Day 61

Tuesday, my early day, started with language, and was followed by math. After that is history. I (and Maggie) have a new history teacher since last week. Apparently the teacher we had had for the first four weeks was just a substitute for this teacher. The first thing I noticed about her was that she wears an incredible amount of purple eyeshadow (It goes all the way up to her eyebrows! And it's bright purple!). And the next thing was that, of all my teachers, she is the most interested in me. And that's not really a good thing. I got an interview the first day (Where in the US are you from? Is it really cold there? Are you related to John Kennedy?). And then another on the second. Not only that, but she asked me (twice) to define "imperialism" (for the perspective of someone from an imperialist power, I'm guessing) and several other questions, and she asked me if I understood after every point she made to the class. Ahh. Too much attention for me. We got a take-home test due Thursday, but when she came over to explain it to me, she took half of my test back to her desk with her. So I didn't have it to do my homework. Oh, well. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. After that is culture. For Tuesday's class, we were (apparently) supposed to have had researched a "counterculture" and be ready to present it to the class. She went though everyone in the class, and at the very end of the hour (literally as the bell was ringing) she called on me (sadly the bell did not save me; she had the class stay until I answered), and I told her I didn't have it. She said to bring it in for Friday or "I'd get a big, fat '1' " (our 'F'). Well, it have been worse. I had gym after school. I don't really think I like gym so far, partly because we keep playing different games and it takes me most of the hour to figure out what's going on. Tuesday night we went out with Karina and Daniel to Jack's. I (in a lemon mood and not, as everyone else always seems to be, in a beef mood) ordered lemonade and lemon chicken. It was the first lemonade I've had here (which is really saying something; I normally drink two or three glasses a day). It was pretty good. The chicken was good too. For desert I had (I didn't know this when I ordered it) a gigantic ice cream sundae with wafers and corn flakes in it. (While I'm talking about deserts, I should mention a recent find: at the bakery we go to often to buy little cookies, we found a cookie that is just a thin biscuit, with an two-inch-thick level of dulce de leche covered in chocolate. Yum. [Side note: as I was writing that parenthetical, I reached into a bakery bag to see if there were any left. Sadly there were none.])

Wednesday I had econ (My teacher is finally back after about three weeks), then English, then religion (I had to give a presentation with my group, but I didn't know what we were presenting, so I faked ignorance [I've found this to be very helpful in these situations. A little "I no speaks Spanish" goes a long way.].). In TIC we went back up to the computer lab, and I, again copied answers (This time, though, everyone else was copying too). I'm not sure why we were in the computer lab, because we never used the computers. We didn't do anything Wednesday evening. Well, I did a fair amount of worrying about my history test due the next day.

But it was Ok. After English, my history teacher asked whether I had the test, and I said no, and explained. So she had me borrow Juli's test and said to turn it in Tuesday. She also had Juli (or maybe Juli did of own accord) correct my test. There were surprisingly few errors (especially for having finished it in the 15 minutes before class). I'm going to go back in time now to first hour. Thursday was picture day. When I got to school, instead of wearing our regular gray uniforms that look like lab coats, almost everyone was wearing a dark blue vest. I guess we were supposed to wear something different today. Oops. I sort of stood by the side not knowing what to do while my class was getting ready to pose for a group picture. My preceptor (The administrator who runs everything related to my class.) saw me and told some boy in another class to lend me his vest. So I got that done and returned his vest and put on my lab coat. And then it was individual picture time. But I managed not to be seen while the photographer went through people to take their picture. Ok, now back to my surprisingly-good history class

My teacher was actually impressed with my history test. She gave me a thumbs up, and I was feeling pretty good about myself (and my procrastination abilities). And then the day took a turn for the worse from which it did not recover. I haven't said yet, that Maggie absolutely hates this new teacher. She is trying to help our Spanish by singling the two of us out in class (where all the other teachers either treat us the same or give us different homework [such as my philosophy teacher]), but this singling out is just too much for Maggie (and I'm not exactly loving it). She came home really upset one day saying that the teacher had made her read aloud to the class two whole pages of her work, and then corrected her grammatical errors. It's not exactly surprising, then, that she wanted me to talk, in Spanish, about imperialism. And then she asked whether the United States was being imperialist in Iraq. Erm... Yes seemed like the correct answer, so that's the one I chose. And then, Can you think of other examples of your country's imperialism? I stuttered and started for a while. Are there other ways your country is imperialist? You can tell us your real opinion, we won't judge you. Well, I don't know! Maybe... How about your war over the Falklands? Isn't that imperialist, too? But again, "yes" seemed to be the opinion of the other 35 people listening to my words, so I chose it again. Ok. We think so, too. (You think the country I come from is trying to create an empire out smaller, poorer states like yours? Thanks, that's comforting.) I was shaking at the end of this interrogation. She wasn't mean, just a little, um, uncomfortingly (Yes, that is a word.) curious about my political views. There was also, "Are you a Democrat or a Republican and which is your state?" hidden in there, which was a much better question in my opinion. "Demócrata y demócrata".

