Closing Ceremony

Well, I was wrong. Our school closing ceremony wasn't one hour of standing around all dressed up listening to boring speeches. It was only 35 minutes!

It followed the same format as every single other ceremony: the Himnusz, a poem, speeches, singing, the second Himnusz (I don't know what it's actually called, it's just some other important song at the end of every ceremony). Today's poem was something by Juhász Gyula containing a lot of "oh, na"s in it, read by a girl with the most unenthusiastic voice. The speech, thankfully just one, was delivered by the principal. It was long. Twenty minutes. Singing followed; this was relatively interesting, but also long. Did I mention that we were all standing? The girls mostly in heels, and the boys many in suits.

Meanwhile the kids fidgeted and chatted, and the teachers fidgeted and chatted and hissed at the kids to be quiet and stand still. We had all gotten flowers, and one teacher used his to whack kids on the shoulder until it broke. As usual, several girls fainted or got dizzy, and were laid out on benches and brought water. Two girls in front of me taught a third how to play thumb wars until they were shoulder-swatted. Clouds moved over the sun, cardigans were put on; clouds moved away, cardigans were removed and sunglasses came out.

Eventually it ended. The students went to their classrooms to collect their report cards, then go home - they're free for the summer. The teachers picked up their things from the teachers room and left with cheerful goodbyes. Seven-thirty Monday morning, we'll all be back for the oral érettségi exams.

Sports Day

Yesterday was our school's Sports Day. Before I get into details, please pause to allow a brief rant: I don't know who the genius was who decided how to fill our last week of school, but... let's just say, they screwed up. Not a little, a lot. Wednesday was our last day of classes. Thursday was sports day - all the students were required to be there, attendance was taken; several key teachers were missing from the day, however. And today we have out closing ceremony. At 2:00. With nothing before nor after it. So basically, we all have to get all dressed up for one pointless hour (hopefully not more) of boring speeches and farewells. Especially fantastic for the students who don't live in Szolnok. Great plan, really. End rant.

Anyway, sports day was yesterday. It was held out at Millér, a szabadidõpark (~free time park) outside of Szolnok. In groups we walked/ran/biked out. Several lucky people also went by car. It took them 5 minutes. Walking, it took us 45. When we arrived, I made a point of showing myself to the gym teachers. (So, a bit of backstory: the whole event was coordinated by the P.E. department. Originally, I had been planning on skipping the whole thing too, but earlier this week one of them burst into the teachers room and starting ranting about how none of the other teachers were taking sports day seriously, they might as well cancel the whole thing, why is it that one department can never support the other, blah blah blah. At the time there were only three other teachers in the room, and her eyes raked over us all, effectively wilting my ambitions to skip. I did have a couple nasty thoughts about how, when the English department gave it's series of six open lessons, I hadn't seen any of the gym teachers there, but... whatever.)

After establishing my presence, I went to sit with 9.c. Like each class, they were building up a fire and preparing to cook. I helped a bit peeling potatoes, but mostly just sat around, nibbled, chatted in English and Hungarian and Hunglish, tried to take pictures (no batteries), and didn't do any sports at all. Students were coming and going, running off to participate in various competitions, borrowing knives and salt, trying to sample each other's food, sneaking off to go smoke, chatting, laughing, and having a good time. In the end, I'm glad I didn't skip (still bitter about the departments helping departments thing, though).

I left a bit early from the park to come back into town and go, again, to the Immigration Office. Long story short, I still don't have the right tax papers, and next week I will be making a trip to the wonderful APEH - basically the Hungarian IRS. So, yeah... more on that later.

More Surreal End of Days

The hazy, lazy, end of the school year continues. My week was like this:

Monday, no school due to Pünkösd (Pentecost). Also, nothing was open, so we drove two towns over to a restaurant for lunch.

Tuesday, no real classes but the school was open for the seniors to come in and view the results of their written school-leaving exams. I helped my contact teacher Ili show the English tests to her class. In the afternoon, I met Tomi and we went to get me check-uped - the first time I've been to a real doctor in Hungary. Interesting experience - everything about it confirmed my previous suspicions about the Hungarian health care system: it's easy, it's cheap, it's (outside of Pest) monolingual, and it's top-notch. Also, it's old-fashioned (she told me I needed to wear slippers to keep my feet warm, even in the summer), and like everything in small-town Hungary it's privacy-less (she knew that I live in a ground-floor flat because she's friends with my landlady).

Wednesday was the only regular day of the week. Other than walking into my first lesson to find the students standing around in a completely furniture-free classroom, everything was normal.

