The first two days in an Amerian High School…

Feels damn weird.

I don’t know if I can describe it in any other words but “weird” is so far the closest.

It’s not that it’s bad or anything, but I guess I’m just new to everything here – the culture, the system, the tests…

I was going to blog about it after the first day of school, but everything was so hectic and I need catch up on a lot of stuff that I really did not have time to do anything else. My mom even called to ask me to go online and talk to her, and then I told her I can’t ‘cause I’m so damn busy, and I’ll talk to her the next day, which I didn’t because I was so tired after all the hectic-ness so I kinda just…slept.

So now that it’s a weekend, I’ve got some extra time to do something else. And since the internet is somehow down, this is what I can do now. (I’m using word to type it btw)

Let me see if I can remember what happened the first day, it’s gonna be a LLLONNNGGG post…LOL still gonna stick to short and frequent, but this is just an exception

Day One of school, Jan 31

(I’m still not used to they way they write dates – mm/dd/yy….so weird)

I got up in the morning at 6.45am. IT WAS SO DAMN COLD!!!!! I got out of bed and started to
hop around trying to get warm, and then went to wash up. Warm water kinda killed the cold a little, which is good. Then I changed into my PE uniform, which is a t-shirt with a horse head and the words “Walnut Mustangs” on it, and shorts. SHORTS. I didn’t get the winter PE uniform!

And so I was FREEZING again.

I put on a jacket, helped a little but my legs were still freezing. Packed my bag – pencil case writing pad, binder, school agenda (it’s like a diary kinda thing to put down homework and stuff) and a chocolate muffin for lunch. Debated on whether I should eat some breakfast first, but decided not ‘cause I might get stomachache during the first period, which is PE. Btw, here’s my schedule:

Period Lesson Teacher Room

1 PE Nelson Courts

2 PE Thompson Courts

3 SRC Garcia C-5

4 US Hist. Landis F-3

5 Digi. Vid. Keith J-5

6 English 3 Wong H-9

I have two stupid periods of PE ‘cause I need to fulfill some weird requirement of the state.

Anyways, Willis (my cousin) dropped me off at school at around 7.30am. Which means I have 15 minutes before classes start. I walked in the school feeling SO DAMN WEIRDD!!! Because one, it’s a big unfamiliar place which is supposed to be my school, and two, no one has their freaking PE uniforms!! Except some random groups of cheerleaders wearing their cheerleader thingys. But I felt so weird.

Went to the library and got my locker combination, which I had a hard time trying to remember. The lady brought me to my locker and taught me how to use it. It’s no different from the RGS one so I can manage and stuffed everything inside except my jacket which I refuse to take out ‘cause it’s so damn cold, and my school agenda because there’s this map of the school which kinda saved my ass the first two days. So I followed to map to the Girl’s Locker and Shower room, where I realized that everyone changes into their PE uniforms here, and not at home freezing their legs off. One lesson learnt.

Went to the teacher to get a PE locker, which is another set of combination I need to remember. Gah. Wrote it down on my agenda just to be save, and put everything including my jacket it the locker and locked it. Which is so smart of me, because I didn’t remember the combination, which I wrote down in my agenda, which is in the locker, which I locked, which I have no combination to. AHHHH!! (went to the teacher to get my combination after that)

So first period is PE. The PE classes are all either freshmen or sophomores (grades 9 and 10) and I feel kinda awkward. We ran half a mile for warm up, which I learnt that is two rounds round the track. That means 1 mile=1.6km…? and then played Frisbee, which is just Frisbee so I have nothing to write about.

Oh and before coming to school, Willis told me to get ready for people asking about chewing gum. And just as he predicted, One of the girls, Cheresa asked me where I was from and I said Singapore and she’s like “Oh Singapore! The really strict and clean country! Oh and no chewing gum right?” The other girl (I forgot her name >.<) was like “Oh yea, I heard Singapore is so clean, compared to them it’s like a dumpster here.” And throughout the day, I forgot who but two more people commented about chewing gum thing. LOL. It was quite funny.

