La Scuola

So school here is so different! My school isn't in Salice but in Lecce, so even though it starts at 8:15, we leave for the bus before 7. And there's no yellow school busses, we take a charter/tour bus (the kind with luggage racks and carpeted seats) that you have to pay for. And most of the time, theres not enough seats, so some people have to sit on the floor or on other people. (So when the bus pulls up at the stop, everyone like sprints towards the door and climbs on top of each other to get a seat. I need to take a video of it one day!) Love the busrides, though, because I get to see all of the vineyards and countryside between towns!

In Italy, you just stay in the same class all day with the same people and the teachers move around. Luckily I LOVE my class, and if anyone from 3F is reading/can understand this, it's true! :D The classrooms are just a chalkboard and desks, which is really weird when you compare it to an American classroom. No posters, no computer, etc. Right now, I really don't do much in class because I don't understand most of what is being said except in math and English (and even then, not really, because they're both still taught in Italian). Apparently the point right now is to get a feel for "the system" (which may or may not involve throwing sleeping bags out the window before the teacher comes?) so it's all good.


Right now, my subjects are:
Math - (Think Algebra 2 but harder. I get what's going on and how to do everything because we learned it last year!)
Italian - (Where I'm completely lost, its literature.)
English - (Taught as a second language... hehe. Not as easy as it sounds though because my teacher makes me do everything in Italian...)
Philosophy - (...)
History - (Again, ...)
Latin - (I think advanced, I don't know Latin, so whatever!)
"Designo Tecnico" - (Which is fun but only 3F knows why xD)
Pys. Ed - (No dressing out, we just stand in a circle and hit/kick a volleyball around.)
Biology - (The Halteh would triple slam me right now because I don't remember anything at all.)
Physics - (...)
Religion - (Which I had yesterday for the first time. Our teacher is a priest and he was ranting about America and Obama and our healthcare system. So I don't know what's going on there.)

And there might be more but I can't remember them right now. So we have all these classes spread out over the week and they're about one hour each, sometimes twice in a row, and some of them have the same teacher. We get homework but so far, none of my teachers have actually checked it. I'm dropping all but five classes (as instructed by AFS) so I don't know how it will work after that!

School is crazy, though. Theres no cafeteria or lunch but theres a break in the middle of the day and a snack bar thing in the hallway. Sometimes it just randomly ends ten minutes early, or if a teacher isn't there, you just don't have that class (no subs!) Today we got out at 12 so that wasn't even four hours of school. Some kids in my class are a litle insane (see the aforementioned sleeping bag) and there's a lot of yelling. And the toilets upstairs are just like this hole in the ground.. haha. That's about all I can think of right now.

But like I said, for the most part, everyone is really nice and friendly! My Italian still sucks of course (it hasn't even been two weeks) but I think it's gotten better! I can understand a lot more now, especially when people are talking about me. Which gets kind of awkward because they'll be discussing whether or not I'm German or how I don't understand any Italian as if I'm not sitting one foot away. But I don't know how to correct them so whatever.

ALSO, a breakthrough: I ordered something in Italian! This is a big deal. I was out with my host sister at this bar-type thing (not a pub) and I went in to get some water when I remembered, oh wait, I won't understand them. But I went up there and I must've looked really scared because before I even said anything the bartenders knew I was foreign. So I asked for "due l'acqui, per favore!" (I think I spelled that wrong) and somehow managed to tell them where I was from and that I was here for a year. Then was actually understood on my first try. It was a complete victory. And I danced. (But not in front of them.)

And finally, a random snippet of why I completely love it here: on the bus today, I was looking out the window when a clown walked by. Just kind of chilling on the street.

Yep.