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Miranda Wilson thinks she knows how she could stump most adults: ask them, "Where's Petra?" If you're as smart as this seventh-grader you'll know it's in Jordan, but Miranda probably still has a leg up on you. She's been there.
The Roton Middle School student credits her family's many travels as the reason she won Tuesday's Geography Bee at the school. She drew upon personal experience to answer this tough question, posed by teacher Rob Pennington: "People in Santo Domingo are encouraged to drink bottled water because clean water sources are scarce. The city which is located in which Caribbean country?"
Answer: The Dominican Republic. Miranda was there when she was little.
Miranda might stump adults with a simple, "Where's Fez?" That question was part of her classroom geography bee, which she won to qualify for the schoolwide bee. "Where's Fez?" almost beat her, too, but you might say she pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
"My dad has this Fez that he got in Morocco, so I guessed Morocco and it was right," she said.
Miranda has also been to Thailand, India and England. "She did really well, and it was an intense competition," Pennington said. Twenty students qualified to be in the bee and faced 100 questions. "We had sixth-graders that blew my mind," he said.
Griffin Root, a sixth-grader, won second place. Olivia Fasset, also a sixth-grader, took third.
Miranda studied with a National Geographic GeoBee app her mother bought on iTunes, which she used on her mother's iPad. She won a Barnes & Noble gift card for coming in first.
"I was really scared during most of it because I kept second-guessing myself, but I guess it turned out OK," she said.
Do you know your geography facts? How would you do in a geography bee? Leave a comment or a question below!
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