One year in Colombia

Throughout my first year in Colombia I have had quite the experience. This year in Colombia has been interesting. It has had hard times and better ones. One thing I found annoying and frustrating was that the school here ended about two weeks after the school in the States. That means that all my friends would get out before me. We did have a longer Christmas break but the school year overall felt longer. Mid term exams and final exams are now something that we have to do in this school. In Hudsonville they did not have those so I was not used to the pressure when we did them. The mid term exams are a large part of your term 2 grade and can pull down the overall grade a lot. The finals are even worse. They got to the point where for French I was just trying to pass! If you don't pass a subject with the grade of all the terms and exams added up then you have to stay a couple days after school during the summer. I did not want to do that! School has been a challenge, and an adjustment. Also I have found it hard trying to learn Spanish this year while the school makes me take French. On top of that the teacher likes to teach us in Spanish, kind of hard to keep the languages in line. The soccer experience here has been bittersweet. The good thing was is that I made it onto the girls soccer team with my friend. We both played defense together and had a lot of fun. Our team ended up making it to the finals for the first time in the schools history. A lot of people came from the school to see the final game but sadly we lost. I wasn't to upset though because that was the farthest I have ever made it playing a sport. The bad part of my soccer experience here though was that I didn't really learn anything new. We thought when we came to Colombia that the soccer would be great, but I didn't get any decent coaching. Coming to Colombia its obvious that we would be learning a new language. Learning languages is not my strong spot. My teacher didn't help with that much either this year. We always spoke English in class, and she only took it seriously in the end of the year when someone started coming to the class to check what we were doing. Let's just hope that next year it will be a different learning experience in that area for me and that maybe by the time we leave here I will at least understand it! There have been lots of goods and bads this year, these just to name a few. Overall though I am enjoying my stay here. Every country is something totally new and exciting! Elena