School

Tuesday Sept 4

I went to the high school to enroll in my classes today (Tuesday).  I'm in a bunch of sciences and math classes.  I've already taken 12 U science and maths and I'm really hoping that there are some major parallels here, it would make my life so much easier.  I have two English classes a week, that much is a blessing.  After that, Sophie took me to some dance classes, a ballet class and a modern class.  It was fun, although the level wasn't as high as I'm used to.  I really want to do some classes so that I don't freeze up and stop being able to dance.  There are elective dance courses at the Lycee so I should have at least one a week.  It looks like I'll be able to take visual arts after all!  Here, l'art visuel is more like media arts.  Visual arts is actually called de l'art plastiques, and I think I'll have at least a couple of hours a week.

This is my timetable, if you have REALLY good eyes, you can see that each day is different, and that I get off school at 11 on Wednesday and 2:00 on Friday.  All other days go until 6:00pm (17:55).  The extra time is balanced out with lots of breaks.  There are two weeks off every third month, plus the summer.


First day of school:
Today (Wednesday) was the first day of high school.  I had an orientation and a civics class.  I understood little of either, and I was falling asleep in civics.  It's not like Canadian civics, let me tell you!  From what I was able to understand, there are two dissertations, an essay and an oral presentation planned for the year.  I'm glad I'm only here for 3 months, that much would be tough for somebody native to the french language, and I certainly am not.   I'm really looking forward to art.  I just found the paintbrushes that I packed.  :)
Right now I'm waiting to be picked up from school.  Wednesday is only a half day, so school ended at 11:00.  The campus here is really quite beautiful, there are trees and grass and benches, and the school is set up in five or six separate buildings.

The blue squares are buildings, the red squares are administrative buildings, and the green parts are grass.  There is a big cafeteria and a smallish library, 850 students go to this school.



Tomorrow is a full day of school, it starts with math, then physics, then biology, then an English class.  Then there is more science.  It'll be great!  I'm only here for a quarter of a year, so I'll probably be gone before any major assignments are due.