First days of School, Second Orientation, a Wedding, and more of the Chinese New Year.

My second and third weeks were perhaps just as rapid as my first, lot’s to cover!

My first few weeks at St. Johns hove gone quite well. St. Johns is quite an old school; the campus was first erected over 100 years ago in 1904 as a Catholic Church and School. However the school appears to have ceased being a Catholic The school is very proud of it’s alumni which include the current King and the current prime minister. The school building itself is quite large, but many portions are periodically gated off (Either singular rooms, a hallway, or even an entire floor). The school has many different faculties including a uniform store, a “Bookstore” (Sells School Supplies), two cafeterias, a deteriorating science garden, and a library . Each school day starts at around 7:20 where we have an assembly in the courtyard. During the assembly, various anthems are played and if any announcements are made. After the assembly students are dismissed by class to their rooms. Rather than give teachers a room, students are given a room and teachers rotate control of the room. School lets out at about 1:20 or 12:30 on Fridays and Saturdays. All students are required to join a house, a “stream” of subjects, an extracurricular organization, and partake in a sport, so school may stretch until 4:00.

After school on my first Friday I left to a two day AFS Orientation at the Mandarin Court hotel. We reviewed the essentials that we may or may have not forgotten at the first orientation, and went over some more topics as well. We had a great time during our downtime, and shared our experiences together.

I have gone to two weddings. The first was in a mosque with only a handful of people. Understanding what happened is hard because I couldn't understand what they were saying, but there was a part where a rather long oath had to be said in one breath. Mostly uneventful; but very interesting to experience. The second was like the first wedding on the first day, quite casual, dining and ceremony.

Later last week we also celebrated Chinese new year with a Singaporean family. This time we had some more a different selection of food (Unfortunately there were no Durian Pancakes). Something that I forgot to mention in my earlier post; at a Chinese New Year party there will be a nutty salad known as Yusheng served midway. Everyone gatherers around the salad and throws bits of the salad high up in the air for good luck (It also either mixes the salad quite nicely, or gets salad all over the table). This particular salad was vegetarian, but the last salad I ate had raw fish in it as well; which wasn’t bad at all.