In my last blog, I mentioned that the thing taking up most of my thoughts was the start of school here in Spain. So for that reason, I´m going to dedicate this whole blog to my first two weeks at school.

You will certainly be surprised, if not envious, to learn that school here started on the 21st of September. It was a Friday and the day only lasted about an hour, but even so it was my first day at a new school and therefore it was terrifying. If you´ve ever been a new student, then you know what it´s like. As for me, I haven´t been a new student since I was in first grade, so the week before I started here, I didn´t even know what to worry about.

Have you ever felt like you would really like to have the ability to melt into a puddle of water on the floor? Or become a chameleon and blend into the wall? Or maybe have a jetpack and blast-off through the ceiling? Well, I certainly felt that way on my first day of school. Between you and me, I felt like I was going to spew (or throw up, for those of you over the age of 12).

Some of the observations I made at the time, most of which made me very nervous, included: everyone looked a lot older than I expected, everyone was talking incredibly fast, no one was dressed like me, and a number of people seemed to stare at me as they passed by. Perhaps this was because I was wearing shorts (it had been hot that week) and a button-down shirt (I didn´t want to look overly casual). In other words, I was wearing the kind of outfit I might usually wear to school in California. Wrong. Actually, I probably could have chosen any other outfit I would wear in California, and looked more normal than I did. I think I saw, at most, two other girls in shorts, and not a soul was wearing anything that could be deemed “button-down”. Painting “I´m new here” on my forehead would probably have been more subtle.

But my first day did come to an end, eventually, and I had a weekend to relax. Needless to say, that Monday morning my stomach was twisting in knots again. At least I looked more normal. Somehow, the kids looked less intimidating that day. It all seemed more real. It was reassuring to know that I could at least understand all my teachers when they spoke. The kids, however, were a different story. I think I mentioned in one of my last blogs that the accent here is pretty different, and everyone talks much faster compared to the Spanish I’m used to. Well, at first when the kids at school talked, it sounded like a continuous strain of syllables stuck together. They said such things like “¡Que lío!” (translation: more or less “what a pickle!”).

Despite the language barrier, the kids are really nice. Everyone talks to everyone else, more or less. There are still the “popular” kids, the “goth” kids, the “sporty” kids, and the, well, let´s just say “studious” kids. The groups all associate with each other, though? at least most of the time.

The main thing I noticed the first day, as I said before, the other kids all look a lot older. Thankfully I wasn’t hallucinating; my intuition was right. In Spain, because of the way classes are organized, and the way assessments work, you´re a lot more likely to have to repeat a grade? or two. Basically, your grades come down to, more or less, three tests. If you don´t pass enough of your classes (at least 50% on each test), you have to repeat the entire grade, not just those classes. I assume the tests are fairly hard, based on how many older kids there are in my classes. So I´m generally terrified to take my first test.

Most of the schools in Spain are single buildings, with several floors. Classes are grouped by course (such as Primero de Bachillerato, which would translate to our junior year of high school) and then by letter (A through F). Throughout the day, you stay with the same group of kids (in my case, Primero E) for all your classes. Except in the case of electives, you stay in the same room while the teachers move from class to class. I´m not ashamed to say that, by the end of the day, my backside is usually completely numb.

Within the first week, I learned something very useful about how school works in Spain. When a teacher doesn´t show up, no one calls a substitute and another teacher doesn´t show up to sit in the room while everyone reads quietly. Nothing like that happens. In fact, “nothing” is a very good word to describe it. If a teacher doesn´t show up, class just doesn´t happen. So, as it turned out, I didn´t meet some of my teachers until the end of the first week, or until even the start of the second week. I also didn’t have all six of my classes every day of the first week.

My philosophy professor, one of the disappearing teachers, is my favourite so far. He´s the kind of teacher that some kids think is crazy, but if you listen to him, he´s completely brilliant. In my opinion, he´s the perfect kind of person to teach philosophy.

After teachers bombard our brains with information, we get a 30-minute recess in the middle of the school day, which is pretty much the only time we get to socialize.

At first, I hung out with a pretty large group (20-plus kids). A couple of kids in my class invited me to eat with them. They´re really great people, but it turned out that with such a large group, it was really hard to talk. Not so much in terms of not being able to cut into the conversation, but more that it´s really intimidating speaking your second language in a large group, who are all fluent. Half the time I had no idea what anyone was saying. I probably looked pretty comical; smiling and laughing as if I had some sort of clue what they were talking about.

On the inside I was thinking, “what the heck are they saying? For heaven´s sake! How do they understand each other? There should really be a speed limit for conversations around here.”

But apparently I´m a pretty good actress because no one called my bluff.

Now I´m hanging out with only two other girls, and that’s a lot easier for me. They can ask me questions and I feel free to answer them without worrying about making mistakes. As a result, I feel a lot more at ease now.

The one change I really had to get used to, is smoking. You may not think that fits within my topic of school, but you´d be surprised. By law, no one is allowed to smoke within the confines of the school, but that doesn´t stop people from smoking. Starting in Bachillerato, kids have the option of leaving the school campus during break. Some kids, the minute they get out the door into the courtyard, light up. I have to remind myself that it´s a cultural thing. As an asthmatic, though, it´s hard not to take a little offence; especially when you sit near someone who constantly smells of coconut and cigarette smoke.

Well, now you have something of an idea of what school is like for me here. It´s very different from California, but it´s really not as different as you might think it would be. I know it’s only been two and a half weeks, but it already feels normal to go to school here.

Well, as they say here, colorín, colorado, este cuento se ha acabado (a Spanish rhyme which generally means “this story is over”).