first day of school!

so lets see. recap.

thursday night my host sister come home from her senior trip. [: she speaks pretty much perfect english, which makes communicating so much easier. friday we went out to see what bus and tram im taking to school then we went to the main square for a drink. saturday i went out clubbing my host sister, her best friend and some other friends. that was so much fun and well, what an experience. hahah

anyways, today i had my first day of school. 

last night i was so nervous that i couldnt fall asleep until about 2 am. now, i had set my alarm for 6:00 being as i was to leave at 7:10. but of course, if never went off and it wasnt until 6:45 when my host mother woke me that i got up. figures.

so i got ready as best as i could in that time and off we were, to my new school. i seriously wish you could have seen my face as we drove around the corner and i see this mass of kids on the stairs outside the school. im sure it was just hilarious and i think my mouth dropped, just like in the movies. but, this was it, there was no turning back. my host mother and i walked into the school to the headmasters office so we could be introduced to our homeroom teacher. he seems nice, but he talks bout WWll an awful lot. emma was there too, which calmed me down a little, at least were in this together. so when the bell rang we followed him up to the third story of the building, to the end of the hall. all the other kids were in the room already but he made us wait in the hall before going in. then he had us stand in the front of the classroom and introduce ourselves. so i go 'hi im dorothy schaadt and im from pennsylvania.' smoooth, right? right. so emma introduces herself and we take a seat in the back of the class. there arent desks like in the us, but tables with two chairs at each. and the classrooms are really like, i dont even have a good word to describe them. they are very plain and old looking. it definitely feels like a city high school to me. not that is bad, its just, very old. 

so after emma and i sat down everyone started coming over and introducing themselves. not that i remember like any names, or that i could even pronounce half of them, but still, i think everyone wanted to talk to us. 

so since it was the first day of school we were supposed to have just four classes. we were supposed to have physics, math, free period, then psychology. physics was awful. i didnt understand a thing. luckily though after class everyone else said they didnt understand it either, which made me feel better. then we had break. now normally we have seven classes a day, and since there is no lunch we have a 20 minute break inbetween 2nd and 3rd period where we can leave the school and go to a bakery or cafe near the school, which i must say, is pretty freaking awesome. so we went with some girls in our class to a bakery and i got a delicious chocolate croissant. then math class. math this year is trigonometry. so far its not to hard, but i have a feeling its going to get much harder because my teacher doesnt seem like shes good at explaining things. after math we had free period where a lot of people came up to us and were talking to us and asking us questions about the us and high school and if the things they see in movies are real. like “do the cheerleaders really rule the school?” i thought that was funny. so anyways after free period we were supposed to have psychology. but the teacher didnt show up and so after five minutes everyone got up and told us that if the teacher doesnt show up in the first five minutes that we dont have to stay for class. okay, cool. :] so we all left, and school was over. it lasted a whole three hours. 

after school emma and i got invited to go with some girls from school around the city to get something to eat and go buy school notebooks. we ended up hanging out for like 6 hours and having an awesome time. 

all in all, my first day of school was great. i have a feeling the next 174 days of school wont be so bad. [:

so some facts about my school:

• it has four stories, and all my classes so far seem to be either on the first, or fourth floor. of course.
• there are 17 subjects a year, about 5 are taught in english and the others in croatian. there are seven periods a day, with different classes everyday.
• since emma and i only take english classes we have two, or three free periods a day. but unlike in the us, we are allowed to just leave school and go to a cafe or walk around then come back for our next class. or if we dont take the class thats 1st oeriod that day we can sleep in and come into school later for out other classes. 
• your allowed to skip up to two classes a day without a written excuse. 
• my school building actually has two schools in it, one school has morning classes, then the other has afternoon. so my first week of school goes from 8am to 2pm and my second week goes from 2pm to 8pm and switches like that every week after.
• most of the time we stay n one classroom and the teachers switch, except for special classes like foreign language and art.
• my school used to be a mental hospital so there are bars on the windows