Thursday was stressy. The whole day I spent alternating between rushing and waiting, rushing and waiting. I went into the school early to finish writing a test, all the computers were full so I waited, got the computer which wasn't compatible with my pen drive, waited some more, tried to write the test as quickly as I could, and all the while Rózsa was trying to tell me about the trip to England plans and Petra and I were trying to put together a program for an after-school program (which I ended up not being able to attend anyway). In between classes I was running, photocopying, answering endless student questions. Classes themselves were an enforced standstill - the students were taking the test, so all I could do was sit silently.

After school I ran home, ate, and ran over to my favorite place in the whole county, the Bevándorlási Hivatal (Immigration Office). There were four people in front of me; I waited in line for almost two hours. Finally I got into the office, waited some more, and turned in all the paperwork to extend my Tartózkodási Engedély (residence permit). Well, almost all the paperwork - of course, I was missing one paper. So I have to go again next week. Grrr. On the other hand, the guy working in the office was wonderfully helpful, and also gave me a bunch more information about getting my Letelepedési Engedély (permanent residence / settlement permit, that magic document that will allow me to do this mass of paperwork only once every five years). So that'll be a project for the summer...

Finally, today, Friday. Normally I would have a very simple day: 4th period with the adorable and wonderful 11.D, and 6th lesson with the slightly-less-adorable but still tolerable 11.C. What actually happened today: I went in for the 2nd lesson to observe a class. In the 3rd lesson I had to substitute another teacher. In the 4th lesson I was free because the 11.D are on a class trip (miraculously, I had known this beforehand). In the 5th lesson I observed another class. And after the 5th, the rest of the lessons had been cancelled for a special program. This I had NOT known in advance, and I was planning to give the 11.C their end-of-the-year test. So it all fell though. But at least I'm at home now, and looking forward to a very calm weekend. I need to save up my strength for next week.

Year-End Review

One of the things I love (and hate) about the end of the year is how unsubstantial it feels. I mean, since the seniors have left, I only have thirteen lessons a week. Of those, many will be canceled because of class trips and other events. Next week is our last full week of classes - both weeks in June actually contain 3 teaching days each. Because of the ongoing school-leaving exams, classrooms are always changing, which adds to the loose feeling. Of course, I enjoy the free time, and freedom, but it's a weird time - like I'm in limbo between school and summer. I think the students feel it too, and they've all started their slide into summer - this, combined with my lethargy, makes teaching the last few weeks a struggle for me.

It happened today that I had my second-to-last class with the 11.d. They're one of my "meh" classes - I only see them once a week, and up til today they didn't make too much of an impression. I certainly enjoy class with them, but... you know the type. They're not good, nor bad; English mediocre; sometimes studious, sometimes lazy; they did make me laugh pretty frequently, but generally I can say I never really paid them too much attention.

And after today I feel a bit guilty about this, because it turns out they've been paying attention all year! As part of the year-end review, I asked them what they remembered doing this year. They remembered everything - even things I'd forgotten. Not only did they remember the topics ("we talked about personality"), they remembered the content (i.e. the vocabulary we learned)! They were enthusiastic about reviewing - I had them work in groups* and each group wrote a mini-test about one of the topics, then quizzed each other. Best of all for my teachers heart, they gave me some feedback about the year. Okay, maybe it wasn't 100% honest feedback, because most of them said they liked everything we did, but the braver students volunteered a couple things they hated. Along with logical, precise reasons why they hated them.

So it was a happy surprise for me to discover, now at the very end of the year, that I really like this class (I'll have them again next year). And I guess it's a good lesson for me, at the end of the year, to remember that I should spend less time worrying and complaining about bad classes and more time enjoying the good ones.

* One group was cooperating less well than the others, and I almost died laughing when the girl turned to me, reached down into the depths of her English memory, and dramatically announced, "Emily! I can not work with them. The ghost... of cooperation... HAS DIED!"

Pictures from graduation Saturday:


The ceremony was in the courtyard of the school, like every year. It started half an hour late, and it was ridiculously boring, mostly because the sound system wasn't working and no one could hear anything.


So instead of listening to the ceremony, everyone just talked with their neighbors. Here's Petra and Chad chatting it up.


When the boring, who-knows-what's-happening-now courtyard ceremony was finally over, the students all walked out with their classes. These are pictures of my favorite class, the 13.A.


Carrying their flowers and graduation bags, they left the school behind to start their walk through the city. Varga and the other 4 high schools in Szolnok (I mean the "secondary grammar schools" high schools, not the "technical schools" high schools) somehow concocted the idea that the 5 of them together should parade through the streets and all meet up at a center point.


