How School's First Day went for an Inverted Frog

Well, since I only have one post here so far, and Melda's gotten two up since that one, I feel obligated to post another. Therefore, I shall do it on my first day of school, since I got the idea for it even before I saw Melda's.

[Take a deep breath!]

Well, since I am, as a matter of course, consistently left out of the loop, I actually only had my classes confirmed this morning, which happened to be my first day of school. So far, the schedule is much easier than last year's, with only Geometry, Physics, English, Spanish, Bible, the Humanities, and Latin so far. Perhaps I'll find out that I'm taking other classes eventually, which would be kind of cool, because I feel like I'm getting off easy with so few classes.

Anyways, this morning started out with Bible, which was interesting. My mom happens to be teaching it (as there's actually only her and another person lined up as teachers for my awesome little school--BERC), and I'm not sure what exactly inspired her choice of scripture, but we went over Ecclesiastes 3 and then Joshua 1: 8-9.

The passage in Ecclesiastes had several cool points, though one of them is a frequently recurring one throughout the book. The first one is right at the start of the chapter, and it mentions how there is a time for everything. It's really actually kind of comforting to know that there is a time for everything. Things don't need to be rushed (well, most of the time), and whatever you do, there's a time specifically for it. I, of course, don't remember all of the little details that change what I'm saying from being confusing into making sense, but I'm sure you get some of what I'm saying. If not, just go read Ecclesiastes 3 and then extrapolate.

The second cool thing is that Solomon says there that "Whatever is has been, and what will be has been before." Naturally, we can all draw our own conclusions from that, but what I drew from it was that whatever decisions we make or actions that we do, we're not the first ones who are experiencing a situation like that. Granted, the chances are pretty slim that someone else was in exactly that same situation at one point or another, but other people have experienced similar situations, and all it takes is some looking to find what happened (sometimes). It's kind of comforting to know that you're not blazing a trail in some aspect of life--people aren't going to be thinking back to you as the cause of some catastrophic event something--you're not at the root of the problem or the....lack thereof, I guess.

And the last cool thing that struck me while reading in Ecclesiastes was that at the end of the chapter, Solomon says that he thinks that there is nothing better for people than to enjoy their work, because thinking ahead or behind is depressing (again, that was the conclusion that I came to). If people come from dust and then they return to dust when they die, etc., then what's the point of living? My twin's Bible had a cool little footnote that mentioned that Solomon is pointing out what life without God is--there is nothing to look forward to except 'returning to dust'. For us as Christians, though, what we do on earth in these bodies that represent us in the corporeal world, might have a huge impact, and it might not, but when we die, we're going to a better place. We have something to look forward to. That's just encouraging, in my opinion.

And then in Joshua 1:8-9, it's God talking to Joshua, with some very encouraging words.

"Study this the Book of the Law continually. Meditate on it day and night that you may be sure to obey all that is written in it. Only then will you succeed. I command you--be strong and courageous. Do not be anxious or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." - Joshua 1:8-9

To me, that last bit is really, really encouraging. It's more than just a little nice to know that wherever I go, and whatever I do, God's there watching out for me, and just keeping me company.


So, that was just what I got from our discussion in Bible class. My next class was Geometry, and our teacher is Croatian, and she actually doesn't speak super-fantastic English. It was her first time teaching Geometry, and none of us have taken it before. Of course, this being just the first day, we didn't do much more than the whole 'introduction-to-Geometry' thing, but we also did the first two lessons, and it looks pathetically easy.

We had Physics after that, kind of. Our teacher had to go to an appointment of some sort, so she really just gave us the intro and our assignment. Naturally, that made us very happy. Still, it looks to be easy, though I'd rather do another Biology-associated class that involves less math, since I don't really enjoy mathematics very much in comparison.

After that, we had lunch. ^_^ I love lunch. Unfortunately, I only had two sandwiches and a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew which was naturally shared with others. So now I like supper more, because it's a bigger meal.

And then, we had an hour of nothing while my mom taught Physical Science to our Junior High group. Naturally, we did our Physics homework during that time.

Unfortunately, after the hour of nothing, we had two hours of something. The Humanities. It's with Gileskirk Curriculum, and my mom originally called it our History class, but it's much more than just History. It's like History, Literature, Philosophy, Theology, Civics, and maybe a few more things all in one. O_O The books-to-read list is something over 100 books, probably closer to 150+, so of course we're not going to get them all during the semester, which is fine because a lot of them are Supplementary materials. If we were just reading and writing book reports for them while also studying the History, it would be fine, but we'll also be looking for examples of the philosophy/culture of the time in the books (and more, but I don't exactly know what), doing more stuff outside of reading (lots of writing and long projects and stuff), along with taking notes. >_< So I'm going to be trying to split my attention between writing on paper (which I don't enjoy) and listening to a lecture (which I like even less). So this class looks at once to be both the most interesting and the biggest challenge, though not for the reasons my mom thinks it will be.

Tomorrow I'm going to have Spanish, English, and Latin. For some reason, all of my Language classes are on the same day. I'm still looking forward to it more than I am to my next Humanities class.


Ooh--it occurred to me that I didn't really explain my scholastic situation. I'm a highschooler, and a Missionary Kid. Now, the only two English-speaking schools here where I live are the British School and something called QSI. I don't remember which one had it's price mentioned by my mom, but the tuition cost for one school year is something around $13,000 at one and slightly less at the other, for each student. Naturally, we can't really afford that. Now my sisters and I had been homeschooled all of our lives, and we coped with it just fine, but several other missionary familys ended up having educational problems, so they left for the USA. Because nobody could really afford the English-speaking schools here, my mom ended up setting up something known as BERC--the Bratislava Educational Resource Center. I like it much. She's the administrator, and she also teaches several classes. We've had some people come in specifically to teach, but it's frequently been volunteer work. This year, another missionary wife is teaching Physics and Geometry, so my mom is now only teaching English, Physical Science, Transition Mathematics, Bible, the Humanities, and possibly Spanish and/or Latin as well. Just a 'small' workload. Now, BERC was actually intended originally for MKs (Missionary Kids), but my mom made it available for non-MKs as well (though it still is a Christian school). However, a lot of the students were already in late highschool, so we had several graduate this last year. Others only attend for a few classes, and only a very few attend all the time--myself, my twin sister, and two others, one of whom is in Junior High. We would all like to have more, but some of the missionary families still want to homeschool their kids in a few classes, so we only have the four of us as full-time students. Later this semester, though, a few new families are moving to town and their students will be attending full-time as well, so that's encouraging.

Anyways, that's my scholastic situation right now, which is at once both enjoyable and somewhat easy. However, the combination is prime for pleasure-reading and browsing the internet, so I'm content. ^_^