American Friday

With an early start again today, waking up with a bowl of cereal, I got to join CeCe to Pingree once more. With the same ritual as the previous days we were taken to the bus-stop, hopped on the yellow bus and were dropped off in front of the school. On Mondays and Fridays, Pingree starts the schoolday a little differently. All the students gather in the auditorium for morning-meeting; usually set up around a theme. Today's theme was Chinese New Year, even though that was in February. The woman announcing it claimed that it was belated because of the numerous snow-days they had had during the winter. First of all, the teachers gave kind of a silly, Chinese fashion show, which the students could laugh about. Then a video was played about several Chinese facts, and it was created by students as well. The 'silly' thing kind of continues onto this. After the video was shown, twenty people were called upstage to go against each other in a kind of game-show quiz idea. It was quite fun to watch! Last but not least, they had people come up to stage to race against each other in the 'chopstick challenge', wherein every component had to move three popcorns from one plate to another by the use of the chopsticks. After this the bell rang, meaning that the classes would soon begin.

It's kind of strange that I can't remember this, but I don't really know the order in which things happened today anymore... :p I think we started with Chemistry, where there was a guest-teacher trying out for possible job at Pingree. He was a very friendly teacher and very enthusiastic about teaching as well. Even though I didn't understand a thing about the chemistry, I'm sure he must have been enjoyable for the class. After this, again if I am writing this correctly, CeCe had like an hour off, so we had the time to get a drink, finish the last bits of her project and get me a Pingree sportshirt. I'm already starting to think that I've the order of today all messed up, but I'll just leave it like this for now. ;) When the time came for a short break we had tortilla-chips with chili-sauce, and it was awesome. Like, I wish we were just provided snacks and drinks and lunch out our school in that way. After this CeCe had another free period, which we used to go see the dance-class. They were practicing for their spring performance, and because they were almost finished I couldn't join, but I still got to watch and that was fun as well! So after that we had lunch. (this is a mess, nothing about this is correct, I'm so sorry!) Quesadillas and ice-cream. I was in heaven. Wishing that such a thing could be possible at our school as well. After that was Spanish and History, and I am quite certain that those were the last classes, so at least I'm sure about that ;) CeCe would still have two hours of Lacrosse practice, so Amy picked me up and dropped me off at the house where I read in Since You've Been Gone for a little while. I'm really starting to love that book already! At 4:30 Amy, Carson and I went to go pick up Deuce at a friend's house and then CeCe and Bryan (her boyfriend) from school again so that we could go to the mall. CeCe, Bryan and I had dinner there at Chicken-Fill-A while Amy, Carson and Deuce went out for dinner and a movie elsewhere. After food we popped into Forever 21 in search of a dress and shoes to wear to the semi-formals which will be tomorrow. It's quite funny how their dance starts at around 7 and finishes at about 9:30, while in the Netherlands 9:30 would kind of mean the beginning of it! It probably has its reasons. ;) When we succeeded in shopping there we looked around in a shop called the Brainstore for a very long time. It's this really cool shop where they have all kinds of interesting games and puzzles to get your brain-flow going. They had everything! It was one of those shops that both kids and adults would get lost in. Plus, you could like try almost everything in there out for yourself! So we spent a very long time goofing around in there. Just before closing time we went to go get a frozen yoghurt at Tutti Frutti, and it is soooo delicious. I honestly think that I will leave America all blown up by food because there's just so much good stuff that I love to try!!

So tomorrow I'll be travelling through the states with Amy and CeCe to visit the University of New England in southern Maine. A university situated directly at the coast, which should be nice! And then at night we'll have the dance. I'm really looking forward to it all!

Goodnight!
xxxx

Helping out at Breuer & Co.

I was very thankful to have my alarm set for 7 o'clock today, and even more thankful that I slept the whole way through to it. Starting the day with a good night's sleep and toast with eggs and bacon for breakfast made a huge difference for the rest of it. So today was going to be the day I joined Amy to her office. Firstly we had to drop off CeCe at the busstop in Boxford like we'd done the day before, and then Amy and I continued on to the highway to get to Wakefield. Her office building was situated in a park called Edgewater, and she informed me that it used to be an amusement park until somewhere in the 1960's. So it actually used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

At her work she first gave me a tour of the very fancy building, and I was introduced to many of her colleagues. They were all very friendly, and interested in my being from the Netherlands and all. ;) Breuer is the name of the main company that Amy works for, but that can be divided under two subgroups. One of which is Veracross, and that is the one situated in this building, and so the one Amy works for. It is a company that creates software for international preparatory schools. So for example, Pingree is one of the schools they work with, but the International School of Amsterdam is as well! After introductions and a tour we got coffee and tea and started a much needed task. As the company had just moved into this pretty new building (I'm telling you, marble in the lobby, golden elevators, fountains, you name it!) There were still a lot of things that needed to be unboxed and sorted out in the building, so I was glad to help out with that. I actually like organising things, so long as it's not my own room, so I quite enjoyed doing this with Amy and her colleagues. For lunch we went downstairs into a large cafeteria and ordered a wrap and some fries. We ate it looking out to this big pond from he windows in the lunchroom. Not long after lunch and some more organising DeWitt and Carson came to pick me up, and we drove back to Georgetown together. While all the guys went out for a couple of hours, I met with miss Flynn again, who came to clean up the house a little. She was upset about missing her soap operas due to a trip to the doctor's, but was glad that she could still see her talkshow (of which I can't remember the name at present). She knew all the make-up do's and don't's, and so got to say 'didn't I tell you so' each time after the 'expert' on tv showed us on her clients. We talked about dressing and shopping some more, and right before she left I took on some reading in Since You've Been Gone. I'm really enjoying it so far!

Thereafter I went on a short shopping-spree to Crosby's with DeWitt to get the last things for dinner and dessert. Because, I don't know if it's just because I'm here, every day is a dessert day here! For dinner we had spaghetti with meatballs, garlic-bread, salad and grapes. Dessert was brownie and ice cream for me <3. When dinner was finished I helped CeCe a little bit with her history project, as she needed to make a big poster and I could lend a hand by cutting out some pictures and texts. Tomorrow will be another day at Pingree for me again, so I'd better go to sleep!

Goodnight!!
xxx

My First American Schoolday at Pingree

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