The World Through 8th Grade Logic

If I were a bitter person, I could use this entry to complain about how my hot water isn’t working. Again. Even after they came and “fixed” it earlier today. Again. During the coldest week of the year. They told me when it malfunctions, I should “just hit it.” Believe me, I tried. A lot.

But I’m not bitter. Really. So instead let me relate an extremely bewildering conversation I had on Monday with one of my 8th graders. Actually, it wasn’t really so much a conversation as it was him offering a theory and me gaping at him. I don’t remember the context (if there even was one), but he told me that teachers don’t drink. My life for the past 6 months flashed before my eyes, and I gaped. He explained that teachers don’t like alcohol. I asked why. He replied, because students do like it. Before I could puzzle out this bit of logic, my attention was called elsewhere, and I’d forgotten the incident until just now. He was dead serious. Any insights? Especially from those of you who’ve been drunk in your schools?

Crackdown, Day Two

Continuing my Shock and Awe campaign to whip my students into shape, today’s step took the form of shopping: I bought a notebook. And with its help, I devised a viable, sustainable, and logical grading scheme to use for the rest of the year. Basically, for those of you who will share and/or appreciate my sense of organization, the plan goes like this: each page of the notebook is one class (see my lovely example below). Since I only see each of my classes once a week, every time we meet I’m going to find something to grade them on. Even something small - I talked to Kati yesterday about grading and she told me that although technically I’m not allowed to grade the students’ behavior, I am allowed to give them grades on “class work,” ahem, wink.

So they get four “small” grades each month (or 5, some months). These average into a “big” grade, which I can write into the big class napló. I’m pretty pleased with this plan. So I just wanted to share it.

It’s “Cold” Here

Current temp in Szolnok: -12 C. Which seems deadly, but that’s in puny Celsius. It’s really about 10 of our bulkier Fahrenheit degrees.

So I’m not going to be a tough-guy Minnesotan and scoff, “Cold, ha! I remember back in the winter of 1993 when it was 40 below and the windchill was minus 62...” Because it is cold, I can appreciate that. And I do feel for the Southerners in the group for whom this is particularly painful (the look on Chad’s face... “Wait... it can actually get too cold to snow??”). But 10 F is completely within the range of normal Minnesotan winter. And that’s not even counting windchill.

Shock and Awe

Yes, that’s right. Inspired by the US government, I’ve begun a Program of Terror at Kassai. It’s a double-edged attack: first I give them legitimate activities to do as class work (I admit, my lesson plans to date have sometimes lacked substance), and then I give them 1s when they refuse to sit down, shut up, and work. Just today I’ve made a 4th grader teary-eyed, a 5th grader bawl, and an 8th grader pout. A good first day.

Newbie Weekend

Song for the moment: 50 cent, In Da Club. For both the awesome bass and the irony in the lyrics today.

So... yet another weekend in Budapest. Actually, this might have been my favorite Bp weekend yet. Despite our supposed goal of meeting thenewbies, a majority of us oldies spent very little time with them. Eh, oh well.

So it went like this: Friday afternoon, Chadwick and I hoped a train to the City. Conveniently (and preplannedly), it was the train Gaines was on. We made it to the hostel, the Mandragora. Yerik had recommended it. If I can describe it in one sentence (one very long sentence), it would be this: It was two beautiful rooms (the Zen Room and the Indian Room), a huge bathroom, nice kitchen with free coffee and tea (although only two kinds, which Gaines proclaimed was “not very Zen of them”), wonderful kind owners (lax, in both the positive and negative connotations), extremely reasonable prices, and one of the nastiest, most painful, springiest mattresses I’ve ever had the agony of sleeping on. But beautifully decorated. And the others informed me that the beds were tolerable.

We headed over to the Kollégium in time to catch the end of Hajni’s Cultural Differences speech. We sat in the back and studied the newbies. At the time, there were six (three more with visa problems are coming later): Jennifer, Jillian, Bill, John, Nicole, and Tara. After answering some of their questions, without scaring them too much (I hope), we met up with Janos and all of us (except Bill) went out for dinner. After stretching our legs a bit, we ended up somewhere over by Vista. Best part of that dinner: when Nicole asked for “beer. A big one” and the whole side of the table said “me too.” Oh, they’ll fit right in.

