One has to show some dedication when you want to experience an American schoolday. My alarmclock was set for 6 AM, and yet my stupid jet-lag woke me up even earlier than that. We had breakfast and then left the house by car at 7:10, in order to arrive at the bus-stop on time. Over there CeCe and I were picked up by a small yellow schoolbus, driven by a very friendly woman. Once I got inside, the girls sitting in it were really excited to meet me. Most of them were friends of CeCe's, and what I noticed about them the most is how open they were. Like, nothing was held back by these girls. They sang, talked about their classmates in a very respectful way, and gave lots of compliments to each other. It was in the bus that I was first introduced to the word 'cleats', which are kind of like hockey-shoes in the Netherlands. However, these weren't for hockey, these were for Lacrosse. A game that I had never seen being played live in front of me until today.
Once at school, which was 8 o'clock, we went to a room with some old sofas in it for a day-starter called 'advisory'. It's kind of like what we would call our mentor-hour in Holland. Pingree has this interesting tradition of sending out an e-mail to all of the students each morning, stating the announcements of the day, the birthdays among faculty and students, the games that will be played that day, as well as interesting things that happened on that day in history and a daily quote. This is basically what was being discussed with the advisor-teacher as well. The little group of students, around 6 if I remember correctly, could use this time to bring up anything they wanted. Out of advisory we went into history, which was quite a fun and interesting lesson actually! Pingree is a private school, and I could really tell the difference with what I'm normally used to. The classes sum up to about 13 people, and this makes it possible for there to be a real conversation with the teacher. That is, instead of a teacher just throwing information at you and skipping questions because there is no time. And I say that coming from a school where lessons take 65 minutes. Over at Pingree, one lesson lasts 45 minutes. Although I thought that was very short when CeCe told me, with this way of teaching it seemed like the perfect amount of time! History, though, was what they call a long hour at Pingree today. Meaning that the lesson took 65 minutes. Mrs. P taught the class about World War One and I was glad that I could kind of participate in that. Sadly, I didn't remember much of what I'd previously learned. Which I always think is a shame! While the class discussed things, she passed around a box of Dunkin' Donuts multiple times. Which I accepted gratefully, of course. Walking through the school after that I kind of discovered a pattern in how the chairs and tables in the classrooms were situated. Most of the classrooms had them in a circle, once again really enabling class-discussion. I thought this was super interesting, because it truly did seem to work. It creates less of a distant feeling between the teacher and the student, as well as between one student and another.
The next class we went to was Spanish, and it was in the old, original part of the building. The majestically large school used to be an old farmhouse, with loads of rooms where the workers would sleep at night. Those rooms were now classrooms, and they had a beautiful, beautiful view over the lake and forest. Spanish was sadly done by a substitute teacher, meaning that the students only had to finish their homework. As I don't understand a word of Spanish, I couldn't really participate in this... But I had a good time looking at photos of my cat on my phone. ;) There was a small break after Spanish, and when we got to the cafeteria CeCe asked me whether I liked goldfish. I had no idea. I mean, I knew she didn't mean actual, live fish. I'd seen the boxes of crisps in my barbie collection when I was younger. So I had some typically American Goldfish crisps then. :)
The following thing on our schedule was chemistry, which I didn't understand one bit of, but the teacher was a very nice and friendly woman so I made sure she got the feeling that I was paying close attention. English class started after that, and it was taught by a man who was kind of nuts, and it's probably okay that I call him that as he called himself a whackjob. The class was busy with a book called the Odyssey, and their task was to write their own Odyssey. Even though I had never read this book, the teacher tried really hard to get me to write one as well.
For lunch we went to the cafeteria and had fritata, bacon, sausages and French toast. French toast kind of tastes like Oliebollen without the raisins, I discovered. My plate was overloaded, because I kind of wanted to try everything, but once I finished CeCe gave me a little tour around and in the school. It's amazing how large the property is! There's a long lane leading up to the school, the main building, an athletic centre, an ice-hockey ring, multiple sports-fields going from tennis to lacrosse to soccer to American football... And then this school is very special as well, because it has a great deal of a forest as well, including a big lake. We took photos together and checked out some more things until CeCe had to go get ready for her Lacrosse game. I watched the whole thing from a bench, practice included, and got so incredibly cold and tired that I thought I was going insane. The game was great! But I almost couldn't enjoy it because of the cold wind that had started gusting from the moment they hit the field. The jet-lag is definitely kicking in now... Fatigue is taking over my body, sadly. So I will call it an early night tonight and see what tomorrow will bring when I join Amy to her office.
Goodnight!
xxx
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