My School- Schedules

School here in the Netherlands is rather different than back in the States. The school I attend here is called Gymnasium Felisenum. There are about 700 students that go there. It is a little smaller than what I am used to. I am placed in the fourth grade here, which sounds strange since I would be in the 11th grade back home. The courses I take are History, Math, Geography, French, Drawing, Economics, English, and Gym. That is a rather small schedule and I only have 22 hours of school in a week. To me the scheduling is one of the biggest differences. At my school back home everyone starts school at the same time 8:00 am. We have a homeroom then go to our classes, with only one break, being lunch. Then we are all done with our classes at 3:10 pm. We also have 7 periods in a day and we have the same classes everyday at the same time.
At my school here in the Netherlands almost everyone's schedules could be different. You can choose your own classes once you are in the fouth grade I believe. Here people start with classes at different times of the day and end at different times of the day. Some days people may only have 2-3 classes and other days they might have 7-8. There are 8 class periods at school here. With my schedule I start at 8:30 am on Monday, Tuesday and Friday, but on Wednesday I don't have my first class until 11:15 am!! Then sometimes in your schedule you have a period with no class at all so you can just hang out in the school or you can leave the school and do something. I was really not used to this sort of system when I first came here. There are also 3 breaks during the day that everyone has. One in the morning, noon, and afternoon. The longest is 20 minutes. These are the times that you can eat since almost everyone brings there own food. The school dosent't have a typical cafeteria like schools in the United States. It just has a little cantina where you can buy a sandwich or drink.
Hopefully this helps you understand about my school here. At least the schedule.
I personally think that it is better in America. I think because first that is what I'm used to, but also because I think that all of the breaks during the day are useless. At first I think most kids would like them, but after a while they get boring and they just make the day longer.