Later we went to Irish Cat (which, just for future reference, is on Kálvin tér, NOT Astoria. I had to buy Janos a Guinness for being wrong on that one). As we stood in our circle talking, the weekend’s oddest event (from my perspective) happened: in my mind I’m referring to it as The Auction. This boy standing behind Mariah (his name was Bahran, but I’m going to call him Iranian Boy) insinuated himself next to her and asked if she or one of us would teach him to “Spanish dance.” Mariah gracefully declined, but suggested that one of us other girls might help him. She made a gesture in our direction, more specifically at whoever was standing on my left. “No,” Iranian Boy said. “Not her... (pointing)... her.” Because apparently I have a sign on my forehead... of what a good dancer I am.

So that was Friday. Wow, three-day weekends take forever to write. Anyway, on Saturday, other oldies straggled in. Ambitious Kat arrived pretty early, not much later than 10. We went to fortify ourselves with lángos before hitting H&M. I picked up 3 sweaters for about 30 bucks. Two are black and gray, but one is in a Gaines-inspired “happy color,” pink (tame dark pink, not bubblegum or anything impossible like that). Very happy about sweaters in general, since it’s going to be frigid this week.

We met Harpswell there, reconvened with the boys, and after a failed attempt to visit Chad’s Writers Store, walked home. Met up with Laura, Liz and Mariah. Met up with some wine and snacks, and spent a good chunk of the afternoon lazing around the hostel. Hey, it’s what we do best.

Later in the evening, we got productive and made it to the Kollégium... or only to the front steps of the Kollégium, for some of us. Then back down the hill to the Snooker club. Then to a place on Kálvin tér. Then to a place on Ráday utca. In retrospect, the evening can be boiled down to three elements: lots of beer, lots of pizza, and lots of calling everyone whose number we had to try to make them make the newbies come out with us.... unsuccessfully.

So, Sunday. Birthday. It wasn’t particularly celebratory. On the other hand, I do a lot of celebrating other weekends, so I don’t feel in any way cheated. I did get an awesome birthday SMS from Juli (thank you!) which almost made up for the non-birthday-related phone call I got at 3:41 AM. Grrr.

Later this morning we did That Which We Do Best at the hostel until 11 or noon. Laura and I struck out Kollégium-wards in order to find Hajni and pay her, and so Laura could meet the newbies. Hajni wasn’t there. So after talking to newbies and Mária for a few minutes, Laura and I spent the next few hours jaunting around the City. Got lots of exercise. It was a little cold, though.

After meeting up with the others, we found a hole in the wall, Rókalyuk (I have another story for another time about another bar called Rókalyuk in Transylvania, where the Demeter brothers and I taught Heron NOT to yell out, “meleg vagyok” or “kurva vagyok”). The point of that aside was that places named Rókalyuk have been good to me, and this one didn’t fail. After finding out it was my birthday, a kind, slightly drunk old man (not Janos, I mean actually old) named Sanyi took it upon himself to play for me a variety of Hungarian music. At one point, Chad and I danced, much to the delight of Sanyi, the bars owner, and the two other patrons.

On the train home, Chad, Mariah, Tim (friend of Yerik, thus friend of CETP) and I hung out in the dining car and made yet another friend. This one was a young Kisvárdan named István. He did not speak much English, thus most of his conversation was directed toward me. On the plus side, I’m proud that I managed to carry on a “conversation,” if I can use the term loosely, in Hungarian for over an hour. Yay, Emily.

So that’s all I can remember to write right now. I’m sure more will come later. I realize that this entry, like the weekend, has remarkably little on the newbies. But really, we spent very little time with them, other than Friday night. And I’m hoping they’ll appear more in later entries. I feel like many of my entries end with the following sentiment, but it’s valid here: time will tell. The End.

