Where Are We Going?

I just had my first day of school today.

Sorry for the post so soon after the last one, but I think the first day of school is something that needs to be written down.

So. School.

It's incredibly different. Now, I want you to go to your dictionary and look up the word "incredibly", and then look up the word "italics", because there's no way you're going to understand what I mean without me there to add the appropriate tone of voice. I was so lost the whole day.

In the useless hope of saving this train-wreck of a blog post, I'm going to go in linear order. Please keep arms and legs inside the train of imagination at all times and refrain from pointing out grammatical mistakes. Thank you.

The day started out with me nearly falling out of bed, having been woken up by my host sister's old alarm clock, which makes a noise I've never heard on this earth. A quick shower (to rid my hair of the last of the sea salt) and a tiny breakfast, and my host mom and I were off along the streets of Orange to get to the bus station and try to figure out how to be at the right stop at the right time. (Eventually we just went in the same direction every other teenager there was going. It worked.)

It took me all of five minutes by bus to get to the right stop. Another five minutes, and I was at the school. Five minutes after that, I was at the right room number. Ten minutes more, and the door finally opened and we were allowed out of the sweltering hallway. (Seriously. No air conditioning, tiny hallway, a million teenagers crammed in. It was boiling.)

My first class of the day was French. I spent most of the two hours I was in that room trying to pick up a couple words here and there. My dictionary was glued to my hand, I must have looked so studious, but in reality I was just trying not to get trampled in a stampede of French. At the end, we had a ten minute break, and I stood around looking like an idiot.

After that, I had History/Geography. It was mostly Geography. The teacher is absolutely terrifying, the kind that will take absolutely no fuss and expects you to live up to your "potential", whatever that is. We spent an hour talking about Europe and why it's the most awesome of all the six continents. (No, it's not a mistake, I mean six. Apparently North America isn't cool enough to be its own continent: it has to share a room with South America. Tough luck.)

Then. Okay. This is the best part. Then....I had lunch. Now, think about your own school lunches. Or think back to them. They were probably the same level of nastiness we have now. Maybe a salad, some sort of unidentifiable meat, a dinner roll that's either rock hard or tasteless, and all of it is absolutely disgusting.

French school lunches aren't like that. At all.

French school lunches are three-course meals.

I wasn't prepared for this at all. You get a tray, reach into a little bucket for as much bread as you want, and go down the lunch line until your tray heaps with restaurant quality food. We're talking some sort of fancy-looking appetizer, a main dish, and a dessert. And when I say that, I'm not kidding. The main course today was grilled chicken with a side of pasta with some sort of really delicious sauce. For dessert, there was a dark chocolate cheesecake with raspberry jam. I felt like a princess. (The rest of the kids were complaining about how much they hate the lunchroom, I told them about American lunches and they shut up pretty quick. I think they were horrified.)

So, that was lunch.

After that, I had cinéma. Or, at least, I was supposed to. Instead, I had a free period, because my teacher was on strike. Then I had another free period, because he was still on strike. Then I had another free period. I had three hours of cinéma today, and I attended none of them. Tomorrow, my French teacher is on strike. I spent those three hours reading Harry Potter in French, and I'm incredibly proud to say that I've now made it to Chapter 3. I this is the way French school goes, I'm really going to like it here.

Of course, not to leave anything out, the second I got home I had a mental breakdown. I'm afraid it was too much French at once for my brain to handle, and it shut down and started only responding to English. My host mother asked me if I was tired when I got home and I couldn't understand her. (This is something both she and everyone else have asked me a million times.) But there's something incredibly calming about reading A Study in Scarlet in English for a couple hours, and I'm over it now.

Fun fact: I understood every single thing at dinner tonight.

~Josie Harris