School Day #1

All I can begin to say is WOW. The school life here in South Africa differs immensely from that back at home. I'll spend today's blog by talking about a regular class day here at St. Johns. Classes generally start at 7:25 am, and continue until 5 pm. Students arrive to class either right on time or 5 minutes late... but never earlier! When the teacher arrives, all students abruptly stand up in their seats (something that I was awkwardly ill prepared for)  and greet him/her with an in-unison "hello ma'am" or "hello sir." The actual class discussion differs from St. George's in that it is mainly question-and-answer based. There is not much discussion, and there's a lot more focus on what rather than why. Students do not use laptops although most of them own Dells and Macs. In my first class, nearly 30 pages of material were given out to each of the 10 students... it made me forget how eco-friendly St. George's actually is! The schedule is also much more lenient here: there are only 2 required classes that each student is required to take (called "compulsory") - and they only take place once every two weeks! What a change from my St. George's experience. Although this is all so strange I am confident to say that I'm getting used to it. Everyone is so friendly and I'm ready to take on a second day!