Meanwhile, all the students from the lower grades, and all the teachers, hold hands and form a cordon to keep back parents and well-wishers, and allow the school-leavers to march down the streets unmolested. Holding hands in a chain while walking isn't as simple a job as you might think; look at that above picture, how the girls are being pulled along, and you'll understand why my hands and arms hurt for a couple days afterward.


Finally we reached the end of the line, and all the school-leavers stood together in a circle, counted down from ten... (environmentalists, turn away now...)


... and released their balloons to float away on the breeze. It was lovely, as always. But when it was finished, I still had to walk halfway across town in my heels and dress to another high school, to congratulate my little someday-brother-in-law Gabi, who was also graduating. Here's a very cranky picture of him and girlfriend:

With Szolnok's spectacular "water tower" in the background.

So that's it. The weird thing in Hungary is, they've graduated but they haven't left the school yet; in fact their major final exam (the "érettségi") has it's written part this week, and the oral exams are going on almost til the end of June. More on that later...

Two events make a trend?

Another example of life-imitating-lessons. Today with the 9.C, we had a test on the Medicine and Injuries unit. Right before the lesson one girl came and announced that she couldn't take the test because she was, well, injured. She had fallen in gym class and scraped herself up - and not put-on-a-bandaid scraped up, but actually being-sent-home-to-recuperate scraped up. Ironically funny.

But a bit worrisome. I wrote before here how I taught a unit on Crime to 9.C, and they almost committed crimes over the unit-end test. So is this a pattern? Teach crime, cause crime; teach injuries, cause injuries? Because the next unit is going to be Global Problems (global warming, wars, societal defects) and the results might be catastrophic...

Differences in American and Hungarian high schools

A couple days ago I was walking down the halls of my school and looking at the tablós. For those outside Hungary: a tabló is a like a big poster, containing all the pictures of the members of the graduating class, plus their teachers. They usually have either a nice background design, or some graphic incorporating the pictures (click here for some examples). These are assembled by a professional photograper or printer (or maybe there are professional tabló-makers?) in the spring and displayed someone in the city all summer - last year all of Varga's tablós were in the windows of the cultural center. Then, when the graduating class has left town and everyone's focussing on the new year, the tablós are dragged back to the school, where they linger in dusty storage for a few months until they find a place on Varga's already-jam-packed school walls.

Which brings me back to me, wandering the halls and staring at the old tablós. It struck me that we don't have tablós in American, but we do have something similar, yearbooks. When I went to write this epiphany down, the following list spilled out:


Anything I missed? Add it in the comments. Also, here is a complete list (not my creation) of cultural differences.

Does anyone know how to make blogger make a table? Mine failed...

ps, two days later - ha ha, I just now noticed that on this of all posts, wherein I actually ask two questions that a loyal reader might chance to answer in the comments, I somehow managed to disable the comments. I'm a genius. Anyway, they're back on, I hope.

Answering by rote: FAIL

Today I was playing a speaking game with my students. I drew a card that said "Tell the others two positve things and two negative things about yourself."

"Well," I began confidently, "A good thing about me is-" and then my brain froze. I stuttered on. "Um, I mean, a bad thing about me is, yeah, sometimes I'm selfish, and, and, and..." I had nothing.

Big deal, right? We all have brain farts now and then. But there's something very important to remember, which I'll point out here for the benefit for all 3 of my readers who aren't other English teachers in Hungary. I spend my life answering these questions. The same ones, over and over. What's your favorite band / music / color / food / class / thing about Hungary? What did you do at the weekend? Describe your family. Describe your ideal teacher / husband / friend. Descibe your personality. These are the question-and-answers that are drilled into the heads of Hungarian students. These are all things that, 95% of the time, I can rattle off without thinking about. Except for today.

Luckily, I have awesome students.

"Well, you're kinda lazy," one said helpfully.

"Yes!" Never been so grateful to be insulted. "Yes, bad things about me are that I'm selfish and lazy. Good things are.... uhm.... I'm a good cook, and...."

"And you have a good accent," offered another. Well, duh, but thanks. I'll adore anyone who tells me they prefer my American accent to the British one they learn normally.

"And you like beer!" Okay, someone else's turn to speak.

Today, after the normal morning announcements, one of the science teachers got on the microphone and declared that someone had broken into his lab, desecrated one of his stuffed chickens, and left a nasty note. Then he threatened life and limb of whoever it was, promising to spare their soul if they would turn themselves in before he called "his friends in the police." Yes, the whole thing's just as wonky as it sounds, plus you should imagine this speech given in his booming, outraged voice. If I had been the delinquent, I would have been terrified.

I had my first lesson of the day with That Class, who thought the announcement was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. I admit, it was a little over-the-top dramatic (seriously, he was speaking like an old-fashioned preacher drawing down the wrath of God) but nonetheless, there was the serious side - someone willfully destroyed his personal property. I can only imagine how I would react if someone if someone wounded me like that.

