Never a Tourist, Always a Traveler

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

Ok, my brain is offcially shot. I cannot, for the life of me, think of a creative title or anything for this blog post. Where is my creative writing little sister with a wild imagination when I need her? :) So anyhow, instead I just used one of my favorite little sayings (or maybe it's a quote...) as my title instead. I absolutely love it, because, well, I want it to be the motto of my life as far as travelling comes. Because NO ONE every wants to look like a tourist! I mean, I know I sure don't want to look like a silly American/Half-Canadian who has no idea what she is doing, do you?

1st/2nd Class: After two easy days in a row, I knew that this would not be such a fun day compared to the others. Especially since I was starting off with a double period of 6th Year French. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Definitely my least favorite class of the day, because I always feel like I am progressing in French so darn much, then I go into that class, understand next to nothing, and feel depressed. I know that I have to look at this French class and even if I understand a little bit, I should be proud. Because after all, it is the equivalent of AP Lang or whatever it is that I would be doing back home. And even that class in English would be a challenging one! It made me feel a bit better during that class though because my friend Constance turned to me and said, "Tu compris?" and I, of course, said, "Um, no..." And then her was reply was, "Ca va, we don't know either..." I mean, if my friends have been speaking French all their life and don't understand, then how in heck do they expect me to???

3rd/4th Class: And the not-so-great continues with yet another double period, but this time of morale. And don't ask me what moral is, because I am in that class and I don't even know! They were talking about some weird subject that apparently they had gone over the previous Thursday, when I didn't even have that class! I tried to make sense of everything, but it was a bit hard. But I had it with my friends, and they were nice and said that oh, it's nothing important at all. And when the teacher seemed mad at me for not being in the class last week (what can I say, it's not my fault! Blame it on the counselor or whoever switched my schedule around!!!!), they said "Oh, it's not a problem. The teacher is..." Umm, the equivalent of really mean but not in exactly such nice words... It is funny, because even the kids who don't know English very well definitely know the English swear words! I travel halfway across the world and still can't escape the swear words... But here, I think that the people that use them don't even really know what they mean!

5th Class: Art, art, art. I didn't know that one could have so much art in her schedule! But alas, I have, out of the 33 hours worth of classes that I am in school, a total of 9 hours of art. Not that I mind at all, it's just a lot. But luckily, the majority of the friends I have made are in the art track as well, so at least I get to seem them a lot! During this period, we had more art history. and I realized that in my blog from the other day I made a mistake, because it was today exclusively that we studied Andy Warhol. And although the art teacher is another person that I find it impossible to understand, at least with the background info that I had on the artist I was able to follow along a bit better!

6th Class: Yay, lunch! And today, I didn't have a sandwich catastrophe!!!! Because when I handed the lunch lady my ticket, my sandwich was actually there. This lunch was actually quite pleasant. I spent the hour with a friend of mine, her friends, and the two Australians who are friends with my friend's friends. If that makes any sense to you... But they were all really nice, talking to me slowly in French and then if I didn't completely understand the Aussies would translate. And after we were done eating, we were able to go outside and bask in the sun. Seriously, Thursday felt like a beautiful summer's day, it was amazing. I just wish that it could stay like this forever...

7th Class: Math class again. And this being the class I accidentally skipped last week after going to chemistry instead, I was very glad that this was the actual class for me. Because, you know, the whole universal language thing that math has. And the fact that we are doing pretty basic Algebra, so it's one of those classes where for once, my brain doesn't have to think so hard that it almost dies. Oh, and Tedde is in that class as well and she hates math. So I said that as long as she helps my French improve, then I will help her all she wants for math.

8th Class: Study hall!!!!!!!!!!! For this class, I just walked around outside with Tedde and we talked about how different things were here. I mean, here we are during our study period, just walking around the town and not in school at all. Back home, it's pretty hard to leave campus. But here, you can just walk whenever you want and no one thinks twice about it. And with all of the weird, constantly changing schedules, and the tracks, and the different classes within a year, and the weird class requirements such as moral, we both decided that school here couldn't get much different. And yet, it's definitely a good different.

9th Class: And to end the not that great, but not horrible day, I had just possibly the worst class I have had ever: Physics!!!!!! Even though the teacher was really nice and easier to understand than others, I really didn't get at all what he was talking about. I mean, at least with most of my other classes I have already studied the subject and can try and comprehend the subject in French. But Physics in French, forget it. It just goes completely over my head. After quite a painful hour of understanding nothing, I decided that I would go and talk to my couselor and see about getting into a French class with the younger students instead, because I feel like that would be more helpful than sitting in a class for the entire year where I understand basically nothing. I might try and do the same with Chemistry, because confusing science in French= confused, stressed out Morgan who really feels like she is wasting her time!

And just a final little note, as I went to catch the bus after school, my horrible luck with public transportation continued as the first bus from my line pulled up to the stop and was so full that it wouldn't let anybody else on. I only had to wait about another 15 minutes, but still. This whole public transportation thing is starting to get a bit ridiculous!