I'm back with another let's talk! post. I think this will be a new thing on my blog where I tackle several everyday/ rare things and focus on my experience with them, as far as I can. if there are any themes you want me to talk about, just let me know in a comment and I will do my best.
Some of these toppics are going to be more lighthearted and other are going to be harder to talk about, especially for me.
This one isn't that hard though. Today I will be talking about my "high" school experiences.
Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (secondary school or high school):
The town where I did the last two years of primary school in Spain also offered the first two years of secondary school, something quite common in the countryside. So that was where my secondary school adventures began. It was not really a big change from primary school apart from the homework we got. I still had the same people in my class,and let me tell you, I was not happy with all of them but then again I guess everybody has at least one person they don't really like right? Well so did I, but I'm not going to go in detail about her, it's not worth it.
After my two first years it was time for me to leave the school I knew so well and go to a different one. It was a lot bigger and had people form various towns, that all came by bus. It took me 45 minutes to get to school. meaning I had to leave at 7 AM and came back at around 15:30, if we where lucky and the bus wasn't late. I made quite a few new friends at my new school, some with which I stilll keep in touch. of course I still had my friends from my old school, but made new once that I liked better. unfortunatly for me, this school was not perfect in any way. I had friends yes, but only about 3 or 4 I actually hung out with. Most of the people at the school of my age didn't really like me or my friends because we where foreigners. Especially some people in our class, becuase they where jealous. You see, I did my last two years of high school at a bilingual school so all my classes where in Spanish and English. As my friends and I all spoke english very good, we had an advantage, someting they didn't like. However it wasn't really fair as we had a bigger difficulty understanding Spanish, and not anybody could get into the bilingual classes you had to have a certain grade percentage, on all your subjects. So after enduring two years of being calles names and being ignored I decided that for my Bachillerato (A levels in england) I wanted to go somewhere else.
I chose to go to Malaga, the city where I played hockey, so I allready knew some girls my age, that where going to study bachillerato aswell. I decided to try and get in to the school they where in, called San Jose, it was a Catholic private school, but that wasn't the reason why I wanted to go or the fact it was the best school in the province. All I cared about was the fact my hockey friends went there, girls I got along with very good. Especially my friend Sandra (I talked about her in a previous blog post). We both wanted to do similar studies so hoped we would be placed in the same class, which we did. For two years. I recently graduated Bachillerato (2 weeks ago). And can say it where the two best years of secondary education I have had. Nobody cared I was dutch, sure they envied my english but weren't jealous as the kids at my old school where. Knowing Sandra and the other girls from my hockey team helped a lot with making friends, but even with out them I would have made new friends. I must admit I was extremly lucky with my class, there where only 21 students in our class, which allowed us to form a thight bond. The secretary of our school, just so happened to be our religion teacher (Yup we had that subject still). And we convinced him to leave all of us in one class for the following year. With only a few minor changes.
Now what you must understand about Bachillerato is, that all though it seems to be the exact same as english A-levels it is most certainly not. Instead of having only a handfull of chosen subjects, we have 11 the first year and 10 the second. These include 4 chosen subjects and 6/7 mandatory ones, these included Spanish, English, Religion,P.E,philosophy and many more. One of the mandatory subjects was a thing called Integrated Project, which is basically a project that lasts an entire year. The first year it had something to do with english and the second year it was learning tecniches in a laboratory. These projects where different for every class and the depended on the 4 subjects you chose. I chose Biology, Chemistry, Maths (yup I know). and science of the earth and the environment. After finishing these two years we had the possibility of doing Selectividad, which is a bunch of exams necesary to be admitted at university. Just your Bachillerato grades won't do, infact that is only about 60% of the final grade. So after studying our asses of for our finals, we have 2 more weeks of endless studying for our Selectividad, which consist in 6 exams of 6 different subjects. But enough about that no I will talk about my Graduation.
Graduation, It's the thing everybody dreams about from the first day of high school. Finally for me, after 6 years my true graduation arrived. I was nervous and extremly exited.
The venue was a small part of the big grounds my school has. I allready had the dress and hair and make up figured out. The only thing left was the actual act of graduating. Now in Spain we don't have a cap or robes we have to wear, we are allowed to wear whatever we want and generally this is a long dress for the girls and a suit for the boys. To prevent girls wearing the same dresses, we had made a whatsapp group trough which all photos of dresses where sent. We didn't have school on the day of graduation, just so we could prepare properly, or at least that's what my friends and I decided to do. I will include a couple of pictures from the night. Following the ceremony, a small group of my closest friends and I went to a nice restaurant in the harbor where we had a lovely dinner. Afterwards three of my friends came to my house where we watched Netflix all night.
Have a nice day/ night wherever you are.
XxSimonee