But of course, this class couldn't see past the humor. They screeched with laughter and spent the whole lesson repeating the speech, embellishing and retelling it in increasing volume and outlandish voices. Sympathy for the victim of the crime? Two or three students only. The rest, nada. I think they would have laughed at a rape victim if she'd told her story in a whiny voice. I might have guessed that the reason for their hilarity was because one of them was the culprit. But at the time I just chalked it up to their usual juvenile obsession with anything that isn't the assignments I give them.

Anyway, the whole episode with this class disgusted me. Not to start my own self-righteous, over-dramatic tirade, but... Up to now, I always struggled to teach them, and I always fought with myself to care about teaching them well, but I managed to do it because I still liked them as people, you know? It was depressing to realize today how completely selfish, self-centered, and two-faced most of them are. What a disappointment. I can't get over how totally disheartening and disillusioning this was. And what about tomorrow, and next week? How can I walk in and teach a group of people for whom I have zero respect, neither as students, and now not even as decent human beings? How can I communicate with them? How can I grade them fairly? How can I be objective? Why should I bother?

Érettségi (part first of many)

I'll try not to rant, but this is my biggest frustration with the Hungarian education system, and it's not just me; I have yet to meet anyone telling me it's a good system. So, students finishing from a gimnázium all take the érettségi (matura, Arbitur, school-leaving exam, etc). This test, supposedly, measures all they've learned in 4 (or 5) years of high school. They take 5 exams, 3 required and 2 of their choosing. The required subjects are history, math, and Hungarian language and lit. The chosen subjects can be anything they want, as long as one of them is a language. Seriously, they can take an exam in P.E. is they want.

Here's the problem. In mid-February the seniors choose what tests they want to take as their optionals. After that, they have absolutely no motivation to do anything in their other classes - and why would they, because their grades don't count. Yes, you read that correctly. The only thing that counts at the end of the year are the grades they get in their érettségi. So I can give them as many 1s and 2s as I want, but these grades don't go into their record. They only thing they're good for is a) harassing the students who still care about being good students or b) leverage over the students whose parents still care about their grades.

I was thinking about it the other day and if I were the mother of a Hungarian senior, I wouldn't care what marks they get their last semester - after all, as long as they get good érettségi marks, nothing else matters. On the other hand, if I were a Hungarian senior myself, I would still work and try to get good marks - but just because I liked being a student.

One of my students told me a great joke about the érettségi. It perfectly illustrates my third problem with the exam, which I will get into in detail some other time. For now, just the joke:

Three students go to take their history exam. They each pay some protekcio. Student one is pretty dumb, needs all the help he can get, so he pays a lot. Student two is average, so he pays a little. Student three is a bright kid, figures he can pass on his own intelligence, so he doesn't pay anything.
Student one goes for the exam. The teacher asks, "When was World War Two?"
Student one answers, "Um..... the sixteenth century?"
"Great!" says the teacher, "It's a five (the highest mark)!"
Student two goes in next, and gets the same question, "When was WW2?"
"It was in the 20th century..."
"Okay," says the teacher, "and how many people died?"
"Maybe... about a million?"
"Good enough, it's a five!"
Student three goes in confidently. "When was World War Two?"
"From 1939 to 1945."
"And how many people died?"
"One million."
"By name?"

Crime Unit: a success?

They say that teachers should teach things relevant to their students' lives. This week, I taught about crime, murder and blackmail and treachery, and my 9th graders threatened to commit them.

We've been doing a unit on crime for the past few weeks, and to finish off the unit I planned one last vocab quiz. Instead of making it myself, I decided to let them write it, figuring they would write a much harder quiz than I would anyway. You should know that the class is divided into two halves, and I teach each half twice a week. For the purpose of this post, I'm going to call them Sneaky Class and Kind Class.

So on Tuesday, I had a lesson with Sneaky Class, and told them the plan: write down 20 vocab words on a sheet of paper, and it would be a quiz for the other half of the class (meaning, they would have to define or use each of the words). For some reason (foresight, maybe?), I also insisted they write their names on it. Sneaky Class wrote their quizzes. On Wednesday I repeated the procedure with Kind Class. And today, Thursday, everyone took a quiz. In the 6th lesson, Sneaky Class took their quiz with a minimum of sniveling (I suppose that should have been the tip-off that something was amiss). At the end of the lesson when I collected them, I glanced through them and saw that they had done pretty well.

Enter the 7th lesson, and I was accosted by the Kind Class begging not to take the test. "Don't worry," I tried to soothe them, "the other half of the class just took it, and it wasn't that bad. So I'm sure you'll do fine."

