Exchange Student Indiana 16/17

I want to be completely honest on my blog. I do. But sometimes, that can be tricky. A little hard. Because on social media we often glorify things, or erase the bad stuff. What I am trying to say here is that I went to an American high school for the first time today and I thought it was tough. It was kind of like a chock to me because I have always been told that American school is easy. 

 

Woke up around 6.00 and brushed my hair and did my makeup. Then I went downstairs to eat my daily bagle with cream cheese, and a banana. I brought my STS backpack, my phone, a charger, my non-set schedule, a notebook and my pencil pouch.. then I was out the door. Sue took a picture of me, which I will post down below. We drove over to Bianca's house to pick her up, and then we got to school. SO MUCH PEOPLE IN THERE!! It was insane, very hectic. And I obviously did not know anyone. We were all supposed to go into the gym and get our schedules. Had to wait in a long line with other juniors.. They printed them on pink papers, probably to cheer us up.. not sure if that worked. Nothing had changed on my schedule. After that Bianca and walked seperate ways, and I headed to my locker which is located upstairs. I left my back pack because apparently we are not allowed to bring them into the classroom.. it is weird because purses are fine. Will make sure to have one of those tomorrow. The pink schedule is what I have to look at in order to know what classroom I am supposed to be going to. It is also were I find my student ID as well as locker and its combination. The classroom ended up being really close to my locker, yet it took me a while to find it. I came in 4 minutes late and I was not sure what the consequences would be.. if I was even allowed to enter the room. People were already in there and everyone was looking. But since it was the first day people ended up showing up after me.. so I did not have to worry.

 

I have the same schedule every day except for Wednesdays.. then I get of school half an hour earlier so each class is moved to a couple minutes earlier.

 

A class I thought would be interesting now when the election is coming up. The teacher said that the class is useful so we will not be fooled by the candidates.. but I am not voting.. and most likely never will, in an American election. My teacher is Mr. Dave Bischoff. I have him 3 periods!! So more than any other student this semester, apparently. Some people thought I was insane. But he is the one who has the serious classes, and since this year counts for me I want to do good academicly. Mr. Bischoff is a funny guy, he made a lot of jokes.. but people really do respect him and know that they want him on his good side. He was very strict. If we are late, that means if we are not inside the classroom when the bell rings, we have to stand up during the entire class.. and the rest of the students will chant "late, late, late".. he showed us 3 different models of desks we would use in case this event occurs. I am wondering who will be late first, and hoping that it is not going to be me.. Feel bad for the wheel chair kid who came late to class once.. they used up a lot of duct tape that time... Bischoff went through a bunch of rules that we have to follow, uncluding no cellphones, do not make him angry, bring materials.. that kind of stuff. We even had to sing a paper - print and signature, to show that we would follow his rules. Not like Sweden where we could get away with basically anything. One thing I really like is how each teacher personalises their classroom. In this classroom there is a lot of picturs, specifically of baseball, since Mr. Bischoff is the baseball coach. In case of a fire we are all assigned one of his personal items.. his plan is to get his stuff into his car and drive around and laugh while everyone else is crying about their personal belongings that now is known as ashes.. We also have assigned seats. This class is mostly seniors, so people who are 17-18 years old, I believe? Eveyone was taking the class because it was required.. 

 

This was my favorite class of the day. Went to the library, was assigned a person to help.. In my case Mrs. Cordray, who is the assistent of the school counslers. Since today was the first day so many people had problems, or classes they did not want to take.. therefor she was very busy and I could just sit down and talk to people. Met a girl named Asia and a girl named Summer. Summer is also an intern for mrs. Cordray, but a "normal one".. I am the "year book edition". It was actually her birthday today.. yay!

 

Okay, can we just take a second to talk about "the breaks"? We have 5 minutes between each class and sometimes you have to go up the stairs.. I have yet to figure out how to effectively use those 5 minutes. There is no time for bathroom break.. I did not even make it to my locker. Might be because I barely know where my locker is located.. but still. And the entire school goes out at the same time, when the bell rings. You seriously just stop with what you are doing and go straight out of there. And for your own sake I hope you know where you are going next.. No time for mistakes.

 

This class had a new teacher this year called mrs. Stuckey. I like her so far because she was both fun and serious. In this classroom there are two sides of desks who face the middle.. kind of like a rap battle if you know what I mean? Oh well, after she introduced herself we started with journaling, which we be doing a lot. We just got 10 minutes to write our name, interests, expectations of the class.. those kind of things. 10 minutes is not enough for me since I am not a "one-sentence-answers-kind-of-person". I can write an essay for each question if she would let me. Then she handed out a paper with rules. We are not allowed to stand up during class, we can chew gum, drinks and food is not permitted, if homework is given to her 1 minute late we only get 50% of the grade we were supposed to get.. yep, it is really that strict. Actually all teachers have been quite clear on how the grading works. For example, a certain precentage of of our grade depends on test, while another depends on work during class.. etc. The school even has a website where you can keep track of your grades, and they rank the students! In Sweden we had no idea until the end of the season.. when it was too late to change the game. After going through that stuff we got a sheet of paper with would-you-rather questions, and then we had to walk around the class and ask people if they had picked the same answer as you. In this class I met Becka, a girl with the coolest neon yellow hair color.. I really dig it. There is only juniors in this class. We are mostly going to work with American literature, and that sounds like a lot of fun to me. 

