The School

After having been in the school for almost seven weeks, I think, it’s about time to finally talk about that. I started in the school a week and a half after arriving, and it was something I had been both looking forward to and was really nervous about. I didn’t know a lot about the teenage culture or the schools in Brazil before coming, but I did have some stereotypes about private school kids (that fortunately turned out to not be true). I’m also a person, who’s never really liked or fit in the school system, so I was a bit nervous about being bored or feeling trapped in the school here just like back home.

Honestly though it’s been so much better than I ever expected, and while waking up at 5 am every day isn’t my favorite thing in the world, I almost look forward to going.

We are five kids in my building who goes to the same school, and the parents take turns driving all of us. One of the girls, Lara, is in the same class as me, and my parents arranged for us to meet a couple days before I started, so I knew at least one person. She also helped with a lot of the translations and practical stuff in the beginning.

The school itself is so much bigger than any school I’ve ever gone to. Colegio Antonio Vieira has 5000 students distributed in the high school and the middle school: Vierinha. Compared to that, my school in Denmark only had around 900 students, and that was big for me. It is a private school, which means there are a lot of upper/middle and upper class kids, but there’s also a lot of kids who goes there on scholarships. It’s also a christian school, although I have yet to see anything really religious except for the church and chapels, that really few people use.

School starts at 7 am here, and although it’s only a 10 minutes drive to school, we leave around 6.15 to avoid the traffic from 5000 parents. This means I usually wake up around 5.15-5.30, and that definitely took some getting used to.

On the first day I woke up after having barely slept due to nerves and put on my uniform, which just consists of a white T-shirt with the logo and leggins or “normal pants” that I had to borrow from my host sister, because mine apparently didn’t count as such. It’s not bad for a uniform, and I totally get why they have them, but I have to admit, that I kind of miss wearing my own clothes and even seeing other people express themself with their style.

My mom and sister both went with me to the office on that first day to get everything sorted out. Here we met a teacher called Isabel, who happened to be the teacher my class had in the first period. She was super welcoming and said a lot of nice things to me that I didn’t understand a word of, because I didn’t speak portuguese very well yet, but my sister helped with the translation. She also took it upon herself to lead me to the class and introduce me, which meant grabbing my arm and dragging me through the sea of students who suddenly found me very interesting.

I don’t think, I’ve ever experienced anything like that, with people literally everywhere around me trying to get my attention and everybody talking at once asking questions about me, my country and what I thought of Brasil so far. Honestly it was a bit overwhelming, but it was also most certainly a great welcome, and everyone was super sweet to help, answer questions and show me around.

The school here is very different than what I’m used to, and there’s definitely been some culture shocks both for me and my friends, when we talk about it.

Here we have school from 7-12.30 most days of the week, which consists of 6 classes of 50 minutes. In reality though the classes only lasts about 30 minute because of people being late, getting the projector and microphone to work (yes, the teachers uses microphones because the classes has like 40-50 students), namecalls and sometimes giving the test result back.

Some of the subjects here are different too. In Denmark we often have the ability to choose some of our subject, but here everyone has everything, which means I suddenly have chemistry and biology for the first time since middle school. Some of the subjects are even split in two, so we have two kinds of math classes, two kind of physics classes and two kind of portuguese classes. The laboratorie work is also a class on it’s own instead of being incorporated like in Denmark. For me it’s really nice to have every subject to see the differences and similarities, but it comes at the costs of some of the creative and more specific subjects we have in Denmark, which I do miss a bit.

On mondays we have physical education, where you have to do one sport in school or outside school. I chose volleyball, which I really enjoy, even though I’m not exactly good at it, but it’s nice to know the basics, as I’d never played before, and everyone here plays all the time.

On wednesday we have classes in the afternoon too, but this is electives, where you have to choose a group of subjects. Here I chose geography, sociology and history, because it was really interesting for me to learn more about these subjects from a brazilian point of view. For example we’re studying world war two in history right now, a subject I’ve studied a lot in Denmark, but it’s from a totally different point of view, and it focuses on some countries or events I knew nothing or very little about before.

Of course there’s also the small detail about very few of the professors being able to speak english and all the classes being in portuguese. In the beginning I hardly understood anything, but luckily a lot of my classmate spoke great english and were ready to help. With time it has also gotten a lot better, and now I can even talk to the professors myself, when I want something. I still speak a lot of english with my friends in school, because it’s really difficult when there’s a lot of noise, and everyone’s speaking fast and at the same time, but I’m trying. By now I’m able to speak to the people who don’t speak english too, which is really great.

All in all both teachers and students have been really sweet and welcoming to me, and Isabel even brought me a gift with candy from Bahia and keychains and clips, that I’ve put on my Rotary blazer.

Honestly I never thought, it would be this easy to make friends, but it feels like all I have to do is stand somewhere, and someone will come and talk to me. As you can see in the photos, it’s not exactly like it’s hard to find me in the crowd, and everyone is really curious. Still, I do have a group of closer friends – a very large group – that I hang out with more in and after school and go to parties with.

There is indeed a lot of parties here, and there’s both similarities and differences to what I’m used to in Denmark, but I’ll go into detail on that in a later post. However I can safely say, that it’s a lot of fun, and everyone has been sweet to invite me to pool partys birthdays, normal partys, and just chill friends nights – even the people who still don’t know me very well.

The teen culture is also a bit different here, which is to be expected, but especially now with social media and a more globalised world, I think there’s a lot of things teenagers all over the world have in common. Maybe it’s just because of the particular people I surround myself with, but my friendgroup here do indeed remind me a bit of my friends at home, and by now I have found my marvel nerds, rock fans, artists and gays here too.

Other than that I do sometimes hang out with friends just by going on walks, going to the mall or cinema, and with the long vacation here, we’ve planned a lot of beach trips and much more. The two times a week where we have classes in the afternoon, we also have 1.5 or 2 hours lunchbreak, so either we go out in the city and eat at a restaurant or we bring/order food and all eat together at the school, while listening to music, talking and sometimes playing games.

In the school there are also a lot of clubs and extracurricular events like science fairs, sports teams and a club for the enviroment. Especially Avla, the creative club, has a lot of members in my class and friendgroup. It covers six smaller groups: music, art, theater, dance, photography and poetry/writing. Until now I’ve seen presentations from both theater, dance, poetry and music, and it’s absolutely amazing how much people here support each other and cheer for each other during the shows. After new year I hope to be a part of at least the music and theater clubs, but we’ll see how it goes.