Inspired by the turnout at their first event in August, the team behind Spell Check: An Adult Spelling Bee will return to the Bottletree on Wednesday, December 4 with Globally Challenged: Birmingham’s First Adult Geography and Culture Bee. Presented by WBHM 90.3, the event will benefit the Desert Island Supply Company and Young Education Professionals of Birmingham.
The event will feature five rounds of competition, focusing on questions ranging from art and history to climate, flora and fauna of different regions of the world. In an effort to streamline the event, the competition will be limited to 20 participants, each of whom will be assigned a country to represent, and who will then compete in continent-based team trivia until the final round.
It may looked like a model United Nations, but event organizer and local young person Max Rykov believes that “Unlike the UN, this event will work. It’ll be streamlined, all that stuff. There’ll be prizes! They don’t give away prizes in the United Nations.”
Said prizes include gift certificates to Chez Fonfon, World of Beer and Silvertron Café; tickets to the Bottletree, the Alabama Ballet’s performance of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker and the McWane Center; a year’s membership to the Birmingham Museum of Art; and much more.
There will also be opportunities for audience participation, beginning with hand-holding and swaying as the night kicks off with a professional singer performing “We Are the World.” Other opportunities include a raffle, voting for favorite competitors, making up tourism slogans for countries being represented, and a photography contest.
Attendees are also strongly encouraged to wear internationally themed costumes. “It is my dream for someone wearing a turban to be assigned Israel,” said Rykov, who will himself be wearing a tubetaika, the traditional hat of his native Uzbekistan.
“It’s kind of a nostalgic thing, to be honest,” said Rykov. “It’s adult kickball for the mind.”
Globally Challenged will take place on Wednesday, December 4 at 8 p.m. General admission is $10, and it costs $20 to compete. For more information, click here.