School

I haven’t mentioned nearly enough about my new school to give you a good picture of how it compares to school in Canada. So, I’ll describe a normal day at school for me.

I wake up at 6:00, get dressed, clean up and eat breakfast. I leave at 7:00 to catch the 311 bus to my school, Zhonghe Gao Zhong (The National Chung Ho Senior High School). Busses here are like a game is Bonanza. The 311 bus is like a Red Bean, there aren’t very many of them and when you’re looking for them, you keep getting Stink Beans or Green Beans, like the 262 and 241 busses. I’m supposed to take the 214 bus, but those are like Garden Beans, you very rarely see them.

Anyway, I arrive just before 8:00, which is when I’m supposed to. The security guards take my temperature and spray hand sanitizer on me, then I sign in, recording my name (莊茉莉 or Chuang Mo-Li, my host parents ave adpoted me and given me their last name) the date, my number (10544, the 105 is my class and the 44 is my seat number), the time and my current body temperature. I’m surprised it’s stayed normal so far, it’s way ridiculously hot here! Then I go to the Media Center where I check in with Ting, my ‘teacher’ and Jasper, my student advisor. Then they dismiss me to my class.

School starts at 7:30, but classes don’t actually start until 8:00, I don’t know what they do in that half hour, I guess I’ll never know. The classes also change every day, not like at St Pete’s where you have the same 4 classes every day. Plus, the teacher comes to us and we don’t have to move except for Art, PE and Music. The seats are assigned according to number. There are 44 students in my class, so I’m at the very back corner, but close to the AC, so that’s nice!

Classes last 50 minutes (which seems like a long time when you don't understand the language), then there’s a 10 minute break, which make no sense because back home, we have 5 minutes to run to our locker, unload and load books, then run to our next class. All there people do here is sit around and talk. Lunch break is at 12:00, then at 12:30, we get nap time until 1:00. Then 4 more classes and we get to go home at 5:00.

As for the classes themselves, they ALL have assigned seating according to our numbers. It took me a while to figure out why everyone was kicking me out of my seat. The classes that aren’t in our homeroom don’t have a seat with me, so I have to find a chair and sit away from the normal people for the entire class. PE was weird too. We did warm up, and I had no idea that we had to stay in numerical order for PE! So, I just kind of wandered around, doing the exercises until people were escorting me to my proper place. Also, numbers 1-25 are boys and 26-44 are girls. So whenever we do stuff like fitness testing, the boys are always done first and have more time to play than the girls. I don’t really think the gym teacher knows what she’s doing. She’s assigned one of the boys to record fitness scores and lead warm up. Then she tells us which sport we’re playing and we divide into groups and fool around until class is over.

Music class is also a disappointment. It’s a vocal class, which I would be okay with, except all the music is in Chinese! I would have preferred instrumental music, I’m just glad I joined the band!

Yesterday, I was allowed to eliminate 8 hours of class, which isn’t much. But I guess I’m already missing Monday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, 8 extra hours is reasonable, even if I don’t understand what’s being taught. Today, the Health teacher started talking to me in Chinese, and I told her, in Chinese, that my Chinese isn’t very good, but she kept talking to me and smiling as if I understood what she was saying. The rest of the class started laughing at the look on my face, I don’t think the teacher noticed.

It’s really funny, whenever I leave the class at the end of the day, people make sure I know which bus to take and which stop to get off at. I’ve been here for almost 4 weeks, I know how to get around! But it’s cool that they’re concerned.

I have a few more subjects to write about, so stayed tuned!