They did not do fine. They struggled, sighed gut-wrenching sighs, swore under their breath, and managed to complete about half the test. Many of them cursed the writers of the tests. Remember how I'd had Sneaky Class write their names on their tests? Now each student in Kind Class knew exactly who to blame for their troubles. In the middle of the lesson, one girl broke under the pressure and blurted out, "I'm going to kill her! Those stupid liars!"

"What?" My eyebrows went up a bit. "What do you mean?"

Unabashedly, she sputtered, "Those liars! They told us that they wrote easy tests for us, so we should write easy ones for them. But they wrote hard tests! Very hard!" The rest of the class grumbled in agreement. I sighed, shrugged, tried to help them as much as I could, promised to grade easily... but as I collected the tests, I could see that it's going to take a VERY easy grading scale to even out the grades between the classes.

As I took one girl's paper, she asked me, "Do you like (name of Sneaky Class girl who had written a particularly difficult test)?" "Well, sure," I replied. "That's too bad," girl continued, "Because you won't see her for a while." "Oh?" I asked, not catching on. "Why not?" "She's in the hospital. Or, she will be in the hospital. I will put her there."

So I may or may not have started a vendetta between the two halves of the class. I have to say, I'm a bit disgusted with Sneaky Class (although not totally shocked) for pulling a stunt like that. They were not my favorites to begin with, and if I made a list now they'd be damn near the bottom (although they've got a long way to go before they overtake TerrorClass). The only redeeming fact is that probably only two or three of them are bad apples... I hope.

Final note, the high point of my day - it made me laugh so hard that I stumbled into the teacher's room nearly in tears, and got many a funny look... just after the 7th lesson, I walked upstairs directly behind a member of the Kind Class. Right in front of the teacher's rooms, she ran into one of her friends from the other half of the class. KC girl nodded, said hi, and was about to continue walking past, when suddenly she remembered the injustice just done to her and veered course dramatically with an ominous, "Hey, I need to talk to you...!"

Due my school being small and poor and having too many students, several of our "classrooms" are not actually classrooms, but, say, a former closet. Or a closed-off corner of the gym. Or the old teacher's apartments (where Chad, Petra, and I myself all lived for a time), which is across the courtyard from the main school building. I have several classes here, and they can be easily measured up on a lazy <---> ambitious continuum: some will ask the key from the reception, let themselves in, and wait nicely in their seats. Some won't ask for the key, but will go out into the courtyard and stand huddled together for warmth by the door, waiting for me. And the laziest sit around the reception, waiting for me to come, fetch the key, and open the door, after which they will gradually get up and meander their way out.

My class today was one of the get-the-key-and-get-in-nicely classes. Which is why I was surprised, while crossing the courtyard, to see several of them busily amusing themselves all around the courtyard. One was playing basketball with a gym class*. One had found a broom and was chasing after the basketball players. One was leaning over the fence to make out with her boyfriend standing on the street.

And I bring this up because just this morning I was gloating about the awesome weather here, and this is the other shoe dropping. This behavior is all the weather's fault. Warm weather breeds teenage craziness. As a human being, I have to love spring time (ahem, see previous gloating entry), but as a teacher...

*another curse of the warmer weather - all winter the P.E. classes were safely inside the gym and I was able to cross the courtyard without worrying about being knocked on the head with a basketball/football/frisbee. But now they're back and I'm under fire every time I have a class outside.

time, exam, techno

Random updates:

It was a long week. Longer than most. So long that if I look over my shoulder, I can't see Monday anymore. In fact, I can barely see this morning.

But. If the week went slowly, I realized today how fast the year is going. November 21st already, yikes. Every store is selling x-mas junk already - although, to be fair, in Hungary not only is there no Thanksgiving rule, but their holiday season starts December 6th with St Nick's Day. I have yet to do any shopping, other than one thing I bought for my brother back in May, and miraculously managed not to lose.

Still no exam results, despite me checking the website three times a day. Maybe if I checked it more, they would post the results sooner - you know, like pushing the button repeatedly really does make the elevator come faster...

Our directly-above-us neighbor has become enthralled with techno music. Sigh. Which means that a dull, throbbing beat now accompanies every conversation we have, every movie we watch, every book, every radio, every every every. Tomi suggested the neighbor is either high as a kite or working out all the time (maybe both??). I lost all hope when Jamie exclaimed, "Hey, that's the song they play at my aerobics class!"

Wow, and, as I was writing the above, the volume of the dull throbbing beat increased to a level that must have been near-deafening upstairs, because I could hear not only the beat but every single insipid word of the 'song'. Then after a minute, back to a normal volume, and just the beat. So... what was that? Was that a warning of some kind? "Stop posting about me, or it'll be full volume all the time"? I'm scared...

