Getting ready for holloween!

          So, on Wednesday I found out that out of the 140 kids in the fourth year, I am 95. I am not very happy with this score, but I have three more tests like it to bring up my ranking. I asked a kid in my class, who is really smart and is 11th on the list, to help tutor me for the next tests, so I might get a better score. The good thing about this is that I can basically not go down and there is only room for improvement.
          The rest of the school week was pretty boring. Lucia did not go to school two days of the week, because of college stuff. Remember the exam I told you about that she took last sunday, well she passed it with a 15 out of 20, so she is able to go that college for business. Another college in Lima wants her to take an entrence exam, but that is not until December, and she only had to have a meeting this last week.
          On Thursday, we had geography and my group was supposed to present, but it turns out that we did not have time, and we will present this next thursday, which I do not know what is going to happen since I don't think we have school this thursday or friday. I drew a map of Africa for our group, and another kid in my group painted it, but he did a bad job, so yesterday I ended up making another one. I only have to paint the water. It is looking much better than his.
          Yesterday, I went to the park with the other AFS students to rent the lights and music for the halloween party. After that, Lucia, Claudi, and I went to the costume shop to look for a costume that is good. The shop got my costume in, and it is looking nice, but the pants are way too short, and we do not need the mask, because we are going to paint my face. Later, my family came and we payed for the costume and picked up fabric to make the pants, or give to a tailor to make the pants. We are going to pick up the costume on Tuesday or Wednesday morning, and I can't wait to see how everything looks together.
          This morning Kristel and her school had to march in a parade thing, so we all went to that his morning at around 10, and we just got home. We are now going to eat something small and leave to go somewhere, which I really don't know what it is. All I know is that it is far away, and sitting in a small car squished in between Lucia, Kris and Angela, is not that fun, especailly since the car seat is not that comfortable.Anyway, I am going to make the best of it, and hope it is fun.
          I believe that this week we don't have school on Thursday and Friday, and I might stay home from school on Wednesday to get my costume ready for the night. I will upload a pic of my costume when I get it all together, but right now I have to leave to go out with my family.

Hard week of school!!

          In my last blog I had said that I was going to an AFS event. At the AFS event, all seven AFS kids and at least one family member for each was there, except Marcus. Unfortunately his grandmother died and he was returning to Germany for the funeral and is coming back at the beginning of November. Everyone brought some type of food. We brought bolitas de yuca, Claudi and Laura brought pancakes and apple sauce (which was my favorite because it reminded me of my grandpas applesauce, but was not nearly as good as his), Yenthe brought orange cake with chocolate chips, Sofia brought cookies, Yenca brought this dish with mashed potatoes and chicken and peas and corn, and Shirley, our director, made a cake for everyone. We all ate and talked for the beginning and then about half way through, they put on some music so I started dancing. I was the only one willing to dance in the middle, so then I walked around and just started asking the AFS girls or the Peruvian girls to dance. All of them gave in to my request except one, go me!!!! We ended up dancing Shakira and some other bands that I do not know, and then we all ate the cake at the end. It was really entertaining and tiring. Also, I think I ate way too much, but I don't have a scale to see how much weight I gained.
          This past week of school was really difficult. School is picking up even more and now that we are in the last bimester ( I don't know why it is called a bimester if there are four but that is what they call it) we are getting a ton of homework, and since we just finished the exam week, I have to do corrections for all the tests. For every exam that I get back I have to right down all the questions all the responses and then mark the correct answer. There is a lot of righting here. It is so different from the US. Another difference here, is the amount of memorizing you have to do. For example on Thursday we had Geography. We all got into groups. Then the teacher told us that the group at the end with the highest combined grades will win money (I think this is great idea for anyone from NL with authority). Our first assignment is Africa. We have to memorize all the countries of Africa, their capitals, and populations. Also, each group has to make a poster with the map of Africa. I am in group 1, so I have to do all this with my group for the next Thursday. Homework is another big difference. I get tons of homework, and that is not as much of an exageration as you think. For example, for History, I have to do the correction for my exam, answer 10 questions in my notebook, do a page in out textbook, and using the computer I have to investigate about 5 different groups during the cold war/latin american crisis time period and right about a paragraph for each. All of this is for a week later, and then for the same week I have to do the correction for Physics, investigate about 5 different types of light, do two diagrams about different spectrums, answer an open ended question, and do an organizer for the two types of spectrums. Also, that is only for one class. I have homework for every class except when we have a test or a project.
          This past weekend was, I thought, going to be exciting. On Saturday, we walked around town to try and get my holloween costume for a party with AFS, but it turned out that none of the stores had the costume I wanted and we have to wait until Thursday to get it. Then, on Sunday, I got up early to go to an AFS event, but because Lucía had a college entrance exam, Shirley told us we could wait and go at 10, we would only be an hour late, and the main events would not start until way later. So I went to work on my homework and drawing Africa (I volunteered to do this for my group, because I don't trust that anyone else in my group can do a great job- I am one of those people that like to see things get done right). At around 9:45 I got dressed and went downstairs only to find that everyone else was still getting ready and we only left the house at around 10:30. I then found out that Lucía's exam was until 11:20, and we waited at the university for a half hour. When Lucía finally came, we jumped in the car and drove to Miraflores where the AFS event was to be held. When we got there (at 12:20), all of the AFS kids had already started to play paintball and I had to sit and wait till they finished knowing that I was not going to get to play.
          After paintball, we were all going to eat, but since my family packed a lunch, we sat down to eat and the rest went to get something. After my family finished eating, I walked around Miraflores looking for the others, but had no luck. I then walked down the road about a half mile, and passed four restaurants but the other AFS'ers were not there. We finally ended up leaving and driving home.
          While driving home, my family stopped at a soccer field to play, but my family is not very good at soccer, so that is one of the only reasons it was fun. Also, try having a 5 year old on your team and teaching them to pass it to you, not to use their hands, and to kick it at the goal not pass it to the defence. So much fun!!!!!!!Anyway, I went to bed early because I did not want to be tired for the next day of school
          Today at school, we had a test that I did not know about. This was not just any test, it was the placement test for the next year, to see which room you will be in (basically to see if they will put you with the smart kids or the dumb kids). It was for the first 2 hours of the day, and it was a hundred questions about all the subjects we have learned and will have in the next year. I knew just about nothing, because even the subjects that I am good at, were questions that we will learn how to do in the next year of school. I basically relied on pure luck and guessed on over 60 of them. It was probably the saddest exam that I have ever taken. I think I will be with the dumb kids next year, basically the ones who do not want to try, which for is not what I want because I need to learn here.
          After getting home from school and eating lunch, I began homework and preparing for the next day of school. I think I am going to go to bed early tonight.