I got another quite-personal questioning in economics, this time about money. This one wasn't anything I was so adverse to answering. Are you upper class, middle class, or lower class? (Well, Ok. It wasn't anything I was thrilled to answer.) I said middle class (And I think that's at least close to true. I don't know. I don't pay any attention to family finances.). Are you well-off? Does your family go on trips often? Does your family have a car? Yes, yes ("He's been to China, profe!"), and yes (I didn't mention that our "car" was actually two mini-vans). Those aren't things Argentina's middle class can afford, she explained. And then she moved on to other things. I was begging my philosophy teacher in my head not to say anything to me in class (Are philosophers much richer in the United States? Do you feel bad about your philosophers imposing their philosophies on other countries like Argentina? In what other ways is your country horrible?), but luckily she didn't. The one good thing about being singled out all day was that my classmates remembered that I was in their class. Before, people had started to, well, not ignore me; they're very friendly. But I have spent a few breaks sitting on the bench outside the room by myself, or standing a few feet behind a circle of people hoping they would invite me to talk with them (not that I would understand everything they said anyway). But now, I was never without someone to talk (or not talk) to, like on the first day. I was very happy.

I went home and took a long nap after school. But then I had to get up for gym. Oh boy. The first activity was just taking balls and throwing them at the other people (Coach: "two pesos to whoever hits Oso's head!" No one ended up winning this, though there were tries.). I partook as minimally as possible (Kennedy! Get animated! Throw that ball at somebody!), and ended up not throwing any balls at anyone. The second game was to tag every person on the opposite team while they were confined to a rectangle marked by orange cones (I was lucky enough to get tagged early.). After gym, I worked on homework for a while (Or, at least, I opened up my books and tried to keep concentrated), and later we had an asado at our house. Mercedes and Chiara, and Nestor and Nico, and Karina and Daniel all came over for dinner. I bailed on the steaks, and had the less meaty option of a hamburger and potato salad (Yes, surprisingly, the less-meat option involved a hamburger. I know I've defined it before, but an asado is just meat. And lots and lots of meat. People here like their meat.) I had a good time making drawings with Maggie and Chiara of "Paco" the goat (You probably don't remember us inventing him weeks ago on the drive back from Tolombon.) being killed by Maggie or Chiara. But I was exhausted (I'm always tired at dinnertime. One thing I can't wait to go back to is the normal mealtimes.), so I snuck away and went to bed.

At this point I still hadn't researched a counterculture, so I got up early to do that. After some deliberation (I didn't want to choose a US counterculture because that would just be Amerocentric of me, but I couldn't find one non-US-related.), I chose the hippies and wrote a little page (direct from Wikipedia, and translated by me) about them. In TIC, we took a test I hadn't known about. I never know when it's kosher to use notes, because sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. I used my notes, and he didn't stop me. The questions were all questions we had answered in classwork on Wednesday, but it turns out my group had #3 wrong (Sorry, Martín, for the wrong answer!). In stats we had another test I was unaware of. This I didn't need notes for, though (Beginning-of-the-year stats? I did that in September.). Except that I forgot to find the standard deviation, and I just made up answers to things like "What are the steps in the Statistical Process?" that other kids had memorized. Oh well.

In culture, she had me read what I had researched. I made it short. I summed up the first half-page, and just ignored what I had written about hippies in other countries (which may not have been the smartest thing to do, given what she thinks about me). When I was done, I looked up at her. She was standing right in front of me. She didn't react to me stopping reading. A few second went by and then Juli behind me said, "Sam, are you done?" "Yes, I'm done." We both looked at the teacher again, but she was still silent and looking at me. "Um. Ok, how about some applause for Sam?" offered Juli, and a few people started clapping, but then the teacher took her eyes off me and stopped them. "Why are you giving special treatment? Most of you couldn't even hear what he said. I had to stand this close to hear him. How do you know whether what he said was good?" And then the applause stopped. Later in the class, she had been talking about something else and said "I treat all my students equally with respect." Someone in the back said, "What about Sam?" Thank you, person in the back!! But she just ignored that. At the end of class, she called out everyone's grades so they could write them in their gradebooks (I guess there's no FERPA here!). Most of the grades between 7 and 9 out of 10, and I don't think any were below 6. I am, because I enrolled late, at the end of the otherwise-alphabetic list the teachers have. "Trundo, 7." she called (I changed some letters in the name so not to release it on the internet). "Zafaz, 8. Kennedy." Wait, there was a period after that. She was supposed to say a number. Like "4" or "2". Then she came around to sign what we wrote. When she got to me, she saw I didn't have anything written, and then she wrote in the date, and my score and signed it. I tried to crane my neck to see what number she had written. My book said "8 (ocho)". I was shocked. Then she put her hand on my shoulder, pointed to the number 8, and said in slow Spanish, "This is your score. Your presentation was very good." Wait, what!?! What happened to that teacher who hated me and said all those things about me!?! Then walked on to sign other gradebooks and someone collected mine and put in the box while I sat in stunned silence for the rest of the hour.

I think I've been too harsh on my school so far. I've only focused on the things my culture and history teachers have said to make me feel uncomfortable and unliked. But my other classes really aren't that bad. Literature was actually pretty enjoyable. We were studying for a test on Monday, and all I had to do was copy what the teacher said, and I could listen to the conversations around me. Friday night we went to a travel agent to see about going to Patagonia (where Mom really wants to visit) and Bolivia (where I really want to visit). She's looking into both.

And today is Saturday. I slept in late today (Yay!) (Which meant I missed some sort of graduating-class trip to somewhere, but I wasn't really sure on the details of it, and I haven't yet told Mom and Dad anyway [this blog is going to be the way they find out].). Since then I've been mostly working on homework and this blog, actually. Tonight we are going to go to Mercedes's birthday party.