Thursday, September 6, 2012

6/9/2012

Well today was my first day of school, but before I tell you all about it I'll take a few steps back. After my last post I ate supper and decided to go to bed. The next day we went bowling and shopping for things for school. Bowling here is pretty much the same as it is at home. (the weights of the balls are even still in pounds). For school I had to buy gym clothes. The only dress code for school is the clothes you wear for gym. Plain white shirt, plain black shorts, and plain white shoes, absolutly no brands on anything. So we had to shopping for things for gym. Afterwards we went to a store called Trafic. I have decided that this is the Walmart of Belgium. They have a little bit of everything there for really decent prices. Speaking of prices although clothes here are really expensive I've noticed that all the shoes I have seen have been rather cheap. Anyways, while at Trafic we bought me a binder (the binders here are wayyyy better than they are at home, two or four holes and super easy to open and close, and they have niftly little thingamagigs on the rings that slide down and lock in place to keep your papers from flying about) and a pen. Apparently the fountain pen is way more popular than the regular pen (which they call a bic). After sitting there on google for about 15 minutes trying to figure out how on earth one actually gets the ink to come out of the pen I finally gave up and asked my host mom. Turns out you gotta like pop a hole in the end and scribble with it until ink comes out. This occured at about 9:30 last night as I realized I oughta figure out how it works before I go to school. So on to school today. We left the house at around 8:10 which means we had to book it to school to be there on time. The strangest part about this morning was the fact that when I stepped outside I realized I could see my breath!!  It was freezing outside. So after arriving at school (on time) I went to where I was supposed to meet the other students. After a brief meeting with the english teacher she sent me to a room. I believe it may be the same as like a homeroom at school. I am not entirely sure being I did not understand most of what was said in the room. Afterwards we actually walked up to the castle that I talked about earlier and we took a class picture there. We walked back down and took a second picture. More things were said that I couldn't understand and then we made our way to class. It is more difficult to understand people in large groups because of all the background chatter going on. I signed up for science 6 which is the hardest one. I believe this was the right choice because during class we played a game with several chemistry questions. I remember more than I thought I did from chemistry and am rather proud that I was actually able to participate. The hard part is the notation is different here than in America and it took some time to figure out what the question is asking for. After chemistry I got to go to what is probably my favorite class so far, English. Not like English writing but like as a foreign language. Its a pretty easy class and the teacher is super nice. For right now we are comparing the education systems between America and Belgique. After English is lunch. For lunch one has to either bring their own food or buy it from a local sandwich shop not far away. Except on Tuesdays, where one can get fries and spagetti.There's no cafeteria so everyone eats ouside either infront of the school or in the courtyard. After lunch I have two periods of Math. For the first period I was in Math 6 which is the most difficult math. After about 5 minutes of that I realized that I had no idea what kind of math they were even doing. I decided that I was in way over my head and my first thought was that it was like they were speaking another language. (which they obvoiously were) and I didn't even think about how funny that thought was until later when I got moved to math 4 the next period. Math 4 was much easier and I can handle what they're doing in both languages. After math is History. History is really hard. The teacher only talks and you are expected to write what she says and take notes. I personally didn't understand most of what she said. She talked so fast!! I wrote what I could but it wasn't much. Afterwards I had Math + which is like math six but harder. Fortunatly I don't have to take it after today. So after all of this I returned home and the weather was much nicer. Today school ended at 4:30 but tomorrow I can go home at 3:30. So That was my first day of school and the two days leading up to it. I feel like I just wrote a book so I hope it's not to long.

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