Second First Day of School

Well, that was an auspicious start to the year. Out of five classes today I was late for four of them and missed the fifth completely. Granted, the skipped class wasn’t my fault, but still … let’s start at the beginning.
Just like we predicted, my two first year roome, Ximena and Larima, woke up at 6:00 am and 6:30 am respectively. I, being the experienced second year that I am, waited until 7:30 to rise from my blue cloud of slumber. I had plenty of time, but I decided that I should start the year out well and eat breakfast: a mistake. (actually, it was a case of deja-vu, I recall making the exact same mistake last year with exactly the same result) The logical consequence of eating breakfast (an error I won’t repeat in the future) was scarfing down a bowl of cereal and running to World Cultures class and arriving there just barely on time … but the door was closed! (door closed means I’m late = bad) Apparently Henry’s clock was 5 minutes fast, and though I informed him of the fact, it didn’t reduce the embarrassment.
Great class though, a discussion of the different meanings of the word “Classic” applying to everything from Greek civilization to “Gone with the Wind”. And next I had a free block. I spent it in the normal free block routine: do various nothings until you realize it’s 10:00 and you have to run to your next class, wondering where your hour went, because you certainly didn’t use it!
Theory of Knowledge, my next class, moved buildings without prior notice, and the sign on the door directed me to the building I had just come from – ahrg. I arrived at class out of breath and had to sit right at the front of the class in the last available chair. My placement was perfect for becoming Official Scribe for the class, an idea our ToK teacher has decided on – write down everything said so we can remember it later – and so I was stuck typing frantically as everyone else had a lively discussion on the nature of history and memory and the effect that writing things down and taking photos has on them.
Yay: break! So I went back to Schultz, my residence, and had a second breakfast, because the last one didn’t cut it. Once again, I mismanaged time (perhaps it’s the relaxing effect of yogurt…), but still got to the room on time – only to find no one there. My English class had been moved as well. Again I run to the other building (in the opposite direction again), and just as I enter the door I see my teacher coming, so I scuttle into class so as to appear un- late ( maybe the red cheeks and panting gave me away though).
Wow. English class was heaven. After a year of Beth (our last teacher who left) we had all trained ourselves to automatically switch our brains off as we enter the classroom, and this class was a frantic fumble to find the switch back on. We read – and I mean really read – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufok, and discussed modernism in Britain and America and its effects and influences in 20th century culture. I haven’t thought so much in English class since the end of AP English in high school (discounting the math homework I used to do there last year).
Determined to get to Music on time, I was waylaid by my Italian teacher: “I missed you in class today, where were you?” What? I had been devastated that my favorite Italian teacher had been switched to C block while I remained in B block with another teacher…or at least that’s what the list said, and I hadn’t gotten a new schedule to say anything different. But apparently I was switched along with my teacher (yay!!) and missed my first class (oops.)
So, I was late to Music as well, but that didn’t really matter because Stefano doesn’t really care anyway, and we talked about orchestration in the Romantic period and the differences between Brahms’ and Bruchner’s early symphonies.
I was early for lunch though, and had a wonderful time with the other native English speakers excitedly lauding our new teacher and laughing at my blunders. It’s been a great day though, because even though I was late, the classes were all really fun, and I’m so happy to back.