Week of exams

          Well, it turns out that about an hour after my last blog last sunday, I fell ill. I had a fever and my stomach was upset, so I ended up sleeping all day sunday. My family was really helpful, and brought me soup and water. Luckily I had brought some Iboprofen with me to Peru, so that helped relieve my fever a bit. After waking up on Monday at around 9:00 I was feeling much better, but I was still a bit queezy. I got up and joined my family for breakfast and then layed down again until lunch. After lunch, I was beginning to feel myself again and was able to join the family in their activities before school started the next day.
          The last week of school was alot different. Four times during the year, the school has a week f exams where for all your major classes you have a big test. There are three tests a day, and the last period of the day is normal. This schedule is nice, because I do not get as much homework, but it means that I have to study every single night for three different classes.
          On Tuesday, I started out with Language, Literature, and Persona. For Literature, I had to memorize two timelines with the characteristics, representatives, and classes of each time period, which, between the two, there were 15 time periods. Because of this, I spent most of monday night and Tuesday morning memorizing for Literature and decided to just wing Language, which after all, it could not be much different than the verb, adverb, and adjective rules in the US, or so I thought. Language turned out to be really difficult, because I had to right a whole bunch of sentences using different aspects of grammar. I basically just tried to use the english grammar and then translate it into spanish. Literature had two parts, which I did not know about, so I think I got a pretty good grade on the time line, but I knew only one or two of the questions from the first part. For Persona, it was basically a bunch of questions about your future and what you need to do to plan for the future, so it was basically all common knowlege, like you need to have goals, and know what you need to do to accomplish those goals, and then what you want the outcome to be.
          On Wednesday, we had Civics, History, and Godgraphy. Civics was kind of difficult because I had to know the all of the basic human rights, like the right to live and the right to a job and the right to a residence. Unfortunately I was not in the school to learn all of those, so I did not know I had to study them and basically I used my bilingual dictionary to help translate the definitions and then come up with an educated guess of what the human right could be. Also, there was not a word box, so I am pretty sure that some of them are close but the wording was wrong, Like for the one I put the right to have an opinion, but I think the corect answer is the right to freedom of speech. For History, I thought I was going to do pretty well because all we had learned was about the second world war and the cold war and the conflicts in Asia. Unfortunately the whole second side was about the Indians in Peru and I did not know any of it. Fortunately it was all true or false, and I could just guess on all of the problems. Geography was I thought easy, but it turned out that I did not read the instructions well and missed out on about 10 points, which out of 20 is a lot.
          Thursday was probably the hardest day up to that point because it was Arithmetic and Trigonometry. For Arithmetic, I did not study because I spent all my time memorizing the formulas for Trig, and it turns out that I did pretty well on the Arithmetic test anyway, but that is just what I think and I have not gotten it back yet. For trig, I though I was going to cry on the test. I fortunately knew all the formulas, but had written some of them wrong. Aparrently + or - is not the same as - or +. After the formulas part, I knew nothing. It was all just tan, sin, csc, and stuff that I did not know how to do. I basically just plugged in the formulas and rewrote the problems and just hoped for a lot of luck. Also, we had a earthquake or fire drill. We all had to run to a side of the room when the alarm wrang and then we all ran out the door and got into circles in the recreation area outside the building. It was really funny, because the people on the fifth floor had actually planned this little demonstation and a couple people put bandages on their heads and arms and then got carried down in a stretcher by these other kids. It was kind of cheesy, but it was comical.
          Friday was the easiest day I thought. We had Algebra and Geometry. Algebra turned out to be more difficult than I thought and I ended up leaving a couple blank. Geometry on the other hand made me feel smart. I knew all the problems and put and answer down for all of them. The only problem that I think I might have gotten wrong was just a stupid mistake.
          On Saturday, in the morning I went back to teach the third graders English, but this time the real teacher was not there, so I was stuck reviewing the insects, animals, fruits, clothing, vegetables, and sports with the kids alone. Despite the fact that I was a little nervous because I did not really know what they had been learning or were supposed to be taught, it was fun. Later in the afternoon, Lucía and I went into town to get a flag for a reunion on sunday. I needed to get a US flag to show or something. I really don't know what it is for. After, we went out as a family to visit my dad's brother. He was really nice, but I was tired, and slept the whole way home. This morning we woke up early to start making an appetizer for the AFS event today, so I was pretty busy earlier. Also, my famiily is makin cerviche right now. It is a dish with raw fish and lemon, so I don't know if I will like it or not. I am excited to try it though.
         

