When most people think of the Olympics, they don't think of science. But in the USA, each year students take part in a kind of competition called the Science Olympiad. It has a lot of different events. Students go there to show how much they know about the science of music, biology, chemistry and so on. My best event is forestry (森林学). This time, I went to the Olympiad with my school's team. We had worked hard, but this was the state competition. It would be hard to win. The Olympiad was out of town, so we got to ride on a bus and stayed in a hotel for a night.
The Olympiad was in three big rooms. When we got there, we set up our team's "camp" off to one side. The big day had come at last! First, I went to watch the tower building competition. That's when students build small towers and put heavy things on top of it. They hope they can hold them up. One of my schoolmates was putting things on her tower. She was nervous, and in the end it was too heavy for her tower to hold it—it broke! I felt bad for her. After lunch, I helped some teammates with their events. One was geography, and the other was history. I don't know much about those things, so I just watched my teammates do most of the work. At last, it was time for my favorite event—forestry. Another student was also in the forestry event. The rules were easy. We had to look at more than 40 different kinds of leaves and find out which plants they were from. We also had to answer some questions about the uses of each leaf. I knew almost all of the leaves and could answer most of the questions. I had spent more than a month studying on the Internet to get ready.
In the end, it was time for the awards (颁奖), l was nervous, because the forestry awards were last. We won second place in the whole state! A nice man gave me a medal and smiled at me.
I had a great time at the Science Olympiad. I can't wait for next year!
