A Great Experience in South Africa

This story is about the feelings I had in a Montessori school in South Africa. This wonderful school I went to is called Auburn House School. In that school there were very nice people and I felt like everyone wanted to be my friend. It made me feel so happy.

One of the nice people I met was Iman, she is a kind girl who is my best friend. I am writing about Iman because on the 10^th of April I was sitting on the playground and she sat next to me. Iman was very kind so I was kind back to her. One day me and one of my friends that I met on my first day (Haajir) walked over to Iman and asked her why she looked sad. She told us that some of her friends were not her friends anymore. I felt so bad that they weren’t her friends anymore so Haajir and I decided that we should do more things with Iman since she was all alone for at least three days. We then always worked with her or sat with her at lunch. I will always remember Iman because she is a really kind, loving and sweet friend!

On my first day of school I was very shy. Luckily, I knew the teachers so I thought that one of the teachers (Miss Cherry) would show me were to put my stuff. Instead, it was a girl named Bella who showed me where to put my stuff. She had lots of friends but I didn’t play with them because I felt very shy and didn’t know many of the kids she was playing with. So I decided that I would go sit on the steps by myself and wait. After awhile, I walked over to two girls one of them had braids (they call them plats in South Africa) and the other had a ponytail. They told me about the game they were playing. I became friends with them and started playing their game. It took me a couple of days to figure out what their names were. At first, I thought their names were Sydney and Taylor and then I thought their names were Sadhiv and Hacha but then I finally figured out their names were Haajir and Sadhiv. We all became BFFs (best friends forever) after that.

There is this language that we studied in class called Xhosa. One of my teachers, Miss Pili, teaches Xhosa. Xhosa is a native language to South Africa. It is actually a pretty fun language to learn. I liked learning Xhosa better than learning Afrikaans, which is another native language in South Africa. Some funny things that usually happened during Xhosa is that Miss Pili would always put funny things about one of the boys in my class on the board. One time she said he was dancing, singing and laughing. One time, Haajir and I were sitting down at reading time and reading a book about Xhosa words. We were trying to figure out what the word for fart was in Xhosa. We wanted to know because this same boy would always fart in class. No one in the whole class knew the word so we wanted to find out what the word was so that we could tell Miss Pili. The next day we did just that and we told Miss Pili what it was and she wrote down on the board and Haajir and I started laughing so hard while everyone else was looking puzzled.

The difference between the school I went to in Denver and the school I went to in South Africa is that back in USA after our teacher took attendance, we always had to sing The Pledge of a Allegiance but in the school we went to in South Africa we did not have to sing it. Another difference is that in Denver at the elementary school I went to there was only one grade in each classroom instead of three different grades in one classroom at Auburn House School. Some of the things that are the same are that we would always eat our lunch and then after that we would walk to the playground.

The five best words that describe South Africa are: friendly, amazing, best school, beautiful and lots of traffic. It is amazing because of Table Mountain. It is friendly because at the school I went to in Denver the cafeteria ladies were very strict and in South Africa there weren’t really cafeteria ladies who would boss you around. South Africa is beautiful because of all the sites you can see and all the nature with mountains. There is a lot of traffic every morning when we go to school and that is why it took 40-50 minutes to get there every morning. Some days I felt like I would vomit in the car because it was jerking around. The reason why my last word is the best school is because when I entered the school I felt really nervous and I felt like a lot of the kids were staring at me but then when I got to know it I felt like I could just walk around and be normal at the school.

On my last day of school I felt so sad and I remembered that I might never see my best friends or my teachers again. I was soo so so sad I even felt like crying. Since I came to South Africa I never wanted to leave but since I have I am glad I got the experience of being in the school.