September: Start of School
Greetings everyone. It is already October which means that I have been in Poland for over 6 weeks. This also means I have a lot to catch you all up on.
Every year, all over Poland the new school year begins on the 1st of September. Of course, if the month begins on a weekend day, the first day of school must wait until the following Monday. Such as it was this year when we started on the 4th. The other thing to note is that the first day is only about one or two hours long and consists of an assembly followed by meeting your main teacher and classmates. Along with me, there are three other exchanges students attending my school. All of us wore are Rotary blazers covered in pins making it even more obvious that we were new there.
The four of us attend the third high school in Lodz (III Liceum Ogólnoksztalcace). This building is amazing. Its construction was finished in 1891 which means that it is almost older than the country of Canada - a fact that I learned from my new Canadian friend. If you are interested you can read more about the history of my school here:
*Be warned- the page is in Polish but it should be easy to translate the page.
School in Poland is quite different to what I am used to and it took some getting used to. First of all, every day of the week you have a different set of classes. Each class is 45 minutes but one day you may have 7 classes and the next day only 4. Two days in the week I don't start class until 9:10 and I am done with my day at 12:40. The other thing that really surprised me is that you are with the same group of students for every class and for all three years of high school. This allows you to become really close with others in this group but at the same time, it becomes harder to make friends that may be in a separate profile. Your profile is the set of subjects you choose after secondary school to study in high school. To my knowledge, there are three profiles- math and physics, biology and chemistry, and humanities. On top of the subjects in the profiles, every class takes history, math, PE, English, Polish, and a third language- Russian, German, and Spanish are offered at my school. Because we were not conventional students we could not choose are profiles and were put into the classes which had room. A boy from Brasil and I were both put into the same class in the "MatFys" profile while the other two were in the Humanities. I was not thrilled about this because I had never taken a physics class before and I really enjoy biology and chemistry. It does not matter so much, especially now, because I do not yet speak Polish. However, we were allowed to pick our third language class and all of us chose German. We were put with the class below us who are also new to the language. Except for in English, German, and occasionally math, I am left to do my own thing in class. The teachers didn't know what to do with us as they had never had exchange students before.
The best part about my school is its location. It is within walking distance from Piotrkowska street, Manufactura, and Galeria Lodzka- the three best places to hang out. At the same time, having the school in the main part of the city has its drawbacks. Nearly every morning I am late or almost late because of the traffic.
I have found that everyone at school has been very kind and helpful to us. It is amazing how well nearly every student can speak English. On the last weekend of September, there was the annual Light Move Festival in Lodz. Light shows are projected on many buildings around the city mostly concentrating around Piotrkowska street. there are also temporary art installations and even projections on trees. One of my new friends from school was kind enough to be our guide around the festival.
Because so much had happened in this month, I will be making a second part to the blog very soon. Thank you so much for reading, following, and supporting this journey. Much love from Poland!