1 month update

          At this time 1 month ago, I was having an orientation in Miami before leaving for Lima. After 1 month, things start to get settled in, school is no longer really weird, even though it is so different. My family is starting to stop acting like I am a new person and that I am part of the family so I am able to do more stuff that one of their kids would be able to do. School is going well, even though there are a few classes that I do not like and a few that I love, but I guess I am going to have to get through it until December, because we have a break from January to February.
          I think that right now, unless anything changes, Geography is my worst favorite class. The teacher is really old, and I can't understand him or his handwriting. Also, though his actions I am getting that he doesn't want to geve extra help to a foreign student, so it is all on me until I can start understanding the class better. Also, there is a lot of memorizing in this school, especially in Geography. We have to memorize all the countries of Asia, their capitals, and their bordering countries and oceans. Talk about difficult. Also, the countries names and stuff are different here. For example, the capital of Russia is Moscú, instead of Moscow, and the country of Turkey is Turquía. So that is a lot to do by next Thursday.
          On Saturday morning, I was invited to help teach an English Class for third graders in the primary section of my school. At around 8:30 we left for the school, and when I got to the class there were about 10 kids sitting in the room. I introduced myself, and then got two papers. One was a wordsearch for items of clothing, and the other was for sports. I just had to write all the words on the board, and then pronounce them fr the kids so they could repeat it. For the sports I even drew pictures of the fields and courts that are used for the sport. It was actually really easy and fun, because all the kids were really interested in what I was doing. I felt really appreciated and was even asked to come back the next Saturday.
          Well besides school, my life is going pretty well. I am making lots of friends, and I am really enjoying my life here. On Tuesday, Claudi got sick with a stomach infection and left school early. The doctor said that we will be out until Tuesday. If you don't remember who Claudi is, he is a German kid in my school wth AFS. So besides feeling bad for him, we could not go to the mall and see a movie as planned this weekend, so we invited Laura, another Geman kid here in Huancayo. Unfortunately, due to misscomunication, we ended up not being able to schedule a time, and Lucía and I went to the mall alone. We saw this movie called The Watch, which I forget the neme in Spanish, but it was funny. Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn, and Richard Ayoade stared in the film about a Neighborhood watch. Lucía and I were laughing the whole time.
          After the movie we bought ice cream from this really nice ice cream place in the mall. I got Fresca chip, and Choco maní, which was strawberry chip and chocolate peanut ice cream. It was really good, I am going to try and taste all the flavors, instead of just sticking with one and coninually getting that kind. After we ate our ice cream, we realized that we had forgotten to eat dinner, and so we bought pizza from pizza hut to eat, It was definitely not better than the kind in the US. It had way less chease, and the dough was really sweet. After we finished, we had to walk 8 blocks to where my dad and mom were waiting to pick us up, so I fell asleep in the car and at home, I died in my bed after a really long day.
          I woke up on Sunday really late, and after eating breakfast, took another really cold shower, the water just doesn't get hot. Because of a holiday tomorow, we do not have school, so I am excited to get some rest. School really gets you tired with the language and the material.