WHOO HOO HOO!

So. I had the speech tournament, and it was pretty good.
I have to say, first of all, that I'm really hard on myself. I mean, really. I don't know why, but I am. The Round Robin for speech was torture, and that was just my club, not even an actual tournament, Needless to say, I was really worried.
My speech is called a POI (rhymes with boy) and that stands for Programmed Oral Interpretation. Basically you have to chose (at least) one piece of prose, poetry and script and weave them together in sections. So the beginning of the prose, then the poetry, then the script, then the middle of each, then the end of each. Or other ways, too, but that's how mine was. It's really fun, and you don't have to have it memorized. Which I can memorize stuff, but I'd rather not at this point. My pieces were The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber, Pirates of the Caribbean and Against Lying by Isaac Watts. Oh, yeah, they all have to have the same theme. Mine was lying. Or truth. Either way.
Another weird thing about me is that I get really nervous before something in front of people, but when I'm actually in front of them, I'm fine. Happy, even.
The tournament was fun! Imagine that! I knew a bunch of people (because they were in my club) and the people who I went up agianst were really nice. There was one guy who I was in the same round with twice, and we were talking before the rounds about a lot of stuff, and he told me after the final round that my POI was really good. And we all wished each other luck before and everything. There was a girl from my club who I had a feeling was going to do really well. She got first by every judge at the Round Robin, and she's really expressive, so I wasn't expecting to even place.
Another guy from a club was in three speeches and debate, and his team won the entire tournament for debate. He got a billion prizes. He was right before me all three rounds, so that was a hard act to follow.
The girl from my club and the winningest guy got first and second. We were all in the final round together, which I thought was just coincidence, but guess what! All the people in that room were going for first! I actually made it to the finals! I got my ballots back, and the ranks I got were all second place, except for two third places, one of which I would say was pretty harsh. I mean, I got 29 points, which is below average, and my average was 35 points. I was really happy that I was even considered. So I got either third or fourth, which is not bad for my first tournament.
And I'm also happy for another reason which I don't think I will disclose, because I said that I wouldn't talk about guys any longer. I think that's all I want to say.
Plus Tal is over here. I'm not with him because he's playing HeroScape with Edison and Monet and all of his brothers.