Back in school already!

Yup, that's right. Although it seems like merely weeks ago that we got out of school, I already found myself back at school on Monday. Well, the rest of my summer after our California trip was pretty uneventful, so that's why I didn't write anything else after that. It was nice, and I did just some normal everyday stuff and did things with my friends, but nothing was really interesting enough to write about. lol. But anyway, I guess I should tell about school...

Well, I FINALLY don't have to deal with the screwed-up bus system anymore since I now have my driver's license and can drive to school! I have to make sure to get there a little early since I don't want to be circling the parking lot (which is total CHAOS) looking for a parking space, which is probably what you'll have to do if you get there after 8:00. As I've said many times, my school is extremely overcrowded. Last I heard we had 2,200 students in our school, and they were estimating to have about 2,400 this year, although I'm not sure if their predictions turned out to be right. Perhaps not, because if there were that many people I think quite a few people would have been trampled to death in the halls already...haha, maybe that's an exaggeration, but I haven't really noticed it being much worse than last year. Mind you, it was EXTREMELY crowded last year and still is. But anyway, yeah, since I make sure to get there at about the perfect time, I'm always able to find a place to park and then I go inside and sit in the courtyard with my two friends and talk to them until the bell rings. Last year and the year before, we had our own little corner in the hallway that we all met in, but unfortunately we all didn't meet on the very first day, so it was taken over by another group of people! So now we meet in the courtyard, which is nice, but I just wonder what we'll do in the winter...guess we'll have to try to claim another area of the school. ;-) But anyway, back to the parking lot. It's pretty easy to get in there in the morning, but getting out of there at the end of the day is a bit more chaotic. Although the sophomores don't drive since they're not old enough and I'm sure we wouldn't have room for them anyway, a lot of juniors and practically all the seniors drive, so that's still TONS of people trying to get out of the parking lot. But they have some teachers and one of the assistant principals out there directing traffic, so that at least keeps it running a bit smoothly. But it can sometimes take up to ten minutes just to get out of the parking lot. Kind of a pain, but still a little better than the buses I guess. lol

So...I guess I should tell about my classes now. Well, right now, I have economics, English, peer helping, and Spanish 4. I have all of those the whole semester, except for economics, which is only nine weeks, so after fall break I'll switch to government. Not exactly my first choice, but that's the required history course for seniors. So yeah, economics is first. It's going okay so far. I can't really tell if it's going to be excruciatingly boring yet since we haven't done much. But, our teacher did say he'd try to make it more interesting and have us do more activities instead of just read a bunch of stuff out of the textbook. I however do hate it when we have discussions during class. We haven't had many yet, but we always have a warm-up to do when we first get to class, which usually asks your opinion about something, and he'll call on a few people and ask what they put down. I never like to talk about stuff like that in front of everyone. So of course I don't raise my hand, and since I've never spoken a word in there, luckily the teacher seems to be unaware of my existence as he has never called on me...yet. Let's just hope it stays that way. ;-)

Then second block is English. Gaaahhh, we're doing British literature this year, which my brother says was the worst and most boring year of English. And of course we have to read another Shakespeare play (surprise, surprise), Hamlet, which we haven't started yet, but I just know it's in the syllabus. And we'll also have the dreaded yearly research paper. But, we haven't started any of that...so far we've only gone over our summer reading book and taken the test on it, and prestented our poems that we had to write for the book. I was of course dreading having to read my poem to the class, because I can assure you I am not the least bit skilled in writing poetry. But thankfully, the poem only had to be fourteen lines so I got it over with pretty fast. So I can't say I'm too excited about English this year...but let's look at it this way, at least I'll have it over with and out of the way after the first semester. The teacher seems all right too, so that makes it a little better. Of course it wouldn't be any fun to have a boring class and a mean teacher combined. haha.

And then I have peer helping, of course! So far that's been a lot of fun. For the first three days of school, we did what we did last year, where some of us sat at a table in the cafeteria giving people their lunch numbers and bus numbers, and some of us sat at the "new student table" where any students new to the school could come sit. So, I got to talk to a few new people, who all seemed really nice and glad to have someone to talk to at lunch. Me and one other girl in peer helping also got to give one new girl a tour of the school. Tomorrow, we're having a little party for all the new students- they can all come down to our room during their lunch and we're going to have pizza, snacks, and cake and stuff. So that should be really fun! And also, even though most days I've been busy doing stuff for peer helping during lunch, we weren't doing anything today so I got to sit with my friends, who finally, this year, happen to be in my lunch! And since we're now seniors, we get to sit at the tables outside. It felt so weird to actually be able to sit out there! lol. But lunch is a lot of fun this year, it's just an awesome group of people sitting at my table.

And then last, I have Spanish. Although I did decide to go up to Spanish 4, I'm definitely stopping after this- I'm not going to take AP because according to one of my friends from peer helping last year, it pretty much takes up your whole life. Plus I'd be worried about having to do really hard stuff, like giving a speech in Spanish. In Spanish 4, we already are only allowed to speak Spanish (well, there are some exceptions sometimes, but usually it's "no ingles!") and will apparently have to write research papers in Spanish, but I can't imagine it's going to be on any topic that's too difficult, since we still don't know THAT much Spanish. But so far it's going pretty well. It actually ended up being a small class, even though most classes at my school are totally full. So that kind of makes it a little less nerve-wracking when I have to talk in front of the class since it's less people. And most people in there seem pretty nice, so I don't think anyone will laugh at me or anything. And usually, my teacher doesn't call on you unless you raise your hand. So I raise my hand sometimes if it's something I'm sure I know, but never do when I don't know so luckily she doesn't call on me then. The only thing I'm concerned about in that class is that I feel like I've forgotten a lot of stuff. Mostly because I went a really long time between Spanish 3 and 4- I took 3 the first semester of last year, and it wouldn't work with my schedule to take 4 the next semester, so I had to wait until this year. Plus, we learned a crazy amount of grammar in Spanish 3- it's not so much the vocabulary that I think I've forgotten, but all those different verb conjugations and stuff. I'm definitely going to get on the classzone website and try to review that stuff! And hopefully we'll review it a little bit in class. We've already gone over present-tense, preterite past tense, stem-changing verbs, and some of the ones that have a change in spelling in certain forms (yeah, it's pretty mind-boggling when you think about all those little particular things like that, lol.). Tomorrow we all have to take in a paper bag with five items representing us, and explain it in Spanish! Kind of scary. I'm going to have to try to find five things about me that I know how to say in Spanish!

So yeah, school is going pretty well so far. I think I've covered pretty much everything. :) Later!