My First Week

Hey Everyone! My first week was great! My school, Scuola Italiana, is not taught in Italian. Everything except for Italian class is taught in Spanish and I don´t go to Italian class so I´m working on my Spanish a lot. The school is really cool because it´s an outdoor campus. It´s really small too but all of the schools here are small and private. My grade has two classes, A and B. I´m in the B class and we have 13 kids and then I make 14. The older kids at the school have exams that seem like midterms, but are a lot shorter, stretched out over last week and this week and then there is winter vacation. I took the language test and got a 2 out of 7 which everyone thought was hilarious seeing as a 4 is the minimum passing grade! I also took the math one which was stuff I learned in 8th grade so that one was easier. I take a colectivo to school and home but I decided to walk home the other day and it only took about 45 minutes. On Friday I didn´t want to take the physics exam so I asked to go to a class to work on my spanish so first they took me to the 3rd grade, but they were doing something so I got to go to preschool! It was actually pretty fun...my classmates are cool and really nice but they forget that they talk really fast and a couple of them were discouraged after we had a history lecture and I had a full page of notes but then I couldn´t understand when they asked me if I wanted to eat lunch inside or outside, o well! Everyone loves my pictures from home and they keep comparing SHS to high school musical because that´s the only other school they´ve seen that´s as big as Shrewsbury´s. It is cold here and I´m so glad I have under armor but today is really nice and I´m in a t-shirt and capris. It´s not anywhere near as cold as it gets in MA but there isn´t any indoor heating anywhere so if your sitting around it´s freezing. The house is nice and I wear my shoes all the time because there aren´t any carpets and my family is very convinced that if you wear only socks you´re going to get sick. On Wednesday I wanted to go out so I took the map I got from AFS and wanted to go to Japon Parque but ended up at the beach instead...perfectly ok with me it was one of the most beautiful things I´ve ever seen! On Thursday, Jorge went with me to the center and showed me a ton of stuff and I told him my mom would love him because he insisted on taking a picture of me almost everywhere we went. Sunday afternoon I went to the mall with Conny and Mami Mile and Sunday morning I went to church with Mami Mile. It was nice because I understood a bunch and the mass was the exact same as the ones at St. Anne´s but it wasn´t so nice that I wore my sundress and tights and everyone else was in jeans. Even the people speaking were in sweatshirts and sweatpants, next week I´m going to dress down more. My room is nice, they moved a tv in there for me because the tv is on 24-7 here even if no one´s in the room or everyone´s sleeping but I haven´t really used it much. O ya, another thing, everyone swears here like crazy because they watch the Simpsons a ton and when they listen to music its rap. It was so funny, my classmates swear a ton but I don´t think they really know what they´re saying because I looked up and said the word for but and they all turned red couldn´t stop laughing.
More New Things: -there are no speed limits; everyone drives fast and stops, there is no slowing down -people put salt on and in everything they eat -cars are not called "coche" they´re called cars or autos -we go to the supermarket everyday to get bread and meat for onces -I´ve tried a ton of new food that I love like completos (hot dogs with mayo, hot sauce, and avacado) but I really don´t like "Pap"(papaya flavored soda) -classes at school don´t start and end when the bell rings, they start whenever the teacher shows up and whenever the teacher leaves -it´s polite to kiss your teachers goodbye as well as your friends