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School Again

Mom and Dad say we'll be going home in just a few weeks. In the meantime, while they get things ready for the trip, RJE and I will be attending school. The new school year here started on Monday, March 3. So I am in seventh grade now.

In Chile, kids in school stay with their same classmates from year to year. So everyone knows everyone else in class very well.

But there can be a couple of new kids every year, or some who have repeated the grade. In my seventh-grade class, for example, we have eight new students, which is a lot. RJE has four new kids in her class.

One of the new girls in my class is from China, but she speaks Spanish well because she's been in Chile for three years.

Another girl is from Argentina, and some of the boys tease her because of her accent. If you want to hear what the Argentine accent sounds like, here is a video of a woman speaking it with her eyes, face, and hands---from a very good website that teaches Spanish.

Another new girl in my class is from Brazil and has been in Chile for only two weeks. She speaks more Spanish than I did when I first went to school here a year ago, though.

There is also a new boy from Brazil who speaks fine because he has been in Chile for two years. There are also two new Chilean boys, and two other boys who are repeating seventh grade.

My friends and I hang around with the girls from China and Brazil. The Chinese girl is very shy and very skinny. She does not eat lunch, and when I asked her whether she got hungry, she said No.

Seventh grade is much harder than sixth. We now have physics, chemistry, biology, and "methods" (a class where they teach you how to study), along with the normal math, language, English, technology, music, art, religion, and history.

All of the subjects are taught by new and different teachers. The hardest so far for me have been language and history. Religion is also hard.

The new English teacher has an even stronger accent than the one we had last year. My friend says that it's because we have a "Chilenisized" English class ("inglés chilenizado").

The first mistake the English teacher made this year was, "Hello, stewdents, tooday I have a bad new," instead of saying "I have bad news."

Mom says that those are the typical mistakes that people make when they have learned a language from books instead of living in a country where the language is spoken. They just translate from their own language. In Spanish, "tengo una mala noticia" is "I have a bad new." It is said that way in Spanish, but not in English.

On Mondays and Thursdays we have P.E., what they call here "Educación Física." On Wednesdays we have physics, what they call "Física." So, last Wednesday, three boys in my class got a bit confused and showed up to physics class wearing their gym outfits!

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