Escuela

Monday was my first day of school. And Catholic school is...interesting. In a good way, I think. Very different. We got to school on Monday before it was light out, and stood around the basketball court for a while. Then they started opening ceremonies, which included the Argentine national anthem and and the anthem of Neuquen. I chatted a little with all of Vicky´s friends, which are all really nice, and then they went to class. I had to go to the office with my host mom because they still hadn´t placed me in a grade yet. Because I had already completed half of my junior year, they didn´t want put me in cuarto (the equivalent of junior year) because I would be starting all over again (the seasons are the opposite here, summer just ended and the school year is starting). The ended up putting me in quinto, which makes me a senior :-). Then this lady led me to the cafeteria, which is really a small room where sodas are sold, and she said ¨These are your new friends¨(in castellano of course) and pointed me to a group of girls. One of them just grabbed my hand and pulled me through the school, pointing out the library, bathroom, office, etc. Then we went to my class room to drop off my stuff. Everyone else was having class then, except for us, because the teacher didn´t come in. As I was told, when teachers don´t show up for class, instead of getting a substitute, they just cancel class. Which is actually really nice... After that we had some type of social studies class, I forget what it was called, and the teacher dictated questions to us and we had to answer them. I was kind of just sitting there stupidly while everyone else was workijng. One of the kids came over to me and handed me a sheet of paper, which turned out to be the questions translated into English. Yipee. Then we had Bio, and then Math. I suppose no one really wanted to be working, so all of my classmates crowdedaround me to ask me questions. It wouldn´t have been so bad, but theyall talked at thesame exact time, so I never knew who to look at or respond to. When I didnt understand something (which was often) they all triedto make me understand atthe same time. I was really tired after school.

Tomorrow is the first AFS chapter meeting, and I get to see allof my AFS friends and all the other kids who were already here when I got here. I´m really excited to see Eei and the girl from Japan, Mizuho, because they came knowing absolutely no spanish. Im also going to meet my liason/counsler person. More later.