French Tests

I woke up at 8:40 or so, expecting Zach not to be here because this was supposed to be his first day of school. But I looked in his room (his door was open) and he was there on his laptop as always. Hmm. I poured myself a bowl of Special K-like ceral and put a whole layer of thin banana slices over the top. Then I grabbed the pamphlet about the school and read it while eating outside. It was a nice day. After washing the dishes while listening to some Miles Davis, I turned on the laptop while my mom called the school. She told me Zach had gone to the school and the guy told him he wasn't on the list. So my mom called this person and they helped clarify it. He had done like the wrong tests or something. I dunno. So then she talked to our friend Helen, who was the woman who came over with her kids to help us with the school supplies. I was just on facebook and whatnot while all of that happened. My tests were at 1, so I had like a few hours. I wasn't that worried, but still had the "unknown" factor against me. I didn't know what would be on the written test, what it would be like, etc. But I was doing ok. I browsed bumper stickers for a while on facebook and then it got to be pretty close to 1. My mom had bought me an alarm clock, so I put the batteries in and set it. It was around 12:15 then. After realizing that, I started to go in "crap its soon" mode. My mom made me a smoothie, which I drank quickly, leaving white foam stripe above my lip. I washed that off and put on my shoes.
"Come on mom, we have to like go... now!" It was 12:26 and I didn't want to be late. My mom put on her shoes quickly and told me we were driving. I didn't want to kill any polar bears, but we would get there in a while if we walked.

As we approached the school, I noticed small clumps of teenagers hanging around the building. It was their lunch break, my mom said. Zach would have been with these people but he wasn't on the list.

We walked up to the outside office thing next to the gate entrance. The lady told us the French tests were in the College, which we could've figured out. So we walked down the yellow steps and walked toward this small building ahead of us. I could see some kids around my age waiting around here.
"Parlez vous Anglais, anybody...?" (Do you speak English) My mom inquired the two moms each with their daughter sitting down in the room. One of them, on the left, said yes and my mom asked what we were supposed to do. The lady said the person told them to just sit and wait for the teacher to call us. So I sat down on the empty chair while my mom sat on this low table. We waited for a while. The room was white, with two abstract art paintings on the wall. There was a small hallway to the right. I had my pencil case, cahier de bouillon (a book of grid paper), a ruler and a triangle to write right angles with. Then my mom asked the ladies again if I needed a passport. The other lady said yeah you have to have some form of identification. So then my mom had to drive back to our house to get my passport. It was like 12:47 or something, so she sort of had to hurry. I wasn't that worried.
After she left, a whole bunch of people came in. I recognized some of them from the English tests. Then the teacher person came in, rattling off some random stuff in French to someone. He was tall, had a slight potbelly, light hair and was clean-shaven. He looked almost German, or like that one character I forgot... ugh. He started saying names, or I assumed they were names because a kid would come up after each one and line up in the hallway. Crap. My mom wasn't here. The door opened a few times, and I'd look over, desperately looking for the curly black hair of my mom. She still wasn't here. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. I thought, hoping I didn't need the passport right away. And it'd still be nice to have my mom here because I noticed pretty much every other kid had a parent with them. Crap.
After a few names, I recognized mine and walked out from behind a parent to line up against the hallway. There were about 15 or so other kids, around my age. The guy was still saying names and then told us something about the schedule. Then I noticed my mom, and tried to catch her attention. I jutted out my chin and widened my eyes. After she quickly glanced through everyone, she finally caught my eye and came over. She held a black zipper pocket thing and handed it to me, telling me to be really careful. Yeah, I would, I told her. Her hand was held out for me to shake and she wished me good luck. I shook it and smiled at her.
The parents were sort of confused after he told them something about the schedule and asked him what he said. My mom came up to me in the line again and told me that apparently, if the parents understood right, I was testing straight through, not going home between them. Which sort of sucked. But they were only supposed to last till about 3:45, which wasn't too bad.
After the parents left, the teacher guy came through the line and told us, in French, to follow him. The school seemed small. Only like 2 floors I think. Walls were plain white and I didn't see any lockers. Bathrooms weren't marked and the doors had labels like "L 26". We walked for a little bit and then stopped in a pile while he called off names for the people going into "L 22". The other door, about a foot down the hallway was "L 24". My name wasn't called for the first one, so I went with him and some other kids into the farther one. This one had some posters on the walls and the desks were again in groups of two connected. I noticed an old newspaper clipping on the wall and I started trying to translate the French into English.