Supposedly it's going to snow this weekend. We'll see how that goes, pictures possible.

We're getting together for an early Thanksgiving tomorrow, pot-luck style, supposedly I'm in charge of stuffing, carrot cake, and potato salad. Repeat on seeing how that goes, repeat on the photographic evidence.

And finally, because as pestiside is always saying, it takes three to make a trend, this weekend'll be my seniors' "School Leaving Ball" - kinda like prom, but much more formal, and everyone is required to go. Petra, Tomi and I will be hurrying back from Thanksgiving, changing into our spiffy-nice elegant clothes, and watching the students dance and whatever. One last time, all together: we'll see how it... pictures... etc...

Funny students

Language exam? No thanks, I'd rather not talk about it. Ask me again in a couple weeks when the official results are in...

Anyway, to keep both my loyal readers content until I'm ready to actually write something... another edition of Funny Things From Students.

about American politics: "She (Palin) doesn't have enough presidental XP."

about American history: "John Paul Jones was the nasal hero of the Revolutionary War."

about Jesse James, who fought with the Conferderacy: "He fought against the army for the consideration on Western Amerika."

about geography: the state of "Sassachusetts"

a smooth, un-flustered presentation:
presenter: "Jamaica is famous for it's rivers, it's reggae music, reggae museum..."
other student, in Hungarian: "And pot."
presenter, not missing a beat: "Yes, and for it's typical Jamaican atmosphere..."

Misadventures in Mail

story one: OTP

Grab a seat, it's a long story. Back at the beginning of October, an ATM ate my card. My reaction was protesting in shock to Petra and random-woman-standing-behind-me-at-ATM, and shedding some tears to Tomi. All three of who calmly informed me that probably my card had simply expired, and hadn't I gotten a new one in the mail?

Well, no. So Tomi and I headed to OTP (major bank of Hungary) to sort things out. This was visit one. They explained that for reasons beyond their control, the new cards had gone out slowly this year, and I should just wait. I noticed that on my statement, they had two addresses for me: my mailing address at my school, Varga, where OTP had been sending my monthly statements, and my residence address, Kolozsvári utca, which was my first flat in Hungary. Where I haven't lived for... um... 16 months. So we corrected that, and I was sent home to wait.

one. Lacking other options, we agreed, and went home to wait the two weeks it would take for the Visit two, about a week later I was in the bank again to wire money to Hajni (I know the exact date, it was October 14th, because the money was due the 15th). While there, we thought it prudent to mention that I still hadn't received my new card, and... wasn't it possible that it had been sent to my old incorrect address and my ex-landlady had simply thrown it out (I, ahem, sorry karma, may have thrown out some of her mail while I was living there, so Iwouldn't have had hard feelings if she had tossed it). OTP service lady admitted this was possible, and thought it best to cancel the new card they may-or-may-not-have already sent, and issue a newnew card. We were sent home to wait two weeks for newnew card to arrive.

So today. It's November, no newnew card in sight. I need access to my paycheck. So, once again, we trudge to OTP, visit three. We patiently inquire if there's any news about my card. Service lady looks surprised, and says it should have arrived a month ago. We explain that it didn't. She says hm. We explain about the non-arrival of new card, and the cancellation of new card, and the ordering of newnew card. She says that, according to her magical computer, newnew card was never order. Tomi has some biting words for the efficiency of OTP, and I sign a paper ordering a newnewnew card (or maybe it's just a newnew card, since newnew card was never ordered in the first place...?). Service lady tells us to come in two weeks and pick it up.

But here's the cap of the story: this evening, as I'm sneaking into my school to make illegal copies for the extra lessons I shouldn't be teaching, I check my postbox out of habit. And guess what's there? The original new card. Turns out my landlady's not a total bitch after all; as I can reconstruct from the post stamps, the card arrived as it should have at my old address, current tenant gave it to landlady, landlady took it to her home in village-near-Szolnok to ponder what to do with it, ended up mailing it to my old school, and old school somehow got it to my mailbox in Varga. But now, it's been canceled, so it's worthless. Although, I now have serious doubts about OTP's ability to perform simple functions like canceling a card, so maybe I'll give it a try anyway. What's the worst that can happen? It gets eaten and we start this whole thing again...

story two: ITK

As I may have mentioned to one or two people, I'm taking the Magyar mint idegen nyelv vizsga (Hungarian as a second language exam) this Saturday. I mailed in my registration papers to ITK (idegennyelvi továbbképzõ központ, center for foreign language studies) mid-October, and was anxiously awaiting a letter in return confirming the registration and telling me when and where to show up to be tested.

