Day 24

One building of my school

Today was my first day of school, but it wasn’t actually school. We just sat in the classroom for about an hour while the teachers went over the basics, then we went home. At first I was absolutely terrified. When I walked into the classroom my heart was beating soo loud and my mouth was dry. I walked up to the teacher and said “Jag är utbytesstudent” (I am an exchange student) which is something that I’ve said probably a hundred times in the past three days. I told them the basics in Swedish like, Jag kommer från USA, jag heter Danni, and they asked basic questions in Swedish which I replied to in Swedish. Things like, how long have you been here? Tre veckor. Vad spelar du? Jag spelar cello. Then I sat down and the teachers started talking. It was all in Swedish but I was actually able to understand most of it. They called roll, then had the three new students introduce themselves, and then they introduced me. People seemed interested, but no one really made an effort to talk to me. Then the teachers started talking about school stuff, and I started understanding less and less. After about an hour they finished, and one of the teachers was nice enough to stay behind and explain what had happened to me so I knew when to show up tomorrow and such. A couple of kids introduced themselves to me, but no conversation went past ‘where in the US are you from?’ I’ve noticed that a lot of people ask that question, but unless you say New York, California, Florida or Texas, they have no idea where that is. When I left school I was in a bad mood because I was stressed and upset that I didn’t understand anything, so I took the tram home and played my cello for a couple of hours.