First Day of School

Today was the first day of school. From what I understood, I do not have any homework tonight, but the key words there are “from what I understood”, because that was next to nothing. The day started off quite nicely with a beautiful sunrise that I could see from my bedroom. We then left the house early, and Oscar took Osvaldo and me to downtown Vicenza, where the school is. It was my first time being downtown, except for the small ordeal at the bus terminal, but that was at nighttime and not in the very center of town. It is a very nice city with small roads and many bridges and other interesting architectural features. For a few minutes before school started, Osvaldo and I talked with some other kids from Longare, some of which I had met, and most of which were in their fifth year of high school. It was Osvaldo’s first day of high school as well since he is now in the first year, so I think it was nice for both of us to see people we knew. Liceo Statale Scientifico Paolo Lioy is situated on the medium-sized Piazza San Lorenzo just a couple blocks from Vicenza’s central garden. During this time before school, it was fairly similar to what one would see on the first day at Summit High School, yet this was outside. And many students were smoking, which I do not think would go over too well in the SHS commons. Like at Summit High School, there was a warning bell five minutes before classes began. Unlike Summit High School, when this bell rang, all of the students went straight to class, as opposed to waiting around and arriving at the last minute. I looked at the chart and saw that class 4A was in room 37, which took me a while to find since Liceo Lioy has split-level floors and not much sense to its numbering system. But I found it after a while. Upon entering the room, I saw that desks were arranged in rows of three, all facing the front of the room. It reminded me of how most science classrooms at SHS are set up. There were only two open seats when I got to the room; one was a sole desk in the very front of the room that was the only desk that was not adjacent to two others, and the other was in the back row, next to two other boys. I chose the latter, and introduced myself to the people around me, and I was surprised to find out that one of the boys in my triplet spoke next-to-perfect English. Apparently most of his cousins live in Rhode Island, and he visits them quite often. Anyways, it will be nice to have someone to translate important things.


At the front of the room, the teacher was waiting for the starting bell. I asked what subject he taught and they told me math and physics. It fit him perfectly. This man was the living manifestation of the stereotypical mathematics professor. He was tall, slim, and was balding on top. He wore glasses, as well as a V-neck sweater over a dress shirt and khakis. Once the bell finally rang, the professor sat down, and looked at his paper. He briefly explained what he was going to do, but I could not understand a word he said. It probably was not because of difficult language, yet because the students’ noise level did not go down at all once the bell had rung. The teacher then started calling off names and talking with each student for quite a while. I believe after calling off each name on the list, he wanted to hear what each student had done over the summer. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. While he was doing this, all the students but the one he was talking with kept on talking, so it was hard to understand anything that was said. But when he called “Cuadrado, Alejandro” all the students turned and look at me. My Italian skills are not developed enough to be able to give a decent answer, and he also caught me a little bit off guard. I was confused and said simply, “Ciao” which I guess was the wrong answer because everyone started laughing, including the teacher. I think I was laughing as well. I then covered up and said, “Si, io sono Alex. Sono un studente di scambio da gli Stati Uniti. Sto qui per un anno.” or, “Yes, I’m Alex. I am an exchange student from the United States. I am here for a year.” That seemed to work because he then moved on to the next student. The whole roll call took about an hour and a half, and today I was scheduled for a double session of math that morning, then an hour of English, and finally an hour of philosophy. For the remaining half hour of the math period, he just stood in front of the class and talked about circles, ellipses, hyperbola, and other conic sections. The only full sentence I was able to comprehend was something about changing a curve so that it was more aesthetically pleasing. I am not exactly sure what that means. I guess this is how most math lessons will be because some of the students were taking notes as if this was normal procedure. I should have listened to Mafy (the Italian girl that is with my family in Frisco), and not brought my graphing calculator. I was sure that since this year we are supposed to do trigonometry, we were going to need one. I guess not. At the very end of class, I went to the teacher and asked if I should buy the necessary textbooks now. Apparently, after a month of me being in the fourth year class, all of my teachers are going to get together and evaluate me to decide if I should stay in the fourth year or move down to the third. Therefore, it would be unwise to buy the fourth year books if in one month I could be moved down to a class where they use a whole different set of books. He seemed to understand the dilemma, but replied at such a fast pace, and the only thing I understood was his last sentence: “Ho capito?” (Do you understand?) I did not at all, but when someone goes to such a great extent to try and explain something, I feel bad asking them to repeat something. I said that that I understood and he left.
Unlike in the United States, schools in Italy do not have students roaming the halls. Here, you are put in a class with about twenty other students and you all take the same courses. It is sort of like elementary school in the United States, but they do treat us like adults. My next class was English, which made me happy. I was going to be able to understand everything that was to be said! The class was reading Frankenstein, and I was surprised to see that participation in the classroom is 100% voluntary. Unlike in most American classes, if somebody wants to doze off for the entire period, the teacher has no problem with it. It also sort of surprised me to hear the English teacher’s accent. Apart from having a slight Italian touch to her speech, she spoke with a noticeably British accent, which makes sense, because to Europeans, the authority for English is England. At the end of class I asked her (in Italian) what I should do about the books, and she told me to hold off for a month and then to buy the right ones. She said that in the meantime, we would just make photocopies of the materials.
My fourth and final hour of class today was philosophy. The teacher, which also will be teaching our history classes, was the only one that could get the classes attention. It was amazing to see how she smacked a book on her desk, and the room went silent. Anyways, she asked me if I had ever studied philosophy, and I said no. She did not seem too happy about that but said that I would therefore not have to take the tests regarding past material. At this point another boy in the class said that he hadn’t studied philosophy either. She threw her chalk at him. Her class today was supposed to be a quick review of last year, and she said that we will finish reviewing later in the week. Instead of giving a syllabus, as most American teachers do, here they just tell you what to expect more or less and that it will be harder than the previous year. This year in philosophy we will study Christian philosophy and maybe at the end read a little bit of Kant. But for today’s review, we looked at Stoicism and its main beliefs. I was glad to see that she was going to write out notes on the chalkboard, that way I wouldn’t have to rely solely on my ears, but once she started writing, I changed my mind. She used an odd form of cursive that I could not decipher and the words she spoke while writing were just as hard to comprehend. We will see how I do in this class. I just hope not to fail
After school ended, I met Osvaldo out in the plaza and we walked to the bus stop which brought us back to Longare. We were lucky enough to catch the bus that Osvaldo used to take in middle school to take us up the hill where the house is. Otherwise, we would have had to walk about fifteen or twenty minutes in the rain to get back home.
Later I will let everybody know whether or not there was homework I should have done. I will also post pictures of my school eventually. I would have looked pretty funny taking a picture of the school, though it is beautiful.