Anarchy is Dangerous

My grand lesson plan for this week was entitled “Five Things That....” Simply, you make up a list of adjectives you want the students to know (or if you’re a Super Lazy Bad Teacher like me, you use the same list in all your classes). Put the kids in groups and tell them to write five things that are green, five things that are dangerous, five things that are difficult to understand, or whatever. When they’re done, have each group read their answers. If another group has the same word, they cross it off. If no one else has it, they circle it and get a point. Simple. Some of the better answers from various classes included:

* things that are green: cannabis, Green Day, greenhouse effect, greenhorn, Greenland
* things that are fast: my mind, our group, “meep meep” (Roadrunner), rappers
* things that are difficult to understand: why you tell us to be quiet, American accent, American football, boys, driving for girls, global warming
* things that are hot: our blood, love (I had to explain in every single class, usually to uproarious laughter, that ‘hot’ is NOT the same as ‘meleg’. For those of you in the dark, in Hungarian when ‘meleg’ refers to a person it means they’re gay.)
* things that are delicious: people, for the cannibals
* things that are small: the stars, from here
* things that are expensive: I want to buy a country
* things that are painful: boiling oil, getting a bad mark, life, love, death
* things that are more fun to watch than to do: school

And my favorite:
* things that are red: red letter. When I read this, my logical brain knew what the 5th grader meant: the bad, red marks that his napló probably has an abundance of. The rest of my mind, the part which far outweighs the logical side, immediately snapped back to 8th grade English and the tragic adventures of a woman named Hester. So I started laughing hysterically; after a brief and ruinous attempt to explain why, I gave up and just spent the rest of the lesson giggling to myself, murmuring, “Red letter - ha!” under my breath, and my students probably all went and mystified the other English teachers by asking them why “red letter” is so funny to the crazy American.

A Productive Day... mostly

This is a picture of Harold Road Junior School, in Abergavenny, Wales (not really, it’s actually my high school in Hastings, MN. I couldn’t find a picture of Harold Road). It’s the partner school of Kassai (Harold Road, not Hastings HS). I don’t know exactly what they partner on, because today was the first time I ever heard their name (and earlier this week was the first time I heard we even had a partner school). I do know that for some mysterious reason, various teachers and/or administrators from Harold Road (but no students) will be visiting Kassai next week Monday.

So this has put everyone into a flurry of activity. The English teachers are all planning their Best Lessons Ever to be observed. The principal and secretaries are working on writing handouts about Kassai, lauding it’s wondrous programs (programmes) and beauty. Which I find funny, because after all, the visitors are going to SEE the school. My favorite line so far has to be the one about Kassai’s “green courtyard” (dusty and brown in the summer, slushy and gray currently), “downtown location” (the one place even close to qualifying as Szolnok’s downtown is nowhere near here), and situation “at the intersection of two major avenues” (just laughable - and still wrong). Anyway, this is where I come in... because when I said they’re writing handouts, what I really meant is that they wrote things in Hungarian, then gave them to Kati to translate, who then passed them on me to retype in actual English, and then worried aloud to everyone who would listen that I didn’t do it right.

Not that I mind - really, please don’t construe this entry as any type of bitching on my part. I love translating. And, even if I hated it, I do have too much pride in my school to let them fob some crappy translation off on native speakers. Plus, I’ve been getting all sorts of smiles from the normally scary school admins. I guess I’m okay in their books, now that I’m FINALLY making myself useful.

Number two act of productivity was the fact that I stayed at school for 2 hours after I could have legitimately run away (as I usually do at the end of the day) in order to write my end-of-the-semester grades in 8 different naplós. Wow, I sure wish I had peeked inside those wondrous yellow-and-green treasure books earlier. In addition to all sort of nifty bits like whose parents are not living together and who has siblings (or parents) at which school, each page also has every single grade the student has gotten for the whole year. In pen. Sometimes red pen. It’s glorious. Oh, the power... which of course I DID NOT ABUSE... too much. No, I really did restrain myself. Although after seeing what grades they get from the other teachers, next semester I’m not going to hesitate the give them the 2s and 3s they deserve. No more of this I’ll-give-you-a-5-because-I’m-afraid-you’ll-start-bawling crap.

