Kool.. School

Kool is the main word for school in Estonian, or at least that is what I use, anyways.. As you might have guessed I started school today. The school system is so different here, it really is. As you know each student in America has their own personal schedule, but here it's not the case. You cannot choose if you take German, Russian, French -whatever. In Estonia you go until grade 9, then you apply to different schools to finish your high school career. And you don't have a personal schedule.. it depends on what grade you're in. In your grade you and your classmates are seperated into different classes. for instance 10a 10b 11a 11b 12a 12b.. you get the idea. At my school, Rapla Ühisgümnaasium, we're pretty small, so we have two classes per grade. I'm in 11H (basically 11A.. only H stands for Humanities, so we learn more languages than math and science :)) And students graduate at 12th grade, like in America, too.
Anyways today was a special day here in Estonia. Every school starts on the same day, usually on September 1rst. But we don't hop right into classes, no. Here we start the year with a ceremony, all ages attend. The school song started to play, which surprised me.. In America we have a really peppy song to cheer on the sports teams, here there isn't any school sports, so no need for peppiness. It was a pretty serious sounding song, on a cd, an orchestra was playing.. haha. It played twice, in the beginning and at the end of the ceremony when the flag was being walked in and out of the gym. So after the ceremony I had to find my homeroom class.
The school really surprised me. There are so many twists and turns, it's confusing! But I'm sure I'll figure it out by the end of the year.. Ha, hopefully.