4. First time at Davis High

[August 2015]

Walking into Davis High School for the first time was like entering a hospital, or a clinic rather. A very new, very modern and very well-equipped clinic. Well, two of these features are correct. The school is indeed brand new and it is well-equipped. 

A. C. Davis High School. One of two high school belonging to Yakima School District, capable of holding something around 2400 students and more than 200 staff members. It's been renovated for last couple years and the fall I am to become a student there, the renovation is to be completed. 

I walk into the school and find a lot of checks, as if it was a post office or a ticket office at the train station. Are we surely in a school? What are all these windows here for? Following my host mum, I walk toward a check that says "Registrar Office." There's two ladies who welcome me loudly and enthusiastically, wide smiles stretching on their faces. And once I'm introduced as an exchange student, the interests gets even bigger. It turns out, the school already owns the documentation that was attached to my application, so the staff of Davis High already knows who I am. 

I am introduced to the reality of Davis High School of which I cannot understand a thing. They are talking about things such as ASB, Seniors, classes, grades, counselors, and more; the vocabulary that isn't strange to me whatsoever, but which apparently has a whole different context associated with the school life. I don't understand what it means that I'm going to be a "Senior", nor do I know what would I need an "ASB" for. What is it anyway?

The registrars mention picking classes and handle me a long list of courses that can be picked. It will be my choice to decide which of them I would like to attend in the upcoming school year. 

In a week or so, shortly before the school year officially opens, I will be required to attend Freshman Orientation. This is the first thing I know more or less what to expect from, for the "Freshmen" surely means the people who are fresh to the school, and the purpose of an orientation is to explain what is what, who is who and how to get around. 

Just after that first visit to Davis High School, which lasted no more than twenty minutes, my head is overloaded with tons of new information, much of which don't tell me a thing. I'm overwhelmed to realize how much I will have to learn, and it won't be limited to learning the language. I am to learn a whole different schooling reality, a reality which seems to be strange to me in its every aspect.