When I came home, I was so fired up that I actually started making lesson plans and worksheets for next week... and it’s only Thursday! Well, I got about half way done, and then succumbed to the call of wine and blog reading and for God’s sake anything other than lesson plans! I know, I fail... but with all the hullaballoo going to be going on on Monday (how’s that for a construction?) no one will notice me. I’ll do them then; I’ll have lots of time since I plan to spend the entire day, even my free lessons, hanging around the school in a desperate bid to catch the eye of and make conversation with another native speaker... even a native British / Welsh speaker.

I’m off to Budapest for the weekend, to welcome the new teachers and to celebrate my birthday as I’ve celebrated all things this year: CETP-vel.

Olive

This is a picture of my grandmother, Olive A. Jenkins (1920-2000). She’s the short one in the middle. She died five and a half years ago today, so today I’m going to blog about her just a little.
This picture was taken September 20, 1940. She was a few months shy of her 20th birthday. That hefty 15-month-old she’s holding is her son, Jerry. If you look very closely, you can see a ring on her left-hand ring finger. I don’t know where she got it, because in 1940 she wouldn’t be married for another two years yet. I never met her parents, but since they were Irish-Catholic and French-Canadian-Catholic, I imagine they weren’t too thrilled with this order of things.

I’m about to turn 23. When Olive was twenty three, she had already had a child, gotten married, and lost her husband to cancer. Mostly I’m just ruminative today because it’s such a stark comparison. Olive at 23: child, one dead husband, waitressing in Worcester, Massachusetts. Emily at 23: college degree, teaching in a foreign country, with no children nor husbands, and no definitely prospect of either. Still, I think it’s more a difference of generation and circumstance than it is of choice and personality. At least, I hope so.

English.... kinda

No, really. One of the things I love about English is that wherever it’s spoken in the world (as both a native language and otherwise) it’s never the same. Today, my 11th grade private student, who has a fondness for reggae and Jamaican hip-hop, asked me to write down the lyrics to a song. The song turned out to be Mattafix’s Big City Life, one of my own favorites, and a personal theme here in Hungary - mostly for the irony: although most of us are trying to beat the system in one way or another, none but one is really living a big city life. And even her, barely.

All right, so here’s the problem: I’ve also puzzled over the lyrics of this song, because even after looking them up, I still didn’t fully understand them. The refrain contains the following lines:

Don’t let the system get you down...
Big city life, me try fi get by,
Pressure nah ease up no matter how hard me try.
Big city life, here my heart have no base,
And right now Babylon de pon me case.

So, (not that this is of any interest to you, but obviously you’re bored or you wouldn’t even have read this far), I spent my evening researching Jamaican English. In addition to having grammatical rules where subject and object personal pronouns are interchangeable, they also have quite a few unique words and cultural references, mostly due to the Rastafarian influence on the language. All right, I’ll stop sermonizing and go to bed. Long story short, Marlon Roudette (the singing half of Mattafix) lives in a big city, with a lot a pressure all the time; he’s just a guy trying to make it by, but the cops are always on his case. And HOT DAMN, have you seen the video?? If Robbie Williams won’t let me be his slave, Marlon is second. Now really, good night.














ps this picture came from a Hungarian website and the caption there was "Változatos és finom." Look it up... it's a useful phrase.

Word Play

I had a terrible day. Being around grown-up Americans has spoiled me so much that I almost broke out in tears in front of my fourth graders today.
Anyway, I was immensely cheered to discover in my mailbox four envelopes from home, each containing the following: one granola bar, one scratch-off lotto ticket (I won a dollar!) and a scrap of paper with a letter on it. On the back of each letter, a notation saying “5 of 20,” “12 of 20,” etc. So some sort of secret message. So far, I’ve got:
_ _ _ _ o _ _ _ _ _ _ e _ _ _ _ _ p o _

Any guesses? I’m pretty sure it’s multiple words, and I’ve no idea when the other clues will come.

"The Fervent Mouse" (Heves and Eger)

First person to get the title scores brownie points.