 

I chose this class because I love to act and read. However, everyone else picked it because it is an English writing class that they thought does not necessarily involve a lot of writing. I believe most students were freshmen and they could not care less about what Mr. Grubaugh was saying.. so I was caught between taking to others and making friends, or listening to the teacher..I noticed how in every class I took today except for this one we were told that we were the smart people.. However, we did get an introduction to the class and what we plan to do during the semester. And then we wrote a paragraph about why we chose this class and previous experience. After that he wanted each student to share 3 facts - two truths and a lie. Everyone just said that they have 9 dogs or 7 siblings.. very creative. I said that I hate water melon, I have lived in Indiana all my life, and that I love Harry Potter. The once who dared to guess went like "you like water melon".. and then I told everyone that I was a Swedish exchange student and I was told I had a cute accent.. I did not know I had one, but sure. They wanted me to say "Ha en bra dag" in Swedish, and everyone thought it was soo funny, even though it was only one sentence! So they were easy to entertain. I was also asked if we have MC Donalds in Sweden, which we do.. but they also mentioned a lot of other fast food places that I have never tried. They stated that I would be obese by the end of the year..

 

What we all fear.. the 30 minute break in which we are supposed to consume food to get us through the day. I did not manage to open my locker to leave my stuff and grab my water bottle, so I came to the cafeteria late.. apperantly someone is hired to make sure we behave correctly during lunch, and that we get out of there in time. 30 minutes was nothing! I sat next to a girl whose name I can not remember.. but we do not have any classes together. I just took the closest seat out of desperation.. and I did feel welcomed so that was really nothing to worry about. Lunch was some kind of pizza or tacos. I picked pizza because it seemed easier..If you are from Sweden I can inform you it tasted a lot like Billys panpizza. 

 

I have Mr. Bischoff again, in the same room. He went through the exact same stuff except he talked a lot more about the pictures he had hanging from the cealing of famous people. I had to sign my name again, get a different seat. I belive we were all juniors in this class. Once the teacher realised that I was a Swedish exchange student he made the other students name countries that boarders Sweden.. at least some people knew. Someone said France.. so they must have mixed it up with Switzerland. I actually got compliments for my Harry Potter T-shirt, yay! That was my plan all along. One thing I forgot to mention is that I have no idea how the bells work.. nor did I know when my next class started.. so I was constently stressed and thinking I was late.. Ugh. 

 

Same thing for the 3d time. Bischoff just got worse and worse at pronouncing my name.. and I was so tired, and since I had already heard all jokes and information I could not care less. He was so suprised when he realised that I had him three times during the day.. I think I will get an award. I was actually told this class is kind of fun and everyone is knew at it, so yay! We got 3 sheets of paper and filled out true or false questions. Learned a lot even though it was only the first day!

 

This is a math class on college level. My teacher is called miss Medsker. One of the first things she mentioned was how we are not allowed to use pens in her class. She gave us all a sheet of paper and told us that we had 5 minutes to finish.. I freaked out! I mean, a test on the first day? Although when I flipped the page and jumped right onto the first question it was only simple questions like "write the date on the top right hand corner", "write the first president of the United states on the back of your sheet", "write the number five at the center of your paper".. questions like that. I did well and read through the questions carefully.. until I got down to one of the last questions that said "now that you have read through each question carefully, only do the first two questions and skip the rest".. I felt so stupid but almost all of us were. That did explain how the girl sitting next to me was the fastest! Apperantly, if i had read the instructions, I would have known that the first step was to read throught all of the questions. But I feel like that would take too much time, I only had 5 minutess. However. We got homework, actually. Three sheets of paper with math questions to answer. And I did not know any of them. There were stuff on there I had not worked with before. Since math was one of my strongest subjects in Sweden, that came as a chock to me.. and I freaked out. One thing that annoyed me is that we are supposed to ask our friends for help if we do not know the answer to a question. This is a problem for me since I have not made any friends yet! I walked up to the teacher and told her honestly that I had never done anything like this before. She told me that I should try it for a while and then maybe switch to Algebra 2. After looking closer at my homework I emailed the school counsler straight away. I mean, I can not start with the advance stuff.. I got to build myself up from the basics.

 

Thankfully that was the end of the day. I walked over to my locker. I kept struggling with my combination today.. I mean, in Sweden we often lost our keys but it feels like a better alternative.. but most likely I will get a hang of it soon. And people were happy to help me. I walked to the main desk and left all forms I had filled out before. Happy to get rid of those. Then I walked out of school, obviously through the wrong door, so I had to walk around the entire building.. but that was not too tricky. I was suprised by how warm it was outside because inside school it was pretty chilly. 

 

After school I just relaxed, ate dinner and went back to school shopping. Ended up buying things for 53$ so I did some damage for sure.. but if I am going to make it through this school year I need to be organized.

 

Let us see how today goes!