Sunday, as I was gazing blankly into space, avoiding doing whatever work I was avoiding doing at the time, my eye came to rest on my copy of the registration paperwork. "Oh $%^&!" I yelled, causing both myself and Tomi to jump in out chairs. Just at that moment, I had noticed that instead of XX utca 4, my actual address, I had written XX utca 6.

So this mail mishap was totally my own fault, but it did involve a couple of adventures, first over to number 6 to speak to the woman who lives there. She was very kind and helpful; she had opened the letter and was able to tell us that there wasn't much info on it other than the date and time. After asking around her block of flats, if anyone knew some foreigner named Emily, she asked the postman to take it back. An adventure to the Szolnok Main Post Office told us that by now, my letter was probably back in Pest.... I hope they don't cancel my registration. Funny that I haven't even taken the test yet, de máris elrontottam :(

minutes, sick, card, Babel

- The Hungarian minutes are spreading! Spreading like a cold in a kindergarten, spreading like the Tisza will creep up to my doorstep this spring, spreading like a cold morning fog that sends it's chilly slimy fog-fingers up your pant legs and down the back of your jacket... The other half of the 13.A is now firmly enchanted with the idea; possibly they're taking it even more seriously than the first group (they actually stayed past the bell to harass me). And in a third class, the 12.A, I heard a couple of hopeful calls for "Hungarian minutes?" but I managed to glare the callers into silence. I think.

- I'm sick. It's just a cold, but the Hungarian side of me enjoys whining about it for sympathy, using it as an excuse not to do anything more than I have to, and drinking lots of tea. Well, drinking lots of coffee, at least.... it's all the same, right?? Anyway, I used being sick as a reason why we had to turn on our heat, so TinyLittleFlat is a bit more cozy now.

- I finally have my residence card. Yay to be working here legally! Next project, permanent settlement card.

- I'm teaching a tower of Babel. My new class at the Szolnok College is made up of a handful of Hungarians (including Serb-Hungarian, Slovak-Hungarian, Japanese-Hungarian), a handful of Chinese students, and two random Spanish. They range from semi-fluent to barely-able-to-count. Unfortunately, the semi-fluents are dropping out like flies or finding higher-level courses, and the beginners are sulky and whiny. It's going to be a fun semester...

I think I've been duped....

.... into speaking Hungarian.

It all started last year. In June, after a year of my adorable 12.A begging me to speak a single word of Hungarian (and giggling good-naturedly but uproariously whenever I gave in and did), I made them a foolish promise. I promised that in September, I would tell them about my summer in Hungarian. With sentences and everything! I didn't really think they'd understood what I was promising. I really didn't think they'd remember. But they did. Of course. Within 10 minutes of me walking in the door. Since they were so cute about it, I sucked it up and, at the end of class after the 5-minute-warning bell rang, I sputtered out a few sentences about my summer. They all giggled, politely but intensely, and left the classroom looking smug.

Week two, when the warning bell rang, they all looked at me expectantly and began chirping, "Emily! Hungarian minutes? Hungarian minutes?!" "Oh, no!" I said, "That was a one-time thing!" They looked so sulky and disappointed that I came up with a compromise: since their homework was learning a bunch of new vocabulary words, I promised to learn the same words in Hungarian.

Week three, I marched into class with my neatly-printed-out list of English-Hungarian vocab and waved it (perhaps a bit overdramatically) in their faces, proclaiming, "I did MY homework, now where's yours??" Suprisingly, most of them pulled out their papers. I secretly patted myself on the back, thinking I had just found a way to kill three birds: make them learn, learn some new vocab myself, and build rapport with them by letting them think they were forcing me to learn Hungarian, all while not actually having to SPEAK Hungarian to them. Yay, me!

But no. Once again, as soon as the 5-minute bell rang, they started packing up their materials. "Hey, hey, hey!" I chided. "What are you doing? Five minutes more!" "No," they said, completely soberly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "Hungarian minutes, Emily. Hungarian minutes." "Okay, class dismissed!" I said. "No," they repeated, sitting calmly in their seats with obviosuly no intentions of leaving.

So what could I do? I sputtered for a few minutes, looked at them blankly, until one cheeky student put forward a question about my weekend, which I was able to answer in one or two stumbling sentences. Again, they laughed, a couple clapped, and they all left with self-satisfied looks on their faces.

I wonder how long this game will hold their interest. Twenty-seven more weeks of class.... but only 3 more 'til fall break!

Off and running: so here we go on another year... my fourth year teaching, if you can believe that. I still remember walking into my first class at Kassai and having three puzzled 6th-graders not understand a word I said. This year is off to a better start.

