Report Card Time

Well it's April 1st, but April Fool's Day doesn't exist in Spain. Instead, Spain has their April Fool's Day equivalent on December 28th. I think it's called El Dia de los Santos Inocentes (The Day of the Innocent Saints). The only "prank" I remember from that day was that our water (at the house, and all the houses in the neighborhood) was turned off. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I remember being upset because I felt gross and needed to shower, but none of the water would work. Luckily the water was turned on later. However, if that was someone's idea of a prank, it was quite cruel. Somewhat clever, but cruel.

Anyways, there was a nation-wide strike ("huelga") on Thursday -- I'm still not 100% sure why -- and we had the option of whether or not to go to school. With that being said, nearly everyone stayed home that day. :) Here's an article I found about the strike: http://www.eitb.com/en/news/detail/859542/spain--unions-wage-general-strike-protest-labour-reform/ . Everyone probably would have stayed home on Friday too if it weren't for the fact that 2nd trimester grades were handed out that day. Here's my report card...

As you can see, I have either maintained or improved every grade except for English, which went from a 10 to a 9! I'm pretty pleased with that. I'd really like to do better this final trimester. However, I won't be at school for a while because it's Semana Santa (Holy Week)! A.K.A. Our spring break until next Monday! Apparently there are parades and other things every day in every city, so I'm looking forward to that. Semana Santa is very important in Spain, and so it'll be interesting seeing another part of their culture throughout the coming week.

I forgot to tell you a few things about school here in my last post, mostly about the teachers. First off, whenever our teachers don't come, we just don't have class. An adult comes in to supervise the classroom, but we don't get a substitute or anything! Also, when a teacher knows they'll be gone the next day and there class is the first hour, they usually kindly inform us so we can have an extra hour of sleep. It works quite well, I think. The other thing is that the classroom is much more open here -- teachers usually just read all the exam scores aloud, and they'll make comments about your grades in front of the whole class. There's not much babying with the professors. Students here have to be much more independent than in the US. They're usually not told what exactly to study, and they're certainly not given nifty worksheets to practice with, but instead they're told what chapters the exams are over, and then expected to know it when the time comes to be tested.

I don't really have much else to tell you all, so please enjoy this photo of the Marbella sun set a few nights ago.

That's all for now,
Josie