First Day of School

The night before my first day (Friday the 18th), I cried myself to sleep. I was so jet lagged that I was not only really tired, but extremely emotional. every time I thought about my dad, I broke into tears, I missed him so much. However, in the morning, after 11 hours of sleep, I was refreshed and ready to go. Our home was a mad house; everyone was running around with their uniforms, and had toothbrushes in their mouths, and everyone was looking for socks. I met two more of my cousins (remember, I have a big family), Bobby and Josh who were very sweet and they were going with Lilyanna (the cousin I'm living with) to their school. 

When I arrived to my new school, Our Lady of Lourdes,I was so nervous I had to keep asking my mom where the front of the school was over and over just to make sure I didn't embarrass myself. Our Lady of Lourdes is a very small school, as I mentioned before, and is a tall building rather than laid out flat like my old school, Miramonte. Anyways, I walked into the office and the assistant principal took me up to the classroom. All of the girls were very excited to see me, with took some of the pressure away. The first person to talk to me was a girl named Niamh (pronounced Neev). She told me all about the school and introduced my to all of the girls as we headed to our first class in the computer lab for YSI, or Young Student Innovators. She explained that YSI is a part of their curriculum where the class must start a charity and raise money for it throughout the year; ours is to help the elderly. Once we arrived in the computer lab, I met another Aoife! I had never had another Aoife in my class before and I was always confused when someone called my name, but was talking to the other Aoife. Then after two hours of YSI, we headed to maths, however, we spent the whole class introducing everyone and then the girls asked me questions about my school, what my home town is like, what I like about Ireland, and telling me about New Ross. Then we had Study Buddies, which is when we go to the nearby Primary school and help the little kids. When I arrived, a girl named Sarah explained what we needed to do and introduced me to all the children as the new Study Buddy from San Francisco. Three girls all immediately gave me hugs. The boys were different, they were pretend shooting each other and shoving each other around. One boy was actually named Tadgh, which is my brother's name (except he spells it T i g h e), they even had the same coloring! We helped the teacher photo copy some test packets and then watched over the kids so they didn't cheat. It was interesting because most of them tried to even though it was a very very simple test. After the Study Buddies, we had lunch and all the girls were telling me how to were my uniform and that they all go to the disco. From what I learned, the disco is like a club for underage people; i.e. no alcohol or drugs and there is supervision. However if a girl sees a boy they think is cute, their friend will walk up to that boy and say "shift her," which means the two of them need to go off and make out. However, when I heard this, I was a little disgusted because that is way more provocative than the kind of stuff kids in Orinda do, so I think I'll keep away from the discos. Anyways, alter in the day, when we had Irish class, and since I've never taken Irish before, and I can't really start now, I will only study the cultural part of the class, not the language. So, my first assignment is to color in the counties of Ireland by their official colors and then write a page for 6 of the counties. 
After school, I went home and later we went to the theater to see Lily in a Pantomime, Hansel and Gretel. A pantomime is a type of fairytale play where there is musical numbers, lots of jokes, a lot of slapstick comedy, and breaking of the fourth wall (talking to the audience). At the end, they sang "What does the Fox Say?" and brought a bunch of audience members on stage to dance. I real didn't want to go, but a guy recognized my mom and I and dragged us on stage. It ended up being really fun! Well that's all I have, I will keep blogging but probably only once every few days unless something really exciting happens.
Until next time,
Aoife