The school Herschel

I just read my second blog post again and realised that I did not really tell you a lot about the school and all that comes with it. Maybe you disagree, but that is just too bad for you. 

First of all I need to tell you about the times of the lessons. School starts officially at twenty minutes to eight. Your first "lesson" is not really a lesson. It is called tutor class and it is basically a lesson in which you get informed about new events coming up, new schedules, the latest news about the school and they check if everybody is present. I would say that it is comparable to our "mentorles", which we have at my school in Holland. Only we have it once a week, not every day. After tutor class, the actual school part starts. In a day you usually have about seven or eight lessons and there are two breaks in between, a little one from 10:05 until 10:20 am and a big one from 12:35 until 13:30 pm. School ends at 15:00 pm, but lots of girls don't go home then because they have after school activities, which they also do at school. It is not like in Holland that kids go home after school and then go elsewhere to do their after school activities, no here everything is at school. You can do sports like basketball, field hockey, netball, water polo and swimming and then there are also more cultural activities such as choir, singing, orchestra and drama/musical. I'm probably leaving a lot of activities out, but these are the ones that I've heard of so far. 

Another important and especially crucial thing for me is that during the day the school bell only rings to mark the beginning of school, the beginning and end of the two breaks and the end of school. So this means that I have no clue as to when my classes start and when they end, because the bell does not ring in between classes. To me it seems like the teachers don't know either. I think this because the other day when I was in drama class the teacher went fifteen minutes overtime and then made me twenty minutes late for my next class! It just all seems very inconvenient to me. 

The classes themselves are very small. In Holland I'm usually in a class with at least twenty-five people. Here none of the classes I've been in have been bigger than twenty people. Also the classes are a lot more quiet and usually the only thing you hear is the teacher talking. What I do have to say though is that not a lot of the people here raise their hand when they want to say something, they just say it instead. This kind of surprised me seeing as the school is so proper. 

On wednesday the 15th of January we had eucharist during school. You must be wondering what the hell that is. Well, eucharist is a lovely church service which takes only two hours in which you sing beautiful hymns and say inspirational prayers. If you did not realise that the last sentence consisted entirely of sarcasm then I have nothing to say to you. Thankfully eucharist is only at the beginning and end of the term and for special occasions. So if the forces are with me I won't be going back to eucharist again. 

Me in my school uniform

The uniforms. What to say about them. My uniform consists of a greyish/greenish/ blueish coloured dress, which has short sleeves and comes to a little bit above the knee. Then you also have a blazer in the same colour as the dress, but you only wear that for special occasions or if you just want to wear it. These very flattering clothing items are then accompanied by fawn (beige grey) coloured socks and very elegant and comfortable brown leather shoes. Again if you didn't catch the sarcasm there then you and me are probably not going to get along. Even though the uniform might not be the most comfortable or prettiest thing there is, it is actually quite nice to not have to worry about what you are wearing to school and because everyone wears the same thing we are all just badly dressed together. 

This is it for now about the school. I'm sure I'll tell you guys more about it in the future, but for now I think it is enough. Sorry if I've bored you with this post, because you were probably expecting something more thrilling and adventurous. However I promise that those stories will come. They just have not happened yet. 

Sincerely,

Paulina