A Day at School

I figured I would write about what I do in a day at school here in France. It's hard to cover what school is like because everyday is drastically different, with different schedules and random trips during breaks. Today is Friday, and I'm choosing to write about everything I did today to give a bit of an idea as to what it's like here. I also slyly took some pictures on my phone throughout the day to have something to share on here. On Fridays I finish my classes at 1pm but I have to wait for the bus at 4pm to go home. Because I have three hours free, I usually leave the school and visit the city my school's in, Pertuis.

6pm-8am:

I woke up at 6am this morning. I had to leave the house at 7am to catch the bus to Pertuis, and my first class started at 8am. I had yogurt (obviously made with our goat milk) with honey, some bread with blueberry jam, and tea. My host-mom dropped me off at the bus stop in the village where I met up with Alberto, the Mexican exchange student in my town. We always pass by some camels which we think is amusing. This time of year there's also circus in town, so we drive past elephants, zebras, and lions. We also have a view the sunrise.

8am-11am:

When we get to school I usually meet up with my French friends outside by the buses. Then we have to swipe our meal cards in the main hall before going to class. My first class today was Italian with Mme. Martines. "Ciao" was the one word I knew in Italian before taking this class, but I can now understand a couple lessons and I've managed to learn the basics on my own. It's hard because they placed me in a higher level Italian class (I went with it they were allowing me to exchange it from a two-hour gym class) but my classmates are super nice and I love Italian. I grabbed coffee with Rubia (the Brazilian) and Alberto (the Mexican) during break.

11am-1pm:

Next I had an hour of Physique/Chimie where we looked at prisms and talked about absorption and emission spectrums. We took another test in my math class after, and I was the only one to finish it. Even though I never liked math class in the US, it helps that the levels were higher there. Overall, France seems to be about a year behind as far as the class material is concerned. It's helpful for me because I can focus on learning the language instead. My last class of the day was Spanish with Mme. Pegalara, from Spain. I've been learning Spanish since kindergarten, but it's always been Mexican because we're next to Mexico. Here they teach us Spanish from Spain, and the Spanish accent bothers me sometimes (it's really not that different though). For example, today she was saying "ciencia ficción" which in a Spanish accent sounds like "thienthia ficthión" which is not at all what I'm used to. Also for the first time I need to conjugate "vosotros" in class.

1pm-1:30pm:

I ate lunch with my foreign friends. Basically I have my French group of friends, and then my friends who are either exchange students or recently moved here. I ate with Alberto (Mexican Rotary exchange student), Rubia (Brazilian semester-exchange student), Alex (moved here from Greece), Claire (French but lived in Australia), and Arige (moved from Syria). I was the first exchange student at the school and over time people started approaching me and asking if I was the American. From there I met a ton of the other foreigners in the school, who I ate with today. The lunches here are really good compared the American school lunches, but the French are constantly complaining about it. Today we had pasta, bread and cheese, salad, and chocolate tart. There's always a lot of food available and the cafeteria (la cantine) is really nice.

1:30pm-2pm:

I was done with all of my classes, so I went to the CDI (the library) to finish a Géo test with Rubia. Because I don't speak a lot of French, my teachers are letting me take the same tests as the others while also getting to take them home and use Google Translate, my notes, etc. Rubia gave me a Portuguese after, which she's been teaching me because I love Portuguese. Arige is also teaching me the Arabic alphabet and basics. (My mind is almost overwhelmed by thinking in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, and Italian.)

2pm-3pm:

I left the school to walk to the city. Usually I'll go with Alberto to buy some éclairs or something but all of my friends had classes, so I was exploring the city alone. Today I went to centre ville (downtown) of Pertuis and found a library. I walked into the entrance but I didn't know if I was allowed to go inside. It didn't seem like a normal public library; it was called the "médiathèque". I sat in the doorway for about five minutes stressing about going up to talk the woman at the desk in French. Eventually I got up and asked if I could look around without a card and check out the library. She was nice and let me in. It was really modern, and there was free wifi which is hard to come by in France.

3pm-4pm:

I left an hour early just in case I would get lost on the way back to school. It was a good idea, because I did get lost. I'm awful with directions. I walked for twenty minutes towards what I thought was the school, but I had gone in a circle back to the library. I asked a woman for directions, walked that way, then after asking another person for directions, would be told to go back the opposite way. I eventually was stuck way outside the village and had to stop at a nursing home for directions. My bus leaves the school at 4pm and I was still lost at 3:55pm. Eventually two woman offered to give me a ride to the school. This sounds sketchy but I promise in France everyone hitchhikes and it's a lot more normal than it sounds. Luckily they took me back to the school just in time for me to sprint on the bus.

4pm-5pm:

On the bus I ate chocolate with Alberto and recounted my trip to the city and getting lost. Because it was Friday and there wasn't anymore school, we got off at the stop in downtown Lauris to walk around town. He bought some gummy bears and we checked out the castle. Next to the castle there's a jewelry store owned by a Japanese woman but I have yet to meet her. I really want to speak Japanese with her but apparently she's never there. We also spotted some cats downtown, and they're everywhere.