great experience. At left is one of the only decent pics I got of her with her team.

IBC took 6 teams, 3 senior teams and 3 novice teams (I think novices are ones who have never quizzed before or have only quizzed one previous year). Katie's team was full of greenhorns, and they didn't score so well, but I think they learned a lot from it. The other teams were so quick to buzz in-- esp the senior teams would buzz in before they even knew the whole question. They would hear the key word and then they'd have 30 seconds to formulate the rest of the question and the answer. Yikes, you have to know the material well! I thought I knew it, but I couldn't answer most of those questions-- at least not at the speed they did it.

At left is the hotel we were at the first night-- beautiful! I had 3 7th grade girls in my room-- Katie and 2 of her friends-- and it really went well. Katie loved being with these girls. They all wanted to go swimming right away, so, both nights, as soon as they could get their suits on, we were down to the pool. And they would have stayed for hours, I think. The first night the pool was pretty crowded, tho, and the second night, the chlorine was really bad-- after a while I couldn't even see because it was burning my eyes so badly, and I wasn't even swimming in it. Kids still managed to have tons of fun, tho. :)

Actually, when we got home, Chad asked Katie to rate the trip on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best possible. She said the trip overall was a 9. The busride was a 7 and the quizzing was a 5.

The busride, really, was like a several hour long party. :) It took about 12 hours for us to get to Chicago on the way out; on the way home, we went partway on Sat pm, so we only had 9 hours or so to do on Sun.

Our church had recently purchased a coach bus, and this was a vast improvement over previous trips on a school bus! Quite comfortable seats and heat, reading lights, even a bathroom in the back. I mostly read books, talked to people, and slept, but the kids played games, drew on the foggy windows, played guitar/drums and sang songs, listened to iPods with each other. It was really fun to see different things going on all at once. Someone would call out, "Hey, we're going to play Rook over here! Anyone want to join?" And different kids would do things with each other-- not cliquish-- and the middle schoolers were often mixed in with high schoolers.

On Sunday morning, while we rode, they announced an "open mike" (PA system on the bus) for kids to go up and tell what they'd learned from the Scripture they'd memorized this year or in past years. That was really cool!

Here's what Katie did on the bus...

She worked on a math project for school-- something about moving a "knight" around a chess grid to fill up every box...

She played Apples to Apples...

And she even took a nap on my shoulder on the way home. :)

So, the actual quizzing was kind of discouraging for her since she didn't feel much success, but I think she learned a lot about what to expect, and maybe how to prepare better. And, I really think she did a great job. She probably buzzed in as much or more than anyone else on her team. She's really good at the ones that say "Locate this verse..." and she has to name the chapter and verse; and the ones where she has to finish a verse or quote a verse. She had a lot harder time with the ones that asked a question.