First Day of School

The first day of school. Well, I know this much so far: the culture and dynamic of the classroom is very different than in the U.S. Yet, the kids are just the same somehow. School started at 8am. It was so strange to see dozens of kids walking to school on a Saturday morning. It takes me a little over 20 minutes to walk to school, and for most of the time, I walked opposite a current of what appeared to be high-schoolers. They could have been high-schoolers anywhere in America.

For the first two hours of school, we had mathematics. After the excitement of our arrival cooled off (a bit), they started in on their work. One by one they went to the front of the room to perform a division problem on the board, while the rest of the kids talked, worked, or more or less did their own thing. Organized chaos. It was a bit of a circus, yet there was a flow to it, an order. The kids pay attention to each other and the teacher, and the play off of one another. But there was a lot going on, and several times I was caught unaware that I was being addressed, because there was so much going on that I couldn't attend to it all.

They are all totally fascinated by Axel, which I expected (blonde hair, blue eyes, from California). They realized quickly that he couldn't understand italian, so they began chattering excitedly at me, asking me questions about him, asking me to tell him things, etc. This while a math lesson was going on. They are absolutely adorably precious. They made such an effort to welcome and help Axel. They got a little competitive, fighting over who got to sit next to him, who got to lend him their colored pencils, who got to be on his team. One would start to tell me something, and before he got more than 5 words into the sentence, another one was there, pushing him to the side, talking over him, saying that he wanted to tell me.

In PE class they played this crazy game called pala prigioniero (prisoner ball), kind of like dodgeball, where the object is to catch the ball, capture and free prisoners. Axel did a great job catching on, and they were all so cool about helping him out. There are only 2 girls in the class, all the rest boys, 13 of them. Axel and I joked that it was just like kickball back in SLO- all the boys arguing over every other play.

Next they had science class. I don't think I am so fond of this teacher (different from math). She was very intense. The kids were assigned to memorize a poem about the pope (yes, you read correctly, this is science class), and one by one they recited. For the kids that hadn't found time to memorize it, she gave a stare that made me shiver. Yikes. She asked me if we were catholic. When I responded, no, she asked what religion we followed, in a tone that made me hesitant to say none. Ooops. I should have said Buddhist. Or pagan. Or Hollywood. Oh well.

Can't wait to see what Monday will bring...