Senior Year: Take 2!

“You’re taking a year off to go to high school again? That sounds awful!” I got this comment a lot last year when I told people what I would be doing on my exchange. But the reality is that Rotary is a youth exchange program, and so students go to secondary school. After my first couple of days at Colegio Mas Camarena, I can say that I really don’t mind at all.

The first day, Amparo drove Paula and I, even though it’s about a 2 minute walk (Paula wanted to ride in the convertible). I was originally supposed to go to the public school, because Mas Camarena has never had an exchange student. But apparently when my host parents went to visit, they didn’t like it all. So I’m going to the private school next to our house that is, as my host father told me in English “very very much much better.”

I’m in Sengundo Bachillerato, which is the second of two non-mandatory years before university. For your Bachillerato years, you select a track to study. My school offers two: Letras (Humanities) and Ciencias (Sciences). At the end of Segundo Bachillerato, you take a test that has an official name but everyone calls “El Selectivo” (the Selection). Your score on this one test decides what university you can go to, and what you can study there. So, naturally, there’s a lot of pressure to do well on it. At the start of every class the first day, we got lectured on how important it is that we do well on the Selectivo. I don’t have to take it, but it makes me nervous just thinking about it.

Technically, Mas Camarena is a bi-lingual school, but for your Bachillerato years, everything (except English obviously) is in Spanish. And even though everyone in my class speaks Enlgish pretty well, they’re all too scared to speak to me in it, which is good because I want to learn Spanish. Here are my classes (I’m in the sciences track, in case you couldn’t tell).

-Hisotry of Spain
-Philosophy (I have 3 Philosophy books…one on Plato, one on Descartes, and one on some other philosopher who I don’t remember right now….yikes).
-Valcenciano (also known as Catalan, it’s another language spoken in Spain, mainly on the coast. Everyone is nearly fluent so I usually work on other stuff during this class).
-Spanish Literature
-English (they’re working on switching me to another class when I have English)
-Math
-Biology
-Earth Science
-Chemistry

Some big differences in school:
1. You stay in one classroom and the teachers rotate
2. We (the Bachillerato students) can leave during lunch
3. For every grade, you buy all your books
4. We have different classes every day
5. The schedule is waaaaay different. We start at 9:15 and have a break at 12 when everyone eats a snack. The Bachilleratos can go to this little cafeteria where they sell food. We have lunch at 3, and then on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we go until 5:00 (!!!). On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we can either leave, study in the library, or use the pool or tennis courts. Most of my class stays because they have to wait for the bus, so I do too.
6. There are only about 17 or 18 students in my class, with about 35 in my grade.

It’s going great so far, although it’s only my third day. Everyone’s really nice, and they all love to ask me differences between America and Spain (they think it’s crazy that in the U.S. I would go to bed as early as 10:30, because that’s when most people are starting dinner). I have a group of friends who explain everything that I don’t understand, and they were talking today about taking me to the beach again soon :) Well, this weekend I’m going to Madrid for a Rotary meeting, so until then, besitos!

XOXO Paige

The picture is of my books, minus Math and Spanish Lit.