Contrary to my earlier predictions (suspicions), the weekend turned out to be a relatively non-dramatic one. There were, however, multiple adventures such as fogwalks, bussing shenanigans, a hostel on a hill, wine tasting, 10 liters of wine in two gasoline jugs, a midnight walk over a sketchy pipe “bridge” and down a long, dark windy road, a mutiny and a revolution, hot baths and freezing air, two people with massive bruises, and various other hijinks.

So that’s the weekend in a nutshell. The detailed version goes as follows: Gaines arrived on Friday just before 3, and we made a mad dash through the trains station to buy lángos. We met up with Chad and all three of us got on the same bus to Heves. Jeremos met us at the station - not beer in hand as promised, but close enough. Harpswell arrived shortly after, but at the other bus station. We picked her up and headed back to Jeremos’s place. Small, but nice. Of all the flats I’ve seen, I would say his gets the Best Decorated award.

Some point later in the evening, we decided to talk a walk. Mostly for the sake of meeting Janos at the train station. It was ridiculously foggy and beautiful outside, and the walk was the better part of half an hour, each way. At some point, Gaines, Chad and I fell behind, so we never actually saw the station. We did become intimately acquainted with a field, a tree, and the line of brush which separated us from the station.

Soon after arriving home, the boys darted across the street to check out the non-bar (I think Jeremy said it was some sort of after-school club or something?). They found nothing there, so they, Gaines and I headed out to partake in the Heves nightlife. Meaning, we went to the bar. Jeremy and Janos tried their hand at darts. We explored the dance floor, which was a big, cold, lightless room at the back. Eventually, the bad music and general lack of both entertainment and sustainable drunkenness drove us home. Chad had found some new friends who were buying him drinks, so he chose to stay (free drinks? Who wouldn’t?).

In the morning, after way too much argument and discussion, Janos and Jeremos ran to the store and bought a selection of breakfast foods. We ate fast and headed to the bus station for the second leg of the journey: onward to Eger.

Having time to kill, we wandered around, down through the Cathedral, and met up with Kyle at McDonalds.

Imagine this street, 83 years later, and with the Golden Arches somewhere on the right side.

Um... where was I? Right, various others arrived at the train and bus stations. Some stayed to wait for later-comers, I headed with the group towards Egerszalók, a little village in a valley near Eger. After a brief jaunt in the wrong direction, we found a helpful old lady who was completely unfazed by the group of luggage-laden American tourists and set us on the right path.

And despite being up a massive hill, the Kohári Pince was totally worth it. We had rooms and rooms of space to ourselves, a bed for everyone (although, of course, it wouldn’t really be a CETP get-together without some sort of dog-pile), kitchen and bathroom for each room, and one bigger room where we congregated for dinner and drinking.

As we waited for the other half to arrive, we did a bit of wine tasting, and ended up buying two massive jugs of wine to have for later. Our conversation with the proprietor went something like this:

Us: Can we pay for the wine we tasted?
Him: No, no, it’s on the house.
Us: Great! Then can we buy some wine?
Him: To take away? For later?
Us: Ha ha... yeah, later (tonight is later, right?)
Him: Of course. How much would you like?
Us: Um... a lot. (How much do we need?) Maybe 10 liters?
Him: (Is there any way possible for me to record his expression at this point? Some combination of bemused, gleeful, and just a tad startled.) Of course.
Us: And how much will it be?
Him: 5000 forint.

So that’s $25 for more than 13 bottles of wine. NICE!! And we did manage to polish off almost 8 of those liters (I adopted those two orphan liters this morning). We hung out in the big room, made piles and piles of spaghetti, and eventually the others showed up. Altogether, we were 12: myself, Chad, Gaines, Jeremos, Janos, Harpswell, Laura, Jenna, Mariah, Mark (the other American from Kisvárda), Brent, and Kyle.

We stayed and ate and drank and talked at Kohári for quite a while. My favorite part was after Jeremos reenacted the cabinet-sleeping story, the two of us sat up there for a good long time, chatting and playing God. We had an awesome experiment planned, but the party started to break up. So we hopped down, he much more gracefully than I (but hardly a fair comparison, since his legs are twice as long at mine).

