AC's First Impressions

Ok, these are my impressions of my first few weeks here.

So far I like it ok, I mean it’s not awful or anything and the weather isn’t that bad yet, all though it did rain for the first time today, woohoo! I really like our house, except that I have to go up 40 stairs to get to my room ughh! but the view is awesome! I can see the whole valley, the harbor and across the sea (on a clear day u can see Scotland!). It’s really pretty. Julieanne and I share the third floor all by ourselves! I feel kind of separated from everybody else sometimes but I like the new privacy. Julieanne and I have already become a lot closer as sisters. We stay up for hours talking about our days and the new people we’ve met and our interesting experiences. For example in school, they don’t write in pencil at all, everything is done in pen. So me and Julieanne who have been taught to primarily write in pencil have been given some pretty strange looks. In fact, Julieanne got “taught off” for it (that means the teacher was not happy with her “elementary behavior” so he talked to her about it and told her that if she was caught writing in pencil again she would get detention! harsh!) So the house is great and the town is nice too, so far my favorite part about the town is the wharf/harbor. I love going down there, it’s so pretty.

School is fine so far, I have made two good friends who I really like. They aren’t Christians but I like their personalities a lot. Their names are mollie- I cant spell her last name (Isla Frost-Benington, or something like that). Isla lives in Muncaster castle (it’s a real castle too, look it up on line, http://www.muncaster.co.uk/). Everybody gets on to me about the way I say things and the phrases I use and stuff like that. For example, I say trash can they say bin, I say eraser they say rubber, I say yall and they don’t say anything like that, I say potayto they say potaughto (u get what I mean), I say white-out they say tipp-ecks (I don’t get that one either?), I say aluminum they say aluminium. The list goes on and on. But my day is filled with snickers and questions about America and about the way I say things. They think that I am the American expert, even the teachers refer to me whenever something about America is mentioned. My class is fairly small, there are only about 40 kids in my whole grade! Most of them are guys but all the guys are really immature. For some strange reason I got put in the top set for every subject! I don’t know how I did that! (They have sets for each subject and set 1 is the highest, there are usually 3). I'm in biology, chemistry (yikes!), physics (double yikes!!), English, maths,(they combine all their math classes into one and split up all their sciences! strange) history (that teacher really doesn’t like me), music (really boring we don’t even play our instruments! we just sit and listen to the guy talk about sound waves and junk like that! and he smells like “smoke” all the time and he has really bad teeth!), and Spanish. That’s a lot of classes! Also we have morning break which is tea and cakes, then we have lunch which is always really good and then we have a break after school before our afternoon activities which lasts 'till about 5:30. I really like how they give out the homework or “prep”. You have assigned days for prep in each subject so that you only have 3 “preps” each day! I like that method allot better! So that’s school in a nut shell, ohhh! I forgot about our uniforms! yay~! We have a school uniform which is black tights, black heels,”(ouch!) a kilt, a white blouse and a navy blue blazer and a tie, which I finally tied all by myself today! Also we have to always wear our hair back, boohoo! There’s also our games “kit” or uniform, it’s a navy blue short skirt, a light blue colored shirt and bright blue socks that go all the way up and over your shin gaurds, sounds lovely right! But wait! it gets even better. I have to do CCF, which is caddete something something. Basically its training for the army! It's hilarious, I have to wear army green pants that are about 5 sizes to big for me with a thick army green belt that doesn’t stay buckled so my pants are always falling down, black shiny laced up army boots which I tuck my pants into, an army green shirt that again is 3 sizes to big and last but not least an army green berett that you wear tilted on your head with you're hair in a bun. It's quite attractive actually! ha! so that’s a summary of school. Sounds pretty great!

God is good and I still have my family! They are what get me through the day, seeing Julieanne’s bright and forever smiling face always perks me up and hearing about nathan’s constant success is always encouraging... thanx for praying for him. Mom and I have had a lot of “slap happy” moments where we just start laughing so hard that we start to cry! And its about things that aren’t really even that funny, we are just glad to be together. So that’s encouraging thanks again for all your prayers, keep it up!

I luv all of u and miss u dearly,

Anna Catherine