first time at school

huge mall!

Chocolate

Lea and I

uniforms

first day of school

'Schultüten'

Plaza

Hello once again!

Here’s what’s been going on since my last post:

I went to a mall with Cata and José Ignació on Wednesday, apparently it is the biggest mall in Chile, and it sure is huge! We went to the cinema there too and we only had to pay 1500 Pesos per person. That’s about 3$, or 2.50Fr. It wasn’t an old movie or anything either! We watched ‘the wolf of Wall street’, none of us got the point of the movie though. Well it was fun anyway!

Then on Wednesday I finally got to see Lea! She lives really close to the school; it only takes her like 4 minutes to walk!  She lives on the 8th floor of an apartment building. We talked a lot and I got to meet her host family. They’re all really nice and said I could come over any time and sleep over too. I think I’m going to take them up on that offer at some point. : )

After some ice cream we went to the school. They showed us around and talked about rules a little. We also got our uniforms. The uniform is blue jeans and then a T-Shirt from the school in blue or red. In winter there’s a sweatshirt. For sports they to wear  a red shirt and black shorts(from school).

Then I went back to Lea’s place for a while, later my host mum picked me up.

We had dinner pretty late and I was in bed later than I had planned too.

The next morning, my first morning at the Colegio Suizo (Swiss School) I was pretty tired and nervous! Paula my host mum drove us to school the first morning. I got to my class (P4) and one girl told me to sit next to her, I was really glad! Her name is Sofía.

This week everyone only had school until 1pm on both days, I was very happy about that! After three hours of school I was really really tired, I don’t think I could have gone any longer!

The first day we the intercambios(exchange students) were presented in front of the whole school.

I also had to present myself in front of my class. Other than that, the teachers talked about what they’re going to do this year and we didn’t actually start with any real work, except for Philosophy there the teacher talked really fast during the whole class and I had absolutely no idea what was going on! I think it’s going to get easier every day though.

Us the intercambios are going to have private Castellano (Spanish) classes 4 times a week. I really like them, and they’re more relaxed and the teacher doesn’t talk quite as fast! When I got home yesterday I didn’t do much at first, I was too exhausted.

On the first day when the little kids have their first day of elementary school they get 'Schultüten', like they have in Germany - apparently they think that's swiss! : ) Most kids use backpacks that roll, I'll have to take a picture for you at some point, because I think they're pretty hilarious!

Later I played some Ligretto with the boys and Tamara. The boys absolutely love that game, and I think it’s kind of cool that I brought that game to Siri and Sten in Portland and now to José Iganció and Andreu here in Santiago.

Later they showed me a playground that is in a little park, well not really a park, but there’s some grass and benches and then the playground. I really like it and it’s very close by too. They call it the plaza.

Today was my second day of school, everything was a little easier. I did have two hours of math though. I like the teacher but I had no idea what they talked about. We also had art, and the intercambios had another class of castellano. After that I had two hours of castellano with my class. I don’t really know what was going on, but they again talked about the PSU a lot. My class is going to finish school this December, before that they’re going to have this huge test called the PSU. Well it’s a really big deal here, school is altogether. They have 45 hours of school every week. My class in Switzerland has 35 classes a week. And it’s not like they don’t have any homework, they have to study lots too and my math teacher for example told the class that they’re going to have 2.5 hours of homework every week. Every test here is very important, every single test of the last 4 years counts towards your graduation grade, so you can’t really have a bad day or anything like that!

Today was also the first day that we went to school with the furgón escolar. It’s like a little bus, for about 15 people. We get picked up by Orlando the driver at 7:20am the bus is already have full by then, I think there’s a girl from my class in the bus too but I’m not sure. : ) After we pick up some more kids we should get to school around 7:45, and then school starts at 8am.

On the way back it’s pretty much all little kids, the older ones take the bus home do other stuff before going home. I’m going to take the furgón escolar both ways for March and then in April I might take the public bus home. I don’t think I’m going to take the public one to school though, that one takes even longer!

On the way back we’re also the last people Orlando drops off, so we weren’t home before 2pm. It was nice to listen to music though and I got to see some more of Santiago too.

All in all I'd say the school is more like the one in Portland than the one in Switzerland. Except that it's a very small school, there are only 400 students in the whole school. And because they grow up together everyone knows each other. The last 4 years there are only 2 classes per grade and there's between 13 and 25 kids per class. Another thing that I really like is that there are little kids from age 5 on or so in the school too, so really it’s a huge mix!

This afternoon I slept for 3 hours and then went to the plaza (the little park) again.

Well now it’s finally weekend – I don’t know what we’re going to do though. I guess it’ll be very spontaneous as usual.
Lena