Questions and More

In this post I will deeply answer questions I received from one of my teachers at Mesa Ridge and other people. The questions may or may not stayed focuses on the initial question.

1) Would you say your school is an elite school or is it on the lower end or average?

I would definitely say that my school is lower end. The school facilities are not very good. The bathrooms don’t have toilet paper, soap, or mirrors. Two of the bathrooms have a small mirror (the type of mirror you buy for a school locker) duct taped to the wall. The doors don’t shut all the way and the sinks just spit water at you when you turn them on. However, even if they fixed up the bathrooms, I don’t believe the students would take care of them well. In the bathrooms (and everywhere - even out of the schools) there is graffiti. Most students all smoke in the bathrooms, whether there’s a teacher there or not, and flick the ashes and finished cigarettes on the floor. The gyms and equipment aren’t as good as in America. The gyms are small, kind of dirty, and have 10 year old cobwebs in the windows and by the ceiling. I am told all the time by other student how broke our school is. Although it’s like this, the students learning is pretty good because they really have to learn the information. The teachers test students randomly and they have to do an oral test with all the students listening. I can tell that it makes them so anxious and scared. A lot of times they will even organize some people to volunteer in exchange for them volunteering the next class. Thankfully, most of the teachers have pretty much ignored me, so I haven’t been asked to do this. However, sometimes a teacher will start trying to talk to me and either they are expecting me to answer back in Italian or they won’t let me speak in Italian because they want to improve their English. Just recently, all teachers have been required to take an English test so many of them are always trying to talk to me in very broken English. It’s a good and bad thing at the same time.

2) Are students allowed to smoke in the bathrooms?

No but they do it anyway. All the teachers know but none of them care. I have walked into the bathroom when girls are just smoking and chatting to the cleaning lady. It’s so strange but it really happens. Even one time, we went outside for a lesson (the teacher for this class is kind of weird and doesn't really teach much apparently) and the teacher rolled a student a cigarette in exchange for letting him use his lighter.

3) How big are you classes?

All students stay in one class unless they fail a few classes. If they fail two or more (I think that’s the number but I’m not sure) classes, then they get held back. It doesn’t happen very often unless the teacher is mean or hates you because even if you get pretty bad grades, they will give you better grades at the end of the year just so you don’t fail the class. It just depend though. In my case I do switch classes and I’m in a lot of English classes (which are so boring) unless they are over and actual topic like History. My normal class I was in all day in the beginning of the year is about 27 people and then there are classes with a little less people and a few classes with more.

4) What do you do for fun with your host family?

Generally I spend most of my time with my host sister and on the weekends we always go out. Even if it’s cold, people still go out and walk in the center of the town. I liked it before, but now that it is

My host sister and I at a party

getting cold, I’m not enjoying it so much. Also, I don’t really like all the people that we go out with on Saturdays and even my host sister doesn’t like them so much either, but for some reason she feels like she still has to hang out with them every week. She likes some of them so I guess that’s why. I’m not sure. I have gone on little trips with my host family and those were fun. My host sister, cousin, and I went to Rome a while back and we stayed with relatives that live there. It was lots of fun also. In general, the people in my family like to watch TV together after dinner, but dinner ends around 9:45 and that’s my bedtime. I can’t stay up too much longer than that because living here really drains my energy.It’s also a little hard to always do things because my host sister is studying a lot (school is very demanding here) but during winter break, I’m sure we will do some fun things together.

5) What will you do for the upcoming holidays?

I can honestly tell you that I’m not too sure. My host sister told me that they plan Christmas maybe a few days in advance. She told me that generally they go to someone's home in the family and eat all day. I’m actually kind of nervous because I can barely handle a normal lunch here. I know for sure that for new years eve, we are going to my host sister’s friend’s home in Lecce. I’ve met her a few times and she’s really nice so I’m excited!

My AFS friends at my b-day

6)What did you do for your birthday?
For my birthday I bought a bunch of little desserts to share with my classmates during our break.
During school people wish me happy birthday and it was a good day. My host family gave me a picture frame with some pictures from our beach trip and I really liked it. Then later on that night, my AFS friends surprised me at my house and we had a party. I really didn't expect it at all so I was super happy. My host sister and parents helped plan it. My host parents bought us all pizza and it was a lot of fun!

Okay those are the big questions and I answered the other one’s inside of the paragraphs. If you guys have any questions, you guys can message me or comment on this post.

Life Update

So for the second time, I got sick and I even stayed home from school yesterday because I wasn’t feeling good and my nose was all stuffed up. Today I felt much better and well rested. I went to my Italian lessons today and was able to meet two new students in my area who will be here for two months. One boy is from Argentina (now we have 3 people from Argentina in my area) and a girl from Australia. The girl from Australia has been studying Italian is school for a long time so she speaks very well. I’ll admit, at first I was a little jealous,but I just decided that I didn’t care and I would be happy for her. She will be in my school so hopefully she will be able to help me! The boy is super tall. The other two people from Argentina are tall but this guy looks like a skyscraper. Recently I have debating whether to delete my social media off my phone or not and today I decide to. They just take up a lot of my time that I could spend much better. I still have YouTube to watch Italian video lessons. I just discovered doing this and I’m very sure it will help me a lot. I also have Pinterest because I can’t part with it and also a reading app I want to keep. I am going to try to start making weekly goals for myself to help me learn Italian and I will share them on here to help keep myself reliable. My first goal is to practice using Italian pronouns because they are used very differently than in English.

I hope everyone is having a good time preparing for the holidays. Miss you guys,
Imogen