Recap

It has been a busy two weeks, and somehow I never got around to writing on my blog. I was going to to it over the weekend, but someone switched the wifi to a different network on me. To be fair, when we figured out it was him, he gave me the password.

Classes have been going very well, at least as well as can be expected. Physics is still incomprehensible, and I had to take a test in it yesterday. The test was in English, but I don't understand the underlying concepts, so it will be a terrible grade. However, according to the teacher, the test only counts for exchange students if we do well. I answered half the questions, the ones that were similar to Chemistry, and wrote "Ma ei tea.", I don't know, for the other half. I also wrote a border of sentences saying "Ma ei saa aru füüsika." which is how I thought you said I don't understand physics, but it should have been "Ma ei saa füüsikast aru." The Estonian student I was sharing the desk with kept looking over at my paper and laughing. The only good part of Physics is that it gives me the opportunity to learn some words in Estonian as I struggle to translate the questions.

Maths is likewise hard, even though the teacher has pulled out books in English for us. The explanations are in Estonian, and the math is really quite hard. It turns out that the class group we're in, 11a, is the eleventh grade group that attends the most difficult classes. I can do a lot of it up to the point where it slips beyond my comprehension.

English class is the best. I have both books I need for the class and the excercises are pretty easy, if sometimes hard to comprehend. It is the only class that gives homework so homework isn't much of a hardship. Usually in class the teacher assigns a bunch of paired exercises and some discussions in pairs. My desk mate and I usually do the first one or two before one sends us in a completely different direction and we start to ignore the class work and just speak in English about something completely unrelated. The teacher doesn't mind because it is in English, and the only thing she doesn't like taking place in her class is speech in Estonian. So yesterday, my desk mate and I spent almost the whole lesson discussing TV shows, and the two girls in front of us turned around at one point and joined in.

Today in English we had a test. I took it and found it pretty easy, except for the translating part and remembering which words we studied that she was looking for.

In drama, the teacher speaks almost no English. Fortunately, there are a bunch of people who are good enough to explain the activity or task. It has been fun so far and interesting to be sure. Yesterday we had to teach a partner a short poem, which they then had to recite before everyone. I taught my partner, Brittney, one in English, but when it was my turn to memorize, the teacher had run out of English poems, and I had to learn one in Estonian instead. Of course, the poem had to be the s card, which meant that nearly every word started with s and contained at least three per word. It sounded like a bunch of hissing, and I'm fairly sure that I butchered the pronounciation.

In Estonian we have been learning a lot of vocabulary, and helpful phrases. And some less helpful ones, such as "I'm single". We have a test in this class tomorrow. It has been a fun class so far and quite helpful, although I can't wait to move on to verbs, which I really need.

In PE we have been doing a lot of running, two laps as a warmup, and sometimes more, such as relay races and timed sprints. The rest of the time we have been doing sports, such as Estonian baseball, much like baseball that I played in hockey practice when I was little, ultimate frisbee, and football. We played football today, and I ended up as goalie. My team won two to one.

In History, we have started with the ice age and moved through to the Bronze Age. Every week one of us has to prepare a short presentation on part of our country's history. I went first and presented last week. My was on the various folk heroes of the US that appeared during the 19th century during westward expansion. The teacher loved it and gave me a five on it, which is the highest possible grade. Erick was supposed to do his today, but we spent the whole period watching the movie 10 000 BC, which is a very good movie.