Thursday, November 13, 2008

Looong school update! and more¡

Two weeks ago I had a real interesting expirience. On Thursday my inspecter came into the room and told us that we were going to a science fair in Conocoto. Conocoto is south of Quito, and north of where I live. It is situated on the edge of the valley. So the two classes hopped into two school busses and headed south. The school busses here are like charter busses in the U.S. All of the busses here really are better than what is found in the states... the only problem is that they can be uncomfortable becuase of my size. It was a military school, I'm not really sure what the difference is except that their summer break is from december to february. This is becuase all of the military schools in ecuador need to be on the same time. On the coast the schools are opposite of here... so all of the military schools are the same. Anyways, there school was more spread out with bunker like buildings. Adam and I were ushered into one of the rooms where there was about four ore five tables set up with science expirements. These really weren't what you would expect from a bunch of high schoolers. There were some really wild expirements, distilling alcohol, making wine, smoke machines, some really wierd thing with kidney stones... anyways it was really crazy, I sampled the alcohol and everything, one group had me mix an acid with my bare hands exposed. Essentially it was way better than any science fair in the U.S. plus there was tons of food, we ate granola cookies, cake and some other weird stuff. Anyways... the funniest thing was that we started being followed by groups of girls. We were aked to have our photos taken a few times and the floodgates were opened. There were girls trying to sneakly take photos with their cell phones, others would wait and ask for photos. THe whole thing was crazy, at first it was amusing, I've definatly had girls ask for my photos before but it became ridiculous. We were probably the main attraction, the thing was... the majority of the girls were from schools run by nuns, these schools are probably deathly boring because the dress code is really strict and they are only one gender. These schools also never take exchange students... all these factors kinda explain why they were like locusts... Adam and I ran at a couple of moments. After Adam and I were stuffed and had probably about a hundred photos taken we boarded the bus to head back to school. This is when some of my readers are going to cringe but I'll explain before I begin my stoy... So my school is crazy, the general inspecter does nothing but yell at me... take of your hat!, whay are you out of the classroom?, tuck in your shirt!, etc. Then I have to deal with my classes inspector. I don't know if this was clear but my program has four different classes. I'nm in a special program which is an International program. So, I have one inspector for four classes, everyone calls her la bruja, which is the witch. She is new to the school and seems to make it clear that under her watch we will be the best students the school has ever seen. So I am completely shut down, Adam says that we're a little army. So when the bus stopped becasue the police wanted to check our bus drivers papers, I asked if we could leave and buy pizza, we were right next to a place called la zona. This pizzeria is amazing, the pizza is only sold by the slice but... it is $1 for a pizza that literally is two handed, they back big square pizzas and your getting 1/8 of the pizza. But of course she said no. I had the bright idea to learn how to jump out of a bus window... really quite stupid! But I did, it is quite easy to do smoothly... but it is up to you to figure it out. I walked to the window of where she was sitting and tapped on the window and smiled! Well as you can imagine she was rightly pissed, and so was the bus driver when he found out that I jumped out of his bus. He told me that I had damaged the bus. I argued but to no avail. So when we got back to school I was told that tommorow I would need to remove the mark of my shoe. I was also going to need to talk to my parents, I had called my mom figuring that it would be best if she heard it from me first. She actually didn't care, and later told me about what my siblings have done in the past. When I showed up the next morning the bus driver was like whatever you didn't do anything... go back to class. I guess he was having a bad day after he spent 20 minutes talking with the police... Bueno, Another thing is that I now leave school everyday at 1:40, it has all worked out. The bad thing is that I'm not being graded in some classes and in others I'm getting really poor grades. The cool thing is that I've got more time to do new stuff. I'm taking dance lessons, latin rythms to be excact. I love Salsa, it is really fun and I'm learning how to dance for real! But Samba is the crazyest dance ever... it really doesn't mak any sense, I told my teacher that and she told me to teach the class. I lead the class in a movement but everyone just laughed at me :). I am also taking break dancing once a week. I think that Adam will start taking this class with me tomorrow. I have only done one week of classes but I'm dead tired and everything is great, yesterday for example finished school, had soccer practice, Capoiera, and then dance class! I am really tired but I'm loving it! As far as Soccer goes... I had a game today, we tied 3-3. My team is good but out of shape. We held them at 3-1 for the first 65 minutes or so, they scored two goals in 15 minutes, we have 80 minute games. It is really interesting, I don't have great skills, but I know how to play. All that time I spent with Chris and my dad taught me how to play... but two years without playing is a long time. In this league there are only four substitutions per game. I was actually the second person to be subbed but it was in the last minte of the game, literally. I never touched the ball. But I have uniform that is mine! it says Alexander and I'm number 9. The shorts are really small, the whole team recieved the same size. Mine are like higher than my compresion shorts... it is a little sad. The games here are really interesting, all the games will be held in this one place, which has a dirt feild, I bought shoes for grass... so this is a little anoying. My coach is really good, he is young but used to play pro when he was 15, but he continued with his studies and then became a coach. He has a soccer school for kids and coaches another pro team. He kinda reminds me of Eric, but he has a very different style of coaching. Hopefully I'll play more the next game... I just need to learn to play with my team. I lso need to work on my shot, becuase I'll be playing forward!

2 comments:

Lioness said...

Here, you'd think they'd never seen a white person. Everybody wants my picture, boys and girls. I've had to run as well. The people that try and secretly take pictures with their cell phones are the funniest. One younger man tried to take a picture throught the windsheild of his car after I noticed him circling me...

Anonymous said...

Hi Alex. Jesse from Talent here. Found the piece of paper with this blog on it finally. Good to hear you're learning how to dance. We're having an argentine tango weekend on thanksgiving weekend with awesome teachers from all over. Nice.
Later!