school school school

Hello there! Today was my third official day of school and I have decided that I don’t like it. It would be alright if it weren’t so boring and if I was actually learning something. Unfortunately, everything (except chemistry) is REALLY EASY. Today in my math class, we were doing something with number patterns. I actually had to explain the pattern for: 2,4,6 and 5,7,9. Yes. It was ridiculous.
The school that I go to is actually inside of a pretty big university, which is nice, because it definitely feels like a school and is very safe. It is quite small- there are about 40 students in my ‘grade’- about 25 are in ‘sciencias’ (where I am), and the rest are in ‘technica’. The other exchange student is in ‘technica’, which is good because I am forced to speak Spanish almost all day long. The building we are in is also new, which is good because it has air conditioning, which is apparently pretty rare here. I am lucky. Monday I had the same classes as last week- homeroom, physics, a computer class, ‘development of thinking’, English, and chemistry, BUT we had a presentation about HIV, so we didn’t go to English, our computer class, or ‘development of thinking’, which is just fine with me. We have two breaks everyday, which most people spend eating and talking with friends. Most schools here don’t have cafeterias, and since we don’t finish classes until 1:35, there is a snack bar that everyone gets something to eat from. I have mostly avoided it so far, since I’m kind of scared of buying something for myself- Ecuadorians don’t believe in lines, so you sort of just have to push yourself to the front of the crowd and shove your money towards an employee and hope that they get you what you want.
Today I had English, math, investigation, literature, physics, and ‘administration’. English was boring- everything moves SO SLOW. I don’t really know what we did in ‘investigation’, but I copied something down and sat there while the people around me talked about something. I think that my class was performing little skit things in our literature class, but no one was paying attention and it mostly just seemed like everyone was fooling around all class long, so I’m not really sure. Physics was okay because I know what to do as long as I copy the problem down right, but it’s hard because the teacher reads out the problem and actually knowing all of the words is sometimes a challenge. I don’t understand ‘administration’ at all. There was a teacher there who is also our homeroom teacher, and she was talking about a lot of things, but I don’t know if they are related or not. There was definitely something about a trip next year, a party (maybe this weekend?), lots of food, and money, but I don’t know if that all ties together or not. I also think we are going to a church tomorrow sometime during school. I don’t know when or why or how, but I think we’re going. I guess I will find out tomorrow! The great thing about being an exchange student is learning to do whatever, whenever. I NEVER know what is going on, or where I am going, or what I need to bring or why. I just get in the car. I am getting quite good at it.
School today was terribly boring, but this afternoon was a lot of fun! When I got home from school, my exchange student friend Leslie was at my house. We had made plans earlier to go to the mall today, and apparently her host dad was leaving to go somewhere so he dropped her off before I got home. Anyway, I changed out of my beautiful uniform and ate lunch and then we went and picked up Amina (another exchange student, from Switzerland), and went to the mall! When we were at the camp last week, food came up quite often in the conversations, so we were basically talking about all of the food that we miss all week long. SO, we went grocery shopping. :) And now I have a pretty large stockpile of junk food. Which is good. We wandered around the grocery store for at least an hour- we had nothing better to do than buy ridiculous amounts of junk food and look at all of the weird stuff. OH and then we were just walking around when some random employee came up to us and invited us to some party somewhere tomorrow afternoon. And he didn’t seem to think that it was weird either. Whatever. The three of us thought it was pretty hilarious. After spending more money than we should have on sweets, we decided to go get some ice cream to eat and then watch a movie! When we were eating ice cream, we also met up with two other exchange students that go to the same school as Leslie. It was nice to meet more exchange students. There are TONS here in Portoviejo. Then Leslie, Amina, and I went to see ‘The Ugly Truth’, which was good. Movies here come out a LOT later than they do in the US. They also leave a lot of them in English and just put Spanish subtitles in, which is nice for us English-speakers. Now I am just rambling.
I hope everything in the States is going well, and I love and miss you all!
LOVE, Kirsty