First Day of School, take 2

As most of you know, this year I changed schools. Before I was going to Industrial, a public technical school, but this year our schedule changed to the night classes, until 9:30pm. And 9:30pm classes would be awful, not to mention having night classes in one of the more dangerous neighborhoods. So, I was changed to la Ribera, a private school 11 blocks from my house.
Now, most exchange students say that apart from the first five minutes after getting off the bus at the start of their exchange, the first day in school is the most nervous feeling anyone has. So imagine not having to go through that once, but twice. Awesome.
One difference with my old school is that this school starts at 7:30am and ends at 1:30pm (though this week and the following, at 12:30pm), which means it is a six hour school day, not three. Which also means waking up at 6, not 10. I like the uniform better, though. At Industrial, just wearing the shirt would probably have covered just as much skin as putting the skirt on over, but the skirt at la Ribera actually is close to St. J dresscode standards. The downside is that the new uniform cost 840 pesos, plus the shoes, which rounds out to a good 1000 pesos ($160).
I got to school at 7:15, and when I entered, I asked one of the women in the office where I needed to go. She kind of just pointed me down a hall, and after wandering about with a scared little deer in the headlights look on my face for about five minutes a student asked me where I needed to go and helped me find the classroom. When I entered, there were already about eight students waiting, and as I took a chair off a desk to sit, one of them warned me that I shouldn´t sit there... when I asked why, he said "ahi se sienta la mala" or "the mean girl sits there." So I changed seats. It turns out that in my class there are two other kids from the swim team and one other exchange student from Italy, so I already had a couple friends. After about five minutes the bell rang to go downstairs for formation, where each grade lines up and they raise the flags and blah blah blah. Then the director started to talk, and she called me out in front of the whole school to introduce myself. Which was awesome.
Class started with economy, then technology, with the same professor. I have never in my life had either of those classes so although I understood the Spanish, the actual content was confusing. Afterwards was Geography, and finally Chemistry. In each class we did a "diagnostic", questions about the subject to judge what point we were at. We also had two blocks of recess, about ten minutes each, to buy snacks or go to the bathroom.
There were a ton of differences with this school. It is much cleaner, without writing on the walls. The desks work and the students are pretty well kept. Everyone I had talked to before said that private school students aren´t very respectful and are noisy and whatnot but I found that they were actually much better behaved than those in my previous school. They were also a lot more sociable, very willing to chat and offer help. Hopefully it will all stay that way.
Other news: today is my six month birthday in Formosa. It actually is way more than halfway, because the program isn´t a full year, it´s actually about ten and a half months. So there are about 140 days left, or a little over four months. We haven´t received our travel information yet, but AFS made a change. Now they won´t have orientation in Buenos Aires or Miami, we will spend a night in the bus from FSA to BA, pass the day in BA, take a plane that night, and arrive in Miami the next day, and from there go home. I don´t like that change, I liked the orientation and think that another meeting with all the exchange students will provide a nice close to the exchange. But anyway, that´s still a ways away.
As far as swimming goes, the pool at Don Bosco is officially closed for the season. We have weekend practice in a 50m indoor pool, and weekdays we are free. My friends and I are looking into getting one lane to ourselves three days a week to train in the afternoons, because we have an important meet coming up in late March. Apart from that I am working up to going for a run. One morning I actually set my alarm for 5am to go run, seeing as the early morning and late nights are the only times physically possible to go running because of the heat, but I woke up, wondered what in the world I was thinking the night before, and went back to sleep. But one day. It will happen.