One Week Down...13 to go

Haha I'm kidding with the title of the post, the first week wasn't that bad! It was a little confusing at first, but now were all catching on. Since some of the social studies teachers have classes in Afrikaans, we follow three different teachers and some days we have four classes a day and some we have fewer (they only have six a day). Their schedule has been the most confusing part because it is so different from american schools. The schedule runs for two weeks and after two weeks they start back with day one. Thats not too confusing, but the classes don't meet at the same time every day. For example one of the 8th grade geography classes we follow meets during 4th lesson on monday (day one), 1st lesson on tuesday (day two), they may not meet on wednesday (day three), and then they meet 5th lesson on thursday (day four). They switch up when the classes meet, which I think is a good idea because then the same class isn't meeting everyday at 8am when the learners (students) are still half asleep.

The school has a staff meeting every morning at 7:45 and the teachers use english and afrikaans like they are the same language. All of us just sit there completely at a loss because we don't understand whats going on. It almost feels like being in the nail salon and the korean women are talking, looking at you, and laughing and you know they just said something about you like "what a biotch" but they smile at you like "girlfriennnnd you awesome". We decided to just make up stories about what we think people are saying. Most of the kids speak both languages, or at least understand both but some know english as a second language so they learn in afrikaans.

The classes are so different from the u.s. because the teachers basically lecture lecture lecture, the kids never do any activities which is so weird because thats all we've learned to do. The school is also really big on sports, like on monday school is cancelled for a field day/ intramural sports day. I get to help run the long jump, which I am not looking forward to. Also the kids are required to play a winter and summer sport, even if they are not very good...CRAZY! Another thing different about the school is that a lot of the kids say "good morning ma'm" when they pass us in the hall....it makes me feel so old, I don't like it! Our 8th graders got one period on thursday to ask us anything they wanted about america and basically they think all american girls are supermodels, that we all run in to celebrities on a daily basis, and that we can use our american dollars here instead of rand.

One final thing, the school reminds me of Hogwarts....they have three "schools" which the learners are divided into. The houses compete in intramural sports and other stuff. There is a valentines dance coming up in like two weeks that I think we're going to volunteer to help with. Something else interesting here is that shoes are not required in stores, i've seen so many people in the grocery store without shoes!

Oh seriously last thing, there is a hot teacher all of us girls have a major crush on (haha that didn't take long). And tonight we're going to a south african braai (BBQ) which should be interesting!