The second point of coming to Egerszalók, after the wine, was the thermal baths. Having confirmed earlier in the day that they were, in fact, open until 3 AM, we headed out in their direction well into the evening. With a confident stride, Jeremos led us across the village, up side streets and down alleys, and across this incredibly dicey “bridge” made up of three pipes laid down across a roaring gorge. I don’t have a picture (if someone does, please tell me), but I found this similar one:

Okay, so it was really more like a small creek, two feet down, and the pipes were flat, not too slippery, and sufficiently wide to walk on. Despite the darkness and drunkenness, no one fell in, or even anything close, although there was certainly some caution, hand-holding, and Janos bashed his leg while attempting some sort of leap.

After the “bridge”, there was still a significant amount of walking - mostly down a long, twisty road, in the direction away from civilization, in total darkness (except for the full moon, of course). Not too far down the long, twisty, dark road, about half of us declared mutiny and turned around. Halfway back, as the leaders decided to take a “shortcut” to avoid the pipe-bridge, Laura and I staged a revolution. This involved us lying on the road in protest. We had convinced Brent to join us and had almost convinced Jenna when Jeremos called me, ecstatic, to tell us that they had, in fact, found the baths somewhere up ahead in the darkness. Laura made a shrewd decision and ran off towards the group going home. Jenna, Brent and I turned around for the second time and headed back to the darkness. And, sure enough, down the long, twisty dark road, around several corners and past vast fields of nothingness, the baths materialized in a glowing, steamy oasis. After the initial horror of being almost naked in below freezing air, they were incredible. By the time we left, my core was so warm that the walk home was barely cold.

This morning, some of the more determined people (Kyle, Brent, and Mark) got up early and left. The rest of us got up whenever, and eventually congregated in the bar downstairs for much-needed coffee. It took a while to clean up the big room and pack. Jeremy put me in charge of collecting money and paying for the rooms. Wow, if there’s anything more pleasing than being in charge, it’s being in charge and getting to demand money from people. Please God, let me be Hajni some day.

Anyway, we paid, we got out, and we got to the bus stop, only to discover that for the first and only time this weekend, my Sacred Green Notebook had failed us (well, perhaps it wasn’t so much the Notebook’s fault as it was the fault of the person who wrote down the information) and there was no bus at 12:06. Hm. But semmi baj, we found a nearby restaurant and had lunch (or breakfast, for people other than Gaines and I). It was good, but the food kept coming slower and slower. Eventually Gaines (such a girl after my own heart) and I decided that we needed to get on a bus towards Eger in order to make our connections. So we and Chad threw down money and left. Now picture this: we leave the restaurant. I hear Gaines, who is slightly in front of me, cry out. Why? Because the bus is closing it’s doors and pulling away. We chase after it madly. Just as we’ve given up, from behind me I hear Chad yell, “Emily!” I stop, pivot, and looming towards me at a great speed is the huge pastel green front of another bus. I squeak, step back, trip over the curb, and fall flat on my ass. Well, not so much “flat” as particularly hard on my right side. Ouch. At least I didn’t fall under the bus.

So we made it to Eger, Chad and I made it back to Szolnok, and Gaines made it onto her bus and I assume home. The others? Don’t know. We tried to speculate who will get home the latest tonight. Votes were cast for Janos and Harpswell, since their routes are the farthest and most difficult. Possibly also Laura, since she might stay overnight with Jenna. But as I told Gaines, whatever stories I make up in my head, I’m sure the truth will be much more mundane. Well, time will tell.

Friday the Thirteenth with 7abT

All week, my students have been behaving slightly worse than normal. I figured it was just back-to-school blues, one week removed, until I talked to my mom yesterday and she reminded me that tomorrow is a full moon. Now, stop rolling your eyes - she’s worked in schools for almost a decade, mostly with special needs children, and I spent that whole time scoffing at her full-moon theory. But... I think there might be something to it.

