The REAL last day of school

It's Saturday again, and Megan just made us some coffee. Sounds like a recipe for a new blog.

This week at school was quite a rollercoaster ride. All the students that had failed their classes during the year had to come to school this week to take an exam for each class they failed. There was some serious cramming going on. I think the record for the most failed classes was 7 in high school, and 12 in middle school. If the student passes their recuperation exam(s), they bypass going to summer school and head on to the next year. But if a student fails more than 3 recuperation exams, they have to repeat the entire year. Obviously, there was a lot riding on just a few exams for some students, which led to a rather emotional week. Kind of the whole "Thrill of victory, agony of defeat" thing happening over and over each day. As a result, some of the students that failed our recuperation exams began to use the Fritz last name as a kind of curse word. For example: Q: Whose exam did you fail? A: FRITZ!!!

We tried our best to console the students that didn't pass, but for some it was difficult to feel sorry for when they could've easily passed if they had actually put in some effort during the school year. Hopefully their recuperation experiences will stick in their long-term memories and motivate them to work harder next year.

Yesterday, the school had its official closing ceremonies with an assembly that gathered all the students and parents in the auditorium to award the best students with medals and certificates. It ended with all the teachers singing a song together on stage, and I had been nominated to sing one of the verses solo. The funny thing was that after I finished singing my part, everyone started cheering - probably because they were amazed to hear me sing in spanish without a copious amount of errors!

If you haven't noticed, the World Cup started yesterday with Germany beating Costa Rica 4-2. Everyone down here is psyched for non-stop soccer for the next few weeks, and I have to admit that I'm getting sucked into it too. Time to check out the England vs. Paraguay game!