Today's Report Includes:

• Congratulations from Journey North
• Don't Forget! Meet and Greet Next Week
• The Day has Come! "Where in the World Are the Mystery Classes Located?
• How Contest Entries Were Ranked
• Announcing the Mystery Class Contest Results
• Hear Ye! Hear Ye! A Call for Mystery Sites 2007
• On May 5th, What Will You Discover?
  

We ranked the contest entries by grade level, so our first step was to separate the entries according to their grade levels. If the entry came from a mixed-grade classroom, we ranked the class according to the highest grade in the class.

After that, we carefully reviewed each entry to see how many correct answers there were. To be a correct answer, the answer needed to provide BOTH:

1) The correct CITY/TOWN/VILLAGE

AND

2) The correct COUNTRY.

Questions? Review your entry again, making sure that you ask yourself this question--"did all of my answers give BOTH the correct city and the correct country?" Also, take a look at these Special Notes below about how we judged the answers for specific Mystery Classes.

Special Notes:

• For MC #1, the correct country name is Serbia and Montenegro. But, in addition to that country name, we also accepted as correct the country names of Yugoslavia, Serbia, or Kosovo. Here's why: over the last several years, the country of Yugoslavia has broken apart, with former provinces becoming independent republics or nations separate from Yugoslavia, and the remaining provinces taking on the identity of Yugoslavia, only to later adopt the new country name of Serbia and Montenegro. Meanwhile the province of Kosovo ( where the city of Pristina is located), has been under semi-autonomous rule by the United Nations, thus giving it country-like status too, (even though it is still physically located within the borders of Serbia and Montenegro).

• For MC #3 (and all locations), this may sound obvious, but in order to be correct the answer needs to give BOTH the correct city (Kapaau), and country too. This means that for MC #3, a correct city answer also needs to give the United States, or U.S., as the country in order to be correct.
  
  Example: It's like giving the city, Munich, as an answer without giving the country Germany, or giving the city, Christchurch, without giving the country New Zealand--both would be incorrect answers because they don't name the country.
  
  
• For MC #8, in addition to the city name of Doha, we also accepted as correct the city name of Ad Dawhah.
  
  
• For MC #10, for the correct city we did accept many different spellings for the city of Ismayilli (e.g. Ismaily, Ismayylly, Ismayilli, Ismanilli, Ismailly, Ismoylly, Ismailly). However, other city answers referencing the city of "Imishli" or "Imisli" were not accepted as correct because that is an entirely different city located in a different province and different region of the country, and the clues did focus on Ismayilli.

Congratulations to ALL Contestants
You did a great job!  

Do you know anyone in far and distant places that can keep a secret?

We're looking for classrooms OUTSIDE of North America that would like to be one of the 10 secret Mystery Classes in 2007! WRITE TO US!

Now that you know WHERE they are, find out WHO they are. They've worked hard all season just like you, and they're really looking forward to "meeting" you.

Will you discover:

* Which site is called the "land of fire" because flames come from earth? * Which site is near the largest "lake" on Earth? * Which site does not have electricity or water 24 hours a day? * Which site has been surrounded by civil war for years? * Which site has world famous -now frozen- cookies? (click on the picture, can you see why? Fortunately, they will give you the recipe so these cookies can melt in your mouth-yum!)

See you next week for Meet, Greet (& Eat!)