Three weeks ago I woke up 6:15am with an excited feeling in my stomach; I was finally going to school. I dressed up, ate breakfast, packed my stuff, and rushed out of the door in time for making it to 07:00pm. However, the minute I did that I heard a voice behind me: Not yet Fred, we first have to be there half past seven because it is your first day; I threw my backpack back at the floor and placed my butt on the couch, tripping like at little anxious kid awaiting Christmas.

Finally, after unbelievable long time, we left the building and walked, in my opinion, slower than a snail who just had the best and biggest dinner ever. Right… One cross, opposite sidewalk… Walking… One cross more, left… And we stood in front of the gate. We entered the school and met Regina, the co-coordinator, at the third floor, and after a long talk and presentation of the different teachers, which, to say politely, are indifferent to you, she introduced me to a class:

Everybody looked at me, when I entered the worn, quadratic room. My eyes looked around to memorize the faces of the students whom watched me carefully, but also curiously. Regina began to talk: “This is Frederico…,” but instead of listening I started to analyse my impressions of the room; not noticing a single word she said. The room was very monotonously furnished; no decorations of any kind except from a painting above the blackboard indicating the religious path of the school. The white-gray walls reflected the artificial, basement-blue light from the naked neon tubes, and the fan behind my back made an annoying, repetive sound, making me drawing parallels to my imagination of a danish classroom back in the thirties. My eyes also sensed the yellow marks on the floor, indicating where the small one-man tables, with barely space for your long legs, should be placed.

Regina pushed me in the direction of a free table besides a good-looking girl, and I sat down listening carefully to every spoken word trying to understand; with no luck.

The positive, unfortunately also the negative, attention about me, the danish guy, was huge the first days. It was a bit hard for me to choose between the right and wrong friends, because of the language, but with a useful hint from a well-trusted friend, I managed to pass the period to my satisfaction; as soon as the bad guys found out I did my homework they left me alone. Right now I´m slowly getting integrated.

As the school is different from Denmark so is my schedule. I have 37 lessons each week, and sometimes also school at Saturday - mostly because of the swine flue which delayed the school start two weeks. This is my schedule:

Every day starts at 07:00am with three lessons in a row followed up by the fat line which marks a break of thirty minutes. Some students eat a little while others save the hunger for the warm lunch at home; usually I eat an apple, banana, and a plum. In the schoolyard there are various activities for me to do. Football, volleyball, basketball, and foosball - I play basketball since my friends prefer that, but when it rains we are only allowed to play foosball, so I already had my games. The break ends when the bell rings with a piece of the classic Mozart, Bach, or sometimes even the latest top song from Jonas Brothers (I must admit that I prefer Mozart or Bach), and we all walk crestfallen back to our classes, attending another four hours of teaching.

Tuesday is a special day, because I also have classes in the afternoon. This day I normaly go straight back at home to eat and repack my backpack; I only have one hour from I leave school to the afternoon classes begin, so I don´t have time for anything else. These classes are often the best classes because we´re operating in the laboratories, touching things instead of looking at the blackboard, though I´m not going to deny that it wouldn´t do anything worse if they didn´t exist.

As you may have noticed some of the subjects are divided in two parts. That´s because I have multiple professors for the same subject, which means I don´t make any relations to the professors, much more homework, and more difficult studying because each professor is specialized in a particular subject.

Conclusion: The things that make the school good are the friends only - and I have plenty of opportunities to choose them since we are 39 students in my class, A1.