First day of School

Yesterday was my first day of school and all the fright that I had went away pretty fast by 10:00. I woek up at about 6:30 and left around 7:00. We got there and my host mom showed me around for a minute and then saw a girl named Lenny and she asked her to be my guild for the day. She took me up the stairs and brought me to the room where the 11th graders meet. Also, like I said, I´m with 11th graders. I found out that I will be finishing the semester with them and then having a semester with them as seniors. They are all about 2 years younger than I am. Continuing on. We had to wait outside of the door for a while becuase Lenny said that the teacher was never there early. So we waited and more people started to gather around. Some greated me with a kiss on cheak and some didn´t great me at all. It made me nervous because all of them talked amoungst themselves. Some asked my name but that was it. I got in there and I talked to the teacher, who was very nice, and she said that if she started to talk to fast for me to understand then I could say something. So I sat back down and they pulled out their books from the shelf. People were chosen to pick to read aloud. I tried to understand but I could only get the some words. It was Roman litterature. I guess I got 1/4 about what they were talking about. After we finsished that we talked about it for a little bit but then it seemed like we have free time. They all created a circle and started to introduce themselves. They tried in english but ended up doing most of the introductions in spanish. Then it was Jamitos turn. Everyone anounced that he was going to be a daddy!

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Ok. Well I wrote this on my return from my first day of school. I never got to finish it because we had lost our internet. It didn´t work and it still doesn´t work. For right now I use the internet at school on my free time. Let me get you caught up on my school live in Chile.

Let me start you off with a picture.These are some of my friends. From left to right, Diana, Nicol, Me, and Mila. But those who know me that this is not the end of "my friends from Chile" list. There is Cami, Eliu, Diego, Pablo, Leni, Maria de los Angeles,Thomas, Abel, and Wasso, Pollero, and everday I meet a new person. They are all very nice. I think I was explaining that in the beginning of this blog. In this picture you can also see my uniform. That day there was sun so I didn´t wear my tights, but usually its freezing so everyone does. It right now is so cold that I´m wearing leggings under my tights. You can see your breath in the morning and sometimes through out the day. There is now snow with this cold so it is a bit different. When the sun is out, and you are in the sun, its pretty nice, but if you go in the shade you freeze. When the sun is out, you can look for me there.

Classes. I´m still working on figuring out classes but I think I´m getting the hang of it now. The day is different everyday. Mondays, I start out with Language which is also the same class as History which I have on Wednesday morning. But starting on monday. History, then our main teacher comes in and chit chats with us. After that we have break then go to physics (which is in the works of being changes to Bio). After that another break. Then one of my favorite classes, English. For English I am a teach for one of the advanced students. His name is Eliu and I speak in Spanish while he speaks in English and we correct and teach each other. I help him with his worksheets and I let him read from my Ishmael book. He is pretty good at English. He can read and sound things out, we just need to work on understanding what he is reading. But I think that that will come eventually. After English we have lunch for an hour. After that I don´t remember. Sorry.

Tuesday: Math, English, Break, Language, Bio (for everyone), Language, Lunch, Music (I have my piano lesson)

Wednesday: History, Chemistry, Break, Gym, Break, Elective, Lunch, Math

Thursday: Language, Philosphy, Music, Break, Math, Break, Main Teacher, Lunch, Don´t Know

Friday: Selected Math Class, History, Break, Philosphy, Break, English, Home (some times we get to go home early on Fridays)

That is the basic overview of my schedual. It is very confusing and as you can see, I´m still learning where I belong as certain times. Classes are hard because there is a lot of reading involved and read spanish is probabaly one of the hardes things for me. Also, they don´t really give out worksheets OR write the questions on the white board. Instead they say them out loud and we are suppost to copy them down and then work them out. Listening and coping! It is super hard! I only know half of what they are saying and only get half of the question! I have to get it from my neighbor most of the time. Also, my spanish spelling is probably as bad as my English spelling. It doesn´t help that they never say the words in "clear" spanish. When I look at what I just wrote, I had no idea what they were even trying to say. Math is good. Math is a language of its own. It is universal. Thank god. I´m a semester behind in Physics so I´m switching to Bio. Hmmmm, I think that about sums up everything! For a while there I didn´t do much at school because most classes were finishing up a certin section in the schedual so I had to wait till about now to start doing stuff.

That was school, now outside of my school life!

This was a concert that I went to. The orchrestra you see in the back is the Symphonic Orchrestra from my school! Many of my friends are in it and they played with some famous Chilean guy that you can see with the white guitar. It was a really great concert.

We went to the beach and I was lucky to catch the sun setting. It is absolutly gorgeous down here. The waves are huge and the sand feels like silk. It still a tad cold but nothing a Minnesotan can´t handle. Also, in Minnesota, my friends and I sometimes go to the beach to hang out. But here it´s differnt. When my friends in chile and I go to the beach, we can´t see the other side of the lake. Here, when you look to the otherside, you are trying to see the other side of the world. It´s an amazing feeling to think that you are litterally hanging on the edge of a continent.

This would be a sighting of school spirit. I was lucky enough to go to the School Parade! Each school made a floate or something to show and walked through the town. The winner won 1,000,000 pesos. There was also a Miss Serena (basically me but not) and we had a girl enter into that too. The parade was amazing and weeeeeeeeeeeee... WONNNNNNNN!! We got the pesos and our girl, Christina, won. It was awesome. I think that the it was amzing to watch the parade. Lots of kids from school were there and we had our chants that we yelled out. In front of the big Mono (puppet), there was a band. There were drums and the beat was great. Everyone around us would dance to our song. The other floats were good, but I guess ours was a little bit better than the rest. At the end there was a big free concert and everyone danced the salsa and stuff. It was so much fun! :)

Well I think that I´m going to stop here because if I keep writing more, I will never publish this. So Ill try to write more often. Sorry about that. :)

P.S. On the 7th of August, it marked my 1 month in Chile, and I have loved every minute of it and love my experience down here.

Ok friends, Stay Sweet!

<3