First day at School!

Pues, hoy fue el primer día de colegio, (pero no clases).

Well, today was the first day of school (but no classes).

The whole day was an orientation day with 2 tests at the end. One test was to see how our Spanish is (i.e. should we go into AP Spanish, AP Spanish literature or DELE—I expect to be in AP Spanish—it is the lowest level offered here, but is the highest at most American schools) and to see what math we should go into. I’ve learned that when I can’t follow what the teacher is saying our if it just becomes to tiring, it is extremely easy to daydream for quite a while before realizing that you’ve missed the last five minutes of instructions on what to do should you becom ill. Throughout the day there were moments when I would look around and realize that this would be my life for the next nine months. I would wind up sitting there with a stupid grin as the teacher talked about which areas of the city to avoid at night.

My favorite part is about an hour into the day there is a 45 minute break to get coffee or a snack from a nearby bar (I had a café con leche and a chocolate croissant—the croissants are so much better here, even in the airports). For lunch (one hour) we went to a local high school (today there weren’t local students because they don’t start until next week) where the food es muy mal (bad, but I guess it’s really just your standard high school cafeteria food  standard all over the world). After the first few days I think I will pay a bit more and buy lunch somewhere else unos días de la semana (a few days a week). The people I’ve talked to are interesting—the flight from Boston was an icebreaker—many of us had already talked to each other a bit. After school many of us broke into groups and walked around. (My group attempted to buy cell phones, but learned that we need our passports.)

After talking to one of the girls, I recognized just how lucky I am to have the host mother that I do, and I could just as easily ended up in a very difficult and demanding family. I met my host sister Clara today! (She hasn’t been at home this past weekend, which happened to be her birthday.) Ella tiene 7 años, and she starts school tomorrow. So far she’s pretty cute, but I only met her an hour ago!