Every year in May the Scripps National Spelling Bee is held at the Grand Hyatt Ballroom in Washington D.C. This year, as grand prize winner of the Jack and Jill National Spelling Bee, I got to cover the Scripps contest for Jack and Jill magazine.

After checking in at the Washington Grand Hyatt, my parents and I walked to some of the nearby exciting sites such as the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building. The second evening, my parents and I walked to the White House as well.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee is different from the Jack and Jill Spelling Bee in many ways, including the words and the rules. While the Jack and Jill Spelling Bee list contains only medical words, a contestant at Scripps can be asked to spell pretty much any word from the Merriam Webster Third International Dictionary.

This year there were 273 contestants in the Scripps bee and the competition lasted 19 rounds. On Wednesday, which was day one of the competition, the first four rounds were completed. The remaining rounds were conducted on Thursday. As the words were pronounced during the contest, I attempted to spell the words and I was able to spell approximately 70 percent of the words correctly.

After 18 rounds of the competition, there was only once contestant remaining on the stage and that was Anurag Kashyap, an eight grader from California.

In the nineteenth round he correctly spelled “appoggiatura” to win the championship.

Anurag received $22,000 in cash and many other prizes for winning the competition. He was invited to be on several TV shows the next day. What is more exciting is that he said he was also invited to be at the White House two weeks later.

I flew back home from Washington D.C. late Thursday night. I only have good memories of the event, the location, and the nation’s capital. I can’t wait to be back at the Grand Hyatt as a spelling bee participant next year.