And today I had my 7abT (Társalgás, aka optional conversation) class. This is the class I’ve mentioned several times, my four adorable, troublesome 7th grade boys. I think I like them because in addition to being hilarious and offbeat, in my project to determine which class’s English is most like my level of Hungarian, I think they win. Our classes are usually them talking to each other in Hungarian and me trying to coax them into English, and me talking to myself in English and them trying to coax me into Hungarian. I love it.

My lesson plan with them today: Circle of Death. Yes, the old college classic is making a comeback as an educational game. Instead of drinks, I used points, explaining that the object was to get as few as possible (just like Beloit - ha!). The rules for each card are a bit modified:

2 - left (the person to his left gets a point)
3 - me (he gets a point)
4 - right (the person to his right gets a point)
5 - table (last person to smack their hand on the table gets a point)
6 - talk 60 (he has to talk for 60 seconds in English. If there’s any Hungarian, he gets a point. The other boys especially loved trying to force the speaker to use Hungarian)
7 - assign (or “give”. He gets to give out 2 points for a red card, 4 for a black)
8 - secret (he should tell the group a secret or take a point. My kids just made up lies)
9 - rhyme (he has to make up a rhyme or take a point)
10 - social (everyone gets a point)
Jack - categories (he picks a category - animals, American cities, etc - and we go around the circle. If he can’t name something in the category, he gets a point)
Queen - questions (going in a circle, keep asking questions. The first person to not ask, not answer, or use Hungarian gets a point)
King - talk 30 (he has to talk for 30 seconds in English)
Ace - freebee (nothing happens. I was considering using this as the “make up your own rule” card, but that would have been too much.)

We played all hour without getting through all the cards. I was tied for first place until one little punk drew a black 7 and gleefully assigned me all 4 points. Grrr... whatever. They had fun. Apparently, so much fun that one extra boy, who had tagged along today to sample the class, decided that he wants to sign up for it. Yay, another recruit!

Now, I have to eat something, then go back and face the rest of my classes. After that, I’m meeting Gaines and we’re off to Heves, Eger and Egerszalók for a nice calm weekend of wine and hot springs. Wait - CETPers, drunk, half-clothed in bathing suits? Oh, how could that possibly lead to any sort of drama?

Orientalist and Autistic

Recently I’ve gotten interested in reading blogs from various parts of the Middle East. Why? I don’t know. It’s certainly not any sort of political interest - yesterday I read something about “Bush, Cheney, and Rice” and my first thought was a Homer-esque, “Yummm, rice.” Maybe at heart I’m just an old-fashioned Orientalist who likes reading about people’s exotic, fascinating lives (thank you, Kim Mills). Some of my new favorites are:

- Saudi Jeans - life and times of a university student in Riyadh
- The Religious Police - if I were funny, this man has the sense of humor I'd want
- Baghdad Burning - a blog so good, it was apparently turned into a book
- A Star from Mosul - jury still out, I just started reading this one
- Tell Me a Secret - I don't like the music, but incredible stories
- Anoniblog - a website which explains how to blog anonymously

It’s scary to think that there are still places on earth where something you write might get you thrown in jail, beaten, or killed. Actually, even though my logical brain knows this is true, the whitebread solid-middle-class American part of me can’t really wrap my head around it. Even as I was writing, “it’s scary to think blah blah blah”, I felt more “this is how I should feel” than “yes, it is truly scary and I do in fact feel sorrowful for people who are oppressed in this way.” Expected emotion rather than actual. That’s autistic tendencies, I suppose. It’s just words. I suppose I can say this because of my complete lack of talent with (or even control over) them.

Birthday Party (not mine, not yet)

Last night, we celebrated Juli’s quarter-century birthday at Jazz. Highlights included:

* In the pre-party category: the fact that I went to Hold and bought Juli’s gift, which included a lengthy conversation with the proprietress Zita on the topic of Juli’s tastes and my budget, all in Hungarian. I rock.

* As I was talking to Ági about her holiday, she broke into a fit of smiling animation when telling me how at the lousy party she and Geri went to, the first song they heard was “Emily’s song.” I spent a brief minute trying to remember what this might be (any guesses, reader....?) before she started humming, yes, “Don’tcha” by Pussy Cat Dolls. Wonderful.

