Educación

So as I've already mentioned, Spanish schools aren't as competative as I'm accustomed. But here in Andalucía, the level is even lower.

I had noticed that one of my friends has repeated. Twice. I then asked another friend of mine how many people in our class is repeating a year.

She counted.

Eight. Out of twenty-four. That's a third of my class. I actually started to cry.

The thing is, I go to the BEST school in the area. And some of the other classes in the school have rates up to 50% of the kids repeating.

It's hard to explain, but this made me so sad. Education is so important to me, and to see such blatant failure of the educational system made me so angry at the people in charge that do nothing, the parents that don't encourage education, and so sad for my classmates that are losing out on opportunities.

I didn't really realize how lucky I am to attend the school in the States that I do. Really really lucky.

But enough of that stuff...

So now it's CARNAVAL SEASON!!! Currently, in El Teatro de Falla, there are all these theatre groups singing original compositions in a competition. It last a couple weeks, and the finals are coming up. After the competition, is the week of partying and dressing up and all that jazz.

Of course, our school this year decided to screw us over and only give us one day of the week off. Not that they expect anyone to come. A flyer was sent out, reminding everyone that we don't have Carnaval off, but by the tome of the flyer, you could tell it was more of a suplication than a mandation. (I wonder if those are words in English...I keep translating from Spanish to English and sometimes it doesn't work too hot)

And now another topic completelyyyy.

So as anyone that has taken Spanish 101 should know (you can skip this part, Frenchies) there are two forms of you singular: Tú, and Usted, the prior being informal, and the latter being formal.

In theory, which is of course what we're taught, tú is used between children with eachother, family, friends, and Gods, and Usted is used between children with adults that aren't family members, strangers, and coworkers.
In practice however, this is completely different.
Almost all my teachers refer to me as usted, whilst I can call them tú if I please. HOWEVER,
some teachers want to be called usted, to show respect, but others want to be call tú, to show familiarity and warmth. Head desk.
As my friend Rubén has told me, Usted, though technically more polite, can have a very rude implication. It can easily implciate I DON'T LIKE YOU AND DON'T REALLY WANT TO TALK TO YOU, YOU ARE NOT MY FRIEND
Which just shows how well we've been taught in school.