(OMG it’s only the first period and I wrote so much!! I might be able to start a memoir!)

Okay, second period was PE too. We played Frisbee again. -_-‘’

So after the series of PEs, went back to locker room and changed. It’s so weird wearing home clothes in school.

We have a 10 minutes passing period after every class, so I went to my locker and got the books for the next class, which is SRC, State Required Course. It’s basically something like CLE, only that there’s a module of driving lessons. So I got in (3 mins late ‘cause I got lost) and reported to the teacher, Mr Jones. It’s Mr Garcia’s class but somehow he’s not teaching. So Mr Jones said something like “Welcome to the coolest class in the school.” Something like that, can’t really remember. Then they had this skit that they’re supposed to perform from last week and coincidentally this person was absent so I had to fill in for her as a cheating student getting caught by the teacher and learnt her lesson of not cheating again.

I’m gonna skip the rest ‘cause nothing interesting happened, but I left the class knowing that there’s this test the next day…so I have a day to study for it. Ugh.

One other interesting thing about American high school is that once the bell rings, everyone just left. Even if the teacher’s still talking, they just got up and exit. I told Willis that in Singapore we had to wait for dismissal and stand up to greet the teacher before leaving the class, and he laughed so hard >.<.

My fourth period is US History with Mr Landis, whom Willis thought was one of the best teachers he ever had, and it’s quite true. He is a really a funny guy, and he was afraid I wouldn’t be able to cope so he got a senior in the class to help me. That was one of the best things that happened so far in the day because coincidentally, that senior girl, Sheree, came from South Africa!! And from Johannesburg too!! We had so much to talk about and she had that heavy british accent like Sandy (other cousin) too! So anyways, History was a cool class. The bell rang, and it’s lunch time.

Man, how cool is lunch.

It’s SO WEIRD to see stuff that happens on TV happening in real life!!! People are eating LITERALY everywhere! Underneath trees, along the corridors, beside the water fountain or clumped up in groups at locker areas…

And I got lonely…T-T

So I took my muffin from my locker and sat down at some random place where there’re not many people and read my history textbook while eating.

So when lunch was over I was kinda happy lol. Fifth period is this Digital Video Class where we need to make videos. Déjà vu. I didn’t choose this class btw, my counselor did. I guess it’s fate to go into video making >.<>

Then it’s period 6, last period which is English 3 with Mrs Wong, whom Willis is not so “enthusiastic” about. Well, she seemed like a nice lady, but she DID put me in fort of the whole class when went “This is a new student, Jessica, let’s welcome her!” And I got so embarrassed I wanna just drop dead. Ten she commented how good my English speaking is. I was like…o.O ‘Cause I think she thought that I had no prior experience in English and is a FOB (fresh out the boat – referring to mainly Asians who just arrived in America, and surprisingly there’re a lot of them in the school)

We did grammar which was easy, and SAT vocabulary, which messed up my brain. This is the vocabulary list we got that day: insidious, cant, turpitude, glib, hirsute, allay, jocose, nadir, panacea, irascible, scion, callous, maim, tyro, curtail and fracas. -_-‘’ Maybe it’s just that my vocabulary suck, but I have never seen any of those words before!

Then we had to read Catcher in the Rye, which I read a little so I could catch up a bit.

Then the bell rang and classes for the day ended. I just ran out to my locker and grabbed my stuff and ran out of the school as fast as I can and tried to locate Willis’ car so that I can go home asap!!

Not that school’s bad or anything, but I think it’s just the unfamiliarity that kind weirded me out.

So that’s all for the first day. Nothing much different happened for the second day, except that there was this drill thing happening after the second period, and there was a lock down, so we got locked in the locker and shower room for around 10 minutes. It was kinda freaky and like there were people (teachers simulating stranded people) banging on the doors and we’re not supposed to open them. Just a drill though, thank goodness.

1723 words so far…o.O

Ok I’m gonna stop now before I ramble too much…

End of post.