IAL

So on monday Iuri took me to my school to register and meet with the principal among other things. The name of my school is the Institute Americano de Lins which also surprisingly enough is a methodist school, which I gather is rather unusual in Brasil.There are approximately 1600 students enrolled at IAL, making it a fairly large school, though it seems smaller most of the time since there are students of every grade attending, which means there are only 500 hundred or so high school students that I usually interact with.I was told to arrive at 6:45 so that the principal Donna Arlene could introduce me to my class and as I still retain my american habits of promptness I was quite concerned about being on time.However when I arrived I was made to wait nearly an hour until she finally arrived and collected me to introduce me to my class.I was initially rather intimidated by the size of the class I was introduced to as Arlene had neglected to inform me that she was taking me to the only period that both 11a and 11b attended, thus I was momentarily under the impression that my class was composed of at least 70 students and was quite horrified at the prospect of such a large class.She then proceeded to make me stand in front of my class as she introduced me and made a rather long speech about various things that seemed entirely unrelated , while most of the students giggled,pointed and chattered about me in portuguese.My class turned out to be 11b , and my classmates then proceeded to show me to our main classroom and bombard me with questions while fighting over who got to sit with me.The first week of school did turn out to be fairly decent and fortunately the majority of my classmates are quite nice and helpful to me.High school is interesting to experience as I've been self taught or homeschooled most of my life and am used to choosing to study art history or Byzantine politics if I so desire, I am also not accustomed to having to listen to a teacher explain the most elementary of priniciples to a class that isn't even paying attention anyway.I do try to have a sense of humor about every thing that I encounter and I am generally on whole quite bemused by all the high school silliness and drama.Frankly it's quite awkward as people are constantly asking me what I think of IAL and if I like it.I've adopted the diplomatic response of muito differente and intersensante, as while I'm quite sure that there are some very good schools in Brasil alas my school is not one of them.I am very fond of my classmates but they simply aren't challenged in school, there are essentially no assignments, the course work is simplistic and usually on subjects I covered ages ago, and they are noisy and disrespectful in class.I'm rather afraid that over the course of several weeks I've slightly started to turn into the punk exchange student who just doesn't care about whether I'm on time or if I break the dress code etc.It's not that I'm in anyway disrespectful it's just so very difficult for me to be passionate about this particular schooling as I've already covered everything they are learning,the teachers ignore me all the time anyway,after five weeks of attendence my textbooks are still on order so I can do very little in class,I'll miss a large amount of school due to trips and functions, and I've already graduated high school in the USA.Though I am still as enthralled with learning as ever, I tend to spend most of my time reading my language books in class, journaling, or writing letters as I have so very little to do, hopefully I can get some books on literature, art,history,economics, and philosphy so that I can keep up somewhat with worthwhile studies.I have six classes lasting fifty minutes a piece daily beginning at 7:00 and ending at 12:30 with a thirty minute break halfway through the morning.Morning breaks are usually difficult as I still have problems distinguishing what people are saying to me when everyone is speaking at once and as they are usually quite impatient they expect an answer far sooner than is within my abilities to supply.As the only other exchange student at my school already speaks quite good portuguese ( due to an extensive background in romance languages and a private tutor for six months ) the students tend to not bother speaking with me as it is far simpler for them to converse with Alyssa.The worst is when they start asking the people next to me if I speak portuguese without even glancing at me and then continue to discuss my language capabilities and me while I stand in front of them , nevermind that I understand portuguese fairly well and can certainly speak some if not flawlessly at least quite enough to get my point across.I have quite accustomed to my school over the past few weeks however and though I still long for Japan it is not nearly as acute as it used to be, though people here constantly think I'm more homesick than I am.I have had quite the trouble attempting to explain that I'm not actually homesick I just wish I had gotten to go to a country that I was interested in as opposed to one quite near the bottom of my choices ^_^.One of the slightly depressing things about my school is that they have absolutely no music,art,clubs or interesting sports to become involved with.I am going to have to see if I can get some sort of lessons whether linguistic or athletic ( preferably both though ) as I am quite infernally bored in the afternoons due to lack of school activities.I will really try to be more regular about my postings here and not spend too much time dwelling on the first several weeks as they are a bit depressing. I apologize for the slight disorder of this entry as I had originally typed out an excellent post but it was lost when my computer shut down unexpectedly and I rather spent several days fuming about it until resigning myself to rewriting it ^^.