Welcome to Dave Abeleven and his students at Miranda Lyceum, Paramaribo, Suriname

We are class 502 from the Mr. Dr. J.C. de Miranda Lyceum situated in the capital of Suriname named Paramaribo.

Something about our country:

Suriname is a republic situated in the north eastern part of South-America. The country shares its borders with Brazil in the south, French Guyana in the east and Guyana in the west and in the north the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname has a population of about 430.000 people and is the second smallest country on the continent. Our country has a tropical climate, which means it ís very hot like 30o C. Paramaribo is the capital.

We are a third world' country with somewhat of a bad economy. We are mostly part of the Caribbean. Suriname has the most diverse culture of the Caribbean. It consists of the Hindoe culture, the Creole-african culture, the
Javenese culture, the Bushnegroe culture, the Amerindian culture, the Chinese culture all of them integrated with each other, everyone having their own dialect. Although we have so many cultures we live peacefully side by side. Almost 80 % of the country ís area is covered with tropical rainforest. In 1998 our government declared a large part of our rainforest a nature reserve (about 10%) making it the largest nature reserve of rainforest in the world.

Our class is in the second year of senior high school (pre-university). There are about 18 girls and 4 boys in the class between the ages of 16-19. The subjects (in total 11) on our school time table are:

- Dutch
- English
- Spanish
- Mathematics
- History
- Sociology
- Economics
- Geography
- Gymnastics
- Drama
- Structures of our state

The Mr. Dr. J.C. de Miranda Lyceum is the largest senior high school in our country, consisting of about 680 students and 54 teachers. There are three levels (degrees) and 30 classes, with 36 classrooms. There is also a library with computer facility, a sport field, and three practice classrooms (biology, science and technology) Our school system is split into two streams. The social-sciences stream and the technological/biology ñ sciences stream (also called the S-stream), each of them having equal three levels. Our class is from the social sciences stream (also called Q-stream). For every subject we have a different teacher. Our spoken language is Dutch, which makes us the only Dutch speaking country of South America.

Our school begins at seven o'clock in the morning local time and ends at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. There are seven periods of 45 minutes and two breaks of a half an hour and a quarter of a hour. All in all it is a great school and as always sometimes a little bit not so great. For example we started the school year a month later because the teachers were on strike. Because of this all schools were closed and we could not follow any classes. It was a very hard time. Finally we have begun. We are looking forward to learn a lot of each other in this math project. Hope to hear from you soon.

Greetings from class 502 of the Mr. Dr. J.C. de Miranda Lyceum.