"Nous sommes" I knew "nous" meant "we", and I thought "sommes" meant something like "are" or "will". It said something about Allemange, which was Germany. Eventually I made it out to say "We are at war with Germany!" which made sense. I was proud of myself.
I sat down towards the back and put my stuff on the desk. There were a few windows I think on the left side.
The man said some stuff in French, and I caught that he wanted us to have a "stylo" (pen) with ink, not a pencil. I brought out my erasable pen and got ready for the test. He passed out paper and told us about the test. There was a cover sheet, which I filled out with my name, date/place of birth and all that. It had the sections in French, but English translations in parenthesis. The test was only 2 pages and seemed ok. The guy wrote on the board that we had 45 minutes for both parts. He knew a lot of English so it was pretty easy to understand him.
I read the directions of the first part, not even having a nervous stomach or shaky hands. The directions were in French but I think it said something like, "It's your first time in France. Something something something... have a journal, write about something" or something. Then it had 5 pictures of a taxi, a hotel bed, French cheese, a sandwich and a camera. I thought it said something about describing the pictures or something, and how it relates to my trip, so I started out with "Le taxi est jaune" which meant the taxi is yellow. Ha. I couldn't really think of how to describe or whatever the other pictures, so I read the directions for the second part. I read a letter that said something like "I am spending vacation in Paris and we'll see churches, the Eiffel Tower, etc. Tell me if you can come so I can make reservations. From Phillipe". And then I thought that the directions said to reply to Phillipe, saying I couldn't come and giving reasons why. My letter was quite pathetic. I just said, "I'm sorry but I can't accept your invitation. I am having vacation in the United States. I know that Paris is very, very good and the U.S. is very, very, very good. Again, I am sorry. I am having fun in the U.S. Have fun in Paris! Have a good vacation!" I know, sad, isn't it? But I knew very little phrases so it was pretty hard. I noticed it had to be 60-80 words, so I counted it and it was around 70. Good. In between the tests, the guy came around and took my passport. After writing down some stuff, he gave it back to me, saying "Merci, Amelia" I just nodded.
So then I went back to the first part. I decided to just describe how the pictures revolve in my day. So I said, "After the taxi, I go to my hotel. It is comfortable. After the hotel, I eat French cheese. It's very very good! I eat the sandwich with French cheese. It is very good! The cheese is for breakfast and the sandwich is for lunch. After breakfast and lunch, I take pictures of my sandwich, the cheese and the hotel for you. France is very good!" Yeah. Pathetic. But I actually had some fun with the test in a way. Again, I knew very few phrases and just did what I could. I remembered the guy saying that if we didn't understand, we just left it blank. But I wasn't giving up that easy. I tried. I really did.
I counted my words and wrote it down, erasing some because it was too long. I pivoted my head around to check out the other students. Their heads were all bent down, writing on the test. After looking around at the posters they had up, the teacher said we had 5 minutes left. I counted my words again just to be safe and capped my pen. He then collected the tests and said something in French that left us all sort of confuzzled. I looked around at the other kids with a confused expression on, trying to get someone to tell me what the heck he just said. Eventually he said a word I understood, "chaise". Chairs. We brought out our chairs into the hallway then and sat down. The kids in the other room also came out and the teachers called a few kids to take the oral test. I just sat there, hoping I'd get to do my oral test soon.
But that was not the case. As I looked around at the school, it was never my turn it seemed. I was bored. It was quiet. Quiet except for this Asian guy talking to his sister quietly, two brothers with cool hair laughing amongst themselves (they spoke English too) and when a teacher would come out to ask for someone. And then kids occasionally walked past us, yelling or whatever. It was quite boring.
Then it was 3:05; I had been sitting there for an hour. I wasn't nervous or nothing, I just wanted to have my turn for whatever. The brothers with the cool hair then started drawing on each other's skin with the rulers and whatnot. Then one of them was bending over, laughing hysterically. I glanced over a few times and couldn't help but smile myself.
I didn't talk to the other kids. There were maybe 20-25 or so. Some of them took out their passports to look at. The guy next to me on my right was from Nigeria. The guy on my left was from Canada. His picture didn't look like him hardly at all. Weird. Earlier I had seen a girl with a New Zealand one. Cool. I brought mine out eventually.
My picture wasn't the best. But it wasn't too bad. Then all of a sudden it smelled like apples. I put my passport back and stared at the floor. Suddenly I remembered my friends who were at Slauson with their first day of school. I heard a teacher's voice in my head saying, "Well welcome to 8th grade! You guys are finally the big cheese, aren't you?" I was mad. I didn't want to be here. I want to do band. I did two hard years of Slauson and I don't get a ceremony. I felt like clenching my fists. I was so mad. This sucked. This was so stupid. Who gives a crap about a "good opportunity"? I had a great opportunity to have fun with my friends at Slauson! I had an awesome opportunity to study trumpet more! This. Sucks.
