"Hey, how was school?" "Fine." "Were people nice?" "No." "Did you make any friends?" "Yes."

So I've finally decided its time for me to talk about school or "colegio" as it is called here. Its funny because we learn school to be escuela but like no one ever uses that word it's just colegio.
So instead of explaining my schedule, I've decided it would be soooo much easier to just take a picture.

Bueno. Okay so everything is pretty self explanatory. Mondays and Wednesdays I go to school at 12:45 until 5:45, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays I go to school at 1:30 until 6:30, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I have gym from 10 am to 11 am, unless it's raining. Gym class is at the country club, which is a country club in every way except I haven't seen a golf course there but it might exist I just don't know, and is a 3 minute walk from mi casa. My school is about 5-10 minutes away from my house, depending on if I'm walking by myself or with other people. It's probably the equivalent of walking to Belleville Ave form my house in the Ridge. The little yellow highlighted line is the designated snack time where they serve hot tea, juice, and a different snack each day. If you want to know more about the snacks you can review one of my previous blogs where I talked about how much I eat and how I should be fat.

So classes:
I pretty much understand everything that goes on in all my classes now, by this I mean that I catch the general topic of the conversation and can go look up stuff about it at home. My favorite class is chemistry or "ambiente" because its really easy to understand and the teacher is fantastic! She explains everything in a way that is really easy to grasp and if we don't get it she'll explain it again without question. She also has A LOT of sass! It's really funny actually. She'll be explaining the hibridación of something and someone will say something a little of topic, and she'll go off on a 20 minute rant about the most random things. English class is also really easy, but that is pretty much because all we do is copy down notes that the teacher writes on the white board, and then do workbook pages. Its like 7th grade Spanish again, without the hours of tiny font and flash card cutting. Math is kind of weird but that's because we are learning thing I haven't learned, or that expand on things that I learned this year in Algebra II. Also they solve the problems a little weird and it looks so much harder than it really is. Salud is like biology class mixed with health class because we study things you would study in health class but also stuff from bio. Lengua or literature is probably one of the hardest classes for me because we read Latin American literature so a lot of the time we read something with so many slang words and I'm just there legit like "what does this even mean?". Etica or Ethics class is kind of like a study of world history and ethics. We look at stuff like how certain revolutions effect society and other stuff like that. It's pretty interesting. Proyecto or project class I can best describe as a class about writing a senior thesis in college except in high school. We basically pick a topic research it and make a like 100 page report with graphs, surveys, and an explanation of your topic. I'm actually doing pretty well in that class so that's good :) I saved my worst class for last. History. I legit have no flippin idea what the heck is going on in the slightest. When we have homework or assignments I kind of understand it. But in general the class is the teacher explaining whatever he is talking about, don't ask me, and then once in a while he'll write something on the board. If you looked around the classroom you would see people drawing on the desks, face down in the arms catching some Zzzz's, the out of place person actually paying attention, and then me drawing in my cuadernito.
My sister gave me the idea to bring a little notebook with me everywhere to write down things like songs I hear that I like, new vocab words, recipes, etc. But during class I don't always have the patience to sit still and listen to things I can barely grasp, so I draw. I can honestly say that I am beast at drawing trees. My friend Leah who is in Italy gave me that idea, and that is legit the only thing I do.  But not so much anymore because I actually know whats happening now.
Here are some fantastic examples of what you might find.

I've also made a list of differences between school here and in the US.
1. Students don't change classes, the teachers move around from class room to class room.
2. There are only 3 or 4 classes each day.
3. Class ends when the teacher stops talking about the subject. Meaning if they finish 10 minutes early we chill.
4. Teachers don't engage the students as much. Meaning its more of a lecture and there is little attempt to ask the students that many questions, and if questions are asked they aren't always taken that seriously. But it depends on the class and the teacher.
5. Someone is ALWAYS absent. I have only had two days when I believe everyone was in class.
6. There is very little homework, you have 2 or 3 days to do each assignment, its not really ever collected or graded, and people don't really ever do it. I do all of it just because it gets me familiar with new words and homework is such a big deal at my school in the US that I feel really weird if I don't do it.
7. Gym is only twice a week.
8. There is no social line between grades, meaning everyone talks to everyone and hangs out with everyone.
9. The students have fights with the teachers about exams and usually always get them postponed or made shorter. (This is not so much my school as other schools I have heard about)
10. Sometimes you can finish a test or assignment the next class.
11. The biggest difference I've found is how the students take notes. My friend put it nicely and said "They put more effort into writing the notes than will ever be put into actually studying them." Everyone writes their notes in at least 3 different colors. How can you do that you might ask? Quite simply. First you don't underline anything in the same color it was written. You absolutely have to have a 10 pack of colored markers to make bullet points, underlines, bold things, etc. You can make any sort of line without a ruler. You don't scribble things out, you use your handy dandy corrector white out pen. You sign the end of your work with a big signature to prove its yours. Here are some examples of my notes. I've pretty much almost mastered it. But ask any of the other exchange students here and they will tell you the same thing.

 

These are some prime examples of note taking in Argentina. Unfortunately I am not in procession of a white out pen or a 10 pack of colored markers, so I make due with what I have.

Another thing to note is that they don't use folders here. They call binders folders, and put all their papers in these plastic sheet thingy's. 

  

Also their binders are weird. You have the option of a 2 or 3 ring binder, but most people have a two ring ones. It looked really funny to me the first time, but now I'm used to it.

 Here are some pictures of the upstairs of my school. I have yet to take pictures of the down stairs where snack time takes place.

 A typical class room

 Hallways.

Stairs.

Everything is outside, like there are no windows and everything is open aired.

So after the whole campera/sweatshirt thing I talked about a few weeks ago, we moved on to our class banner. And after two weeks of planning and making our sign, we finally finished it on Thursday.

 

The sign with all our names

Some class pictures. There are two people missing from the photo in addition to another two people that are absent because they are on exchange, one of them being one of my host brothers.

I like school better and better the more I get to know my classmates, and the free food helps a little too ;) The only thing that would make it perfect would be if it had a popcorn bar, but that's a bit unrealistic especially because they don't have popcorn with butter here, they have something kind of like caramel corn but different.

This weekend I went to the lake house of one of my classmates. But I'll save that for my next blog!
Espero que todos tengan una buena vacaciones de primavera!
Chau!