Yay, a TL;DR post!
-Do you have school uniforms? We didn't at my high school, or any other school in the country that I've gone to (6 schools total). The only schools in my city that have uniforms are the parochial schools...but I think their uniforms were just things like 'polo shirt in (insert the school's colors here) and slacks in either black or tan'. I think those uniforms are boring; if more American schools had uniforms like Japanese schools (who sometimes hire professional designers to make their school uniforms as cute and fashionable as possible), then it wouldn't be so bad. (I've seen some pretty cute school uniforms in malls in southern California, though.)
-How strict are the teachers? It really depends on the teacher. Most of mine in high school were pretty easy going. I had a few teachers who was very strict when it came to our homework. My Geometry teacher wouldn't accept assignments on paper that had been ripped out of a spiral-bound notebook (we had a healthy supply of scissors in his classroom for cutting off the 'frizzies'). My Genetics/Animal Behavior teacher wouldn't hesitate to give us a D on our portfolio checks if we were missing an assignment. I had a lengthy debate with him in the middle of class over it.
-What classes do you take in elementary/secondary schooling? In middle school (what would be the first half of secondary school in British-style systems; our 6-8 grades are about equivalent to years 1-3), the curriculum is very rigid; you have the option of taking maybe one or two elective classes (usually a music class or some sort of craft; woodworking or art or cooking) outside your regular core classes (science, math, social studies, english). We had 6 or 7 classes a day in middle school
At my high school (grades 9-12/years 4-7), we only had 4 classes a day (block scheduling; each class is 90 minutes long), and had to pass a certain number of required classes and get 220 credit hours to graduate. On our system, one could easily obtain over 300 hours (I finished with 307.5 credit hours), so that wasn't difficult. It was just a way of ensuring that you took the required number of 'hours' for each department (for example, you need 15 hours of art classes, 30 hours of English classes, 20 hours of math, 15 hours of science, 25 hours of history, etc.). However, this actually allows for a lot of schedule customization.
Tiny font explanation: Our schedule plans that we filled out when registering for classes was a 4x4 grid, instead of a list of 7 slots. Each class would take either one or two 'blocks' on the grid depending on how long the class was. A class like English would take a whole year at other schools, but at ours, only took half a year (2 terms/'blocks'; 1 semester at other schools). So you could take English and Science both in block 1, just at different times in the year (English in the fall, Science in the spring) and still have 12 empty 'blocks' available. You could also do something like take a Freshman Math class in the fall, and Sophomore Math in the spring, and then not have to take any more Math all throughout high school. I chose my high school because it had this schedule system; you can eliminate the classes you don't like really early on, and take a wide variety of classes that interest you. (For example, I took 6 years of foreign language classes, 5 years of science classes, 4 years of math, about 4-5 years of varying English classes (I dropped out of one class halfway through and started up a new one), 5 years of history classes, the list goes on.) Because of our schedule, our school had some really, REALLY advanced classes on the roster (AP Calculus Diff; Advanced Computer Languages, AP Advanced Physics, Fundamentals of Health Careers (you could earn a CNA license after completing that class), College Accounting, a 6th year of Spanish, a whole slew of AP classes) and some classes that sound really off the wall (History of the Civil Rights Movement, Forensic Science, Triathletic Training, Music Lyric Study & Analysis, Literature of the Holocaust, Sports Literature, Promotional Marketing, Latin, etc.).
So really, there was hardly any limit to what classes you can take. XDD
-Rules? Policies? No hats, no gum, no spaghetti straps...we recently had rules put in place regarding school dances; no bumping, no grinding, no 'back to front' dancing, etc. We all had a pretty good laugh over those rules, since the DJs aren't going to stop playing 'grinding' music at school dances; slow-dancing to Flo Rida just looks and sounds silly.
-What is a typical day of school like? For me, I'd wake up at 7:00 AM, be out the door by 8:00 AM, get to school around 8:10. Class started at 8:15, my next class started a little after 9:45, the next class/lunch started a bit after 11:15, with my last class starting at a little after 1:30. I'd then go home at about 3:00 if it was Monday or Friday; on Tuesday-Thursday, I had study groups and club meetings after school until 4. My schedule changed every 9 weeks, so I always seemed to be going somewhere new. XDD
Senior year, I took Animal Behavior (Science), Problem Solving (Math), worked as a Teacher Assistant to my Japanese teacher, and Beginning Photography (Art). Then I took AP Government and Politics (History), Economics (Economics), Sociology Diff (Human Behavior), and the other half of Problem Solving (Math). Term 3 was Anatomy and Physiology Diff (Science), Music Theory (Art), Shakespearean Drama (English), and Advanced Creative Writing (English). Term 4 was Water Games (Phys. Ed.), the second half of Anatomy and Physiology Diff, nothing for my 3rd class (Anat/Phys is HARD; I spent that 2 hour block doing homework XDD), and Cultural Foods (Art). Seems like a lot, huh? This was actually the year that I took the least classes out of my whole time in high school. XDDD
-Is lunch as bad over there as it is here? xD Yeah, probably. XDDD Upperclassmen were allowed to leave campus for lunch, but we only had half an hour to eat. You could hardly go anywhere without being horribly late back to class. Still, we had a sub sandwich shop and pizzas were delivered every day. (They let us have our horribly greasy pizzas, but they took away our Little Debbie's snacks. stare Way to make us eat 'healthy'.) Our lunches cost insane amounts of money...an average school lunch might end up being about $5. They liked sneaking in as many charges as possible.