My schedule's much the same as last year, the major change being that I'm no longer teaching at Kassai. This year'll be all Varga, 9th to 13 grades. In the C "bilingual" classes I teach all grades, mostly twice a week; in the other classes I teach seniors and juniors.

So far classes are falling into three categories:

1. The classes I hated disliked struggled with last year, I'm struggling with this year.
2. The classes I was meh with last year, I'm finding suprisingly fun this year.
3. The classes I didn't have last year, and are so-far-so-good this year.

But... we'll see how it goes. I'm off to get my lungs scanned.

(the anklet, mentioned in the post directly below, I lost today. Meh, easy come, easy go. Although this makes a disturbing trend along with the watch and necklace that broke last week...)

Requiem for my house

I may have mentioned, in passing, to anyone I've ever met, as well as some people I've never net but read this blog, that we live in a house. An awesome house. Yes, okay, it has some problems, like the electricity has a tendency to short out unexpectedly (I learned how to work the fuse box) and the roof leaks a bit (only when it rains...) and the stove won't work if the oven is on (was only a problem at Thanksgiving). Oh, and it faces the prison. These minor things aside, the house has significantly more positive things going for it:

* It's big. Tomi estimated it at 120 square meters, which would be almost 1300 square feet. It has several rooms, which means they can have their guitar studio, I can have my space for private lessons, the upstairs is the private area... and the kitchen, oh the kitchen. Big enough for several people to cook, and several others to stand around talking.

* It has character. It's old, and obviously was built up in several stages. Architect Tomi and I have spent many an hour musing about the history of the house.

* It has no real neighbors (well, the prison...) so it's perfect for parties. Or guitar practice. Or whatever.

* It has all the furniture from both of the old flats. Which means bedspace for about 6 people comfortably, up to 10 if you're willing to get cozy.

* The stairwell has a railing which was perfect for displaying framed pictures.

* It's well-located. Other than being across from the prison, it's immediately behind my school, two minutes from a grocery store and five minutes from the center. Within spitting distance are a great little ABC, two good restaurants, and my 3 favorite bars.

* The hot water in the kitchen tap is close to boiling. Despite my warnings, many people have been scalded. But if you want a cup of coffee or tea... presto.

* The ceilings are tall... more than 3 meters downstairs, and 2.5 upstairs.

* The upstairs is basically one big room, but there's a strange/cute little alcove (Pista bácsi called it the "confessional") where I set up my desk and work space.

* And of course, the icing on the cake, the fact that I pay nothing for it. As per my contract, Varga (my school) pays everything.


Well. As of 10:30 this morning, Varga informed me that they're tired of paying the (understandably) high bills, and that they're moving me. Well, us. This month. Since we'll be gone most of the month, that means: this week.

We go to see the new place tomorrow at 8. I'm not optimistic.

So, June...

As per my usual lazy updating, here's everything that's happened in June:

* School ended. It was less dramatic than the seniors leaving in May, since after all, I'll see 'em all again next year. It rained on the last day and the closing ceremony was held inside, broadcast over the intercom to each classroom. Overall, it was anticlimactic.

* I took part in my first-ever Érettségi (school-leaving exams). Wow. Just wow. I don't want to get started ranting about a system in which your final exam grades are based half on what you know and half on how kind your teacher is to you, so I'll just leave it at: wow.

* I started Hungarian lessons. I mean, for real this time. With an actual teacher, not a friend. It's bizarre - in a good way - how much Hungarian I realize I know when I'm forced to speak it twice a week. Then again, it's sad how little I know after three years here. Anyway, I have the vague idea that I'm going to take a magyar mint idegen nyelv exam in September. Or November...

* We went on a family road-trip. Tomi and family and I took a two-day trip across Hungary, packed into a small-ish, air-conditioning-less Volkswagen. The point of the trip was mainly to go to Sopron to see Tomi's 2nd graduation, the one to which families and all are invited, where they hand out the diplomas. Like all ceremonies in English and Hungarian, it was speech speech speech, clap clap clap, sit sit sit... so, boring. Although, this particular ceremony had it's own unique undercurrent of excitement, a story so unbelievably soap-opera-ish that I can hardly post it here (but buy me a beer and I'll regal you with all the gritty details).
Between the graduation and the endless driving, we also managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing in Sopron... pubs are sights, right? Plus, on the way back we took a detour down to Balaton and had the first swim of the year (cheap bathing suits and towels courtesy of Tesco). We got back pretty late on Wednesday night, but it was well worth it.

* I started ATC-making again. I would say, "pictures to come in the next post," but we all know that I won't post again for another month, so...