Another hour passed. I still wasn't called. The one male teacher had let these two girls home after they did their math and oral test. I so envied them. I had been waiting 2 hours. Finally, FINALLY the guy called my name. I got up and sat down across from his desk, putting my stuff down. Apparently I looked nervous, because he told me to take a deep breath and relax several times throughout the test, which I did. I didn't feel too nervous, I was just annoyed. He asked me what my name was, where I was from and all that. I understood most of the questions, and it helped that he used English almost more than half the time. He was surprised I played ice hockey, because he thought it was too tough for girls. Man, I get that a lot. He also thought Zach's name was Isaac, but I corrected it. It was pretty easy. He thought I looked nervous a lot because he wanted me to take deep breaths a lot. Then he said something like, "Just relax, you know. We are not like-" he glared and clenched his fists together, as if to demonstrate a strict or unpleasant environment. I was relieved. "Life is... life is well, you know? Just relax." He seemed pretty nice. He asked me what I didn't like about school, and I said tests. I hate tests. He also asked what my mom did for her job, and I told him she wrote plays. He put on this very suprised expression and made quite a face. I felt like laughing.
At the end he told me I was going to be in the beginning French class and might have him as a teacher. He said there wasn't any shame being in the beginning class, 'cause like everybody has to start there. I was sort of surprised, but not necessarily upset. I mean, I did only know pretty much the basics. But that test didn't really test didn't seem that well-thought out to test someone's French ability. But whatever. After I closed the door I sat back down in the hallway, holding back a smile. I was happy for some reason.
I waited for another half an hour or so, until we all re-located to down the hall a little bit. He asked us to help put back the chairs and then he thanked us. I was getting hungry. The new place we waited at didn't have chairs, so I just sat on the floor with the remaining kids, about 10. There were lots of kids running through the halls every few minutes, and an annoying bell went off every hour or so.
After a little bit of waiting, while they called in 2 kids at a time, some parents came. The dad for the brothers with cool hair came and sat down in front of them. I was sitting right next to them, so I listened in to their conversation. The one brother had done the same thing I did for part one of the test; describing the pictures. But then the other boy told him those were just examples. Crap. So I had pretty much done it wrong. Maybe I failed. I hope not. But the guy said I was in the beginner's class, so I wasn't too bad. After a while the dad left. The teachers for the math test came out once in a while to tell the loud kids to shut up. They were trying to like climb the wall or something. Weird.
At 4:55 or around there I finally got my turn to take the test. I walked in the room, ready to be done with this whole thing. I sat down next to a lady and she wrote out a few problems in my bouillon. My brain had like forgotten a bunch of stuff so I was slow. I solved basic negative/positive problems, simplified fractions and did some geometry. I was so pathetic. I had lots of trouble simplifying this one fraction, and had forgotten that 12 went into 36. Ugh. I felt like an idiot. But I survived. I sort of sucked at geometry, because I forgot the names for the triangles. But whatever. Finally, finally I was done with everything. She told me to just wait for the school to tell me to come in, and I had gotten in to 4eme, the class I was applying for, which was good. I said bye and thanks and hurried out of that place. I had to go to the bathroom really bad. I had been needing to go for a few hours. I found my way back to the front door and found an open room with a sink. I thought it was a bathroom, but the sign said something that probably meant we couldn't use it. Crap. So I just ran up the yellow steps, walked past the clumps of high school students talking, then started running.
I ran because I could. I ran because I just wanted to frickin' get to my frickin' home. I just wanted to get out of that place, to go to the bathroom, eat some food and lie down. I wanted to go home. I had been there 4 hours. Taking stupid tests. I wanted to go back to Ann Arbor, too. I didn't stop running. I dropped my ruler and triangle by accident and had to stop to pick it up, though. I needed to go to the bathroom so bad I almost considered going behind a bush or something. God. I pushed the door buzzer and waited for a minute until my mother opened the door. I ran up the stairs, just wanting to get home. I dropped my stuff down somewhere and raced to the bathroom. Aah. Then I told my mom about the tests. And got on the computer quick so I could blog about it while I still remembered it. For a second I thought people might be on chat, but then they were at school. It's right now 1pm, so you guys probably had lunch. Tell me about your first day and stuff, guys. I just told you about mine. It was a long day.

After today, I felt like I could take on almost everything.