* Watching Anita and Jacek, two fully grown adults, perfectly sober (as far as I know), playfully ruffling each others hair. All together now: aww......

* The Jazz serves a limited menu of food things, so as a birthday treat, Ági ordered for vegetarian Juli a plate of what was basically all the vegetables the cook could round up, deep-fat-fried. I helped her sample them. Deep-fat-fried broccoli? Absolutely amazing.

* Finally, towards the end of the evening, Geri taught us a drinking game which seemed remarkably like Circle of Death played with dice. But with fewer rules: roll a 9, person before you drinks. Roll an 11, person after you drinks. Roll double, you drink the number on one die and assign the others. Roll a four, grab your nose. Roll a 1 plus a 2, you become the Pigeon, and if anyone rolls a 3 on a single die after that, you drink. That’s it, I think. I miss Beloit.

I have also been up to various purposeful activities, such as coming up with new classroom games and discovering some incredible new blogs. But that'll come tomorrow.

First Weekend of the New Year

Gaines, understandably pleading jet-lag, stayed in Mezõberény Friday night but arrived in Szolnok Saturday morning. We had a generally good chill time, watching MTV (which she had feared maybe I would be sick of... silly girl), hanging out with Chad, and eating all three Saturday meals out: gyros, Pizza Pronto, and Fisherman’s Restaurant. Also included in the program were taking in a basketball game (where the Szolnoki Olaj soundly trounced their Kaposvári rivals) and watching About Schmidt, a well-made but generally depressing movie. Sunday morning followed in the same vein: brunch and MTV. And... and that’s it. An excellent way to start off a new season of visiting-weekends.

Speaking of weekends: several discussions with Gaines, trying to remember what happened which weekend, prompted me to make up the following list. I don’t know if anyone else other than me is at all interested in a walk down memory lane, but here goes:

August 27-28 - our last weekend of orientation; on Sunday we departed for our various cities (and villages)
Sept 3-4 - first weekend in out towns; most people stuck close to home
Sept 10-11 - the Gulyás Festival in Szolnok
Sept 17-18 - the Paprika Festival in Kalocsa
Sept 24-25 - I went to Budapest and hung out with Roz; others mostly went to Hernad and hung out in Laura’s school, and later in ditches
Oct 1-2 - Roz and I pleaded poorgirl-ality and didn’t make it away from Szolnok; others were hosted by Yerik and Jenna in Nyíregyháza
Oct 8-9 - Chad and I hosted another Szolnok weekend, which included both mini-golf and a high school party
Oct 15-16 - I was in Szolnok doing laundry all weekend; others...?
Oct 22-23 - weekend in Mezõberény, including the Sausage Festival in Békéscsaba
Oct 29-30 - Erdély, Transylvania
Nov 5-6 - myself in Szolnok; others...?
Nov 12-13 - again in Szolnok, with basketball and squash
Nov 19-20 - once more in Szolnok, getting stir-crazy
Nov 26-27 - wonderful Thanksgiving in Nyíregyháza
Dec 3-4 - I went to Szeged; I think others congregated in Budapest
Dec 10-11 - the great Budapest Birthday Bash weekend
Dec 17-18 - some people flew home; we gathered in Hernad for Jell-O and baking
Dec 24-25 - Christmas, obviously. We were spread out over the globe
And New Years Weekend, which is still too recent to need reiteration.

Egyedül (American-less)

Song of today: Area by the Futureheads

Your area's in ruin, Your area's in... ruin, Your area is free,
When it gets to the point that you're finished with me,
When it gets to the point that you're finished with me and all the first are ready.
Very certain that she has to go, where do you come from, what do you know?

They’re gone. After two weeks of various combinations of Americans living in my flat, the last one left today. Vacation truly over. Back to talking to myself. Back to cooking for one; back to not sharing the remote; back to not sharing the bathroom; back to sleeping alone, pantsless, in my own bed; back to drinking alone; back to amusing myself; back to obsessive text messaging; back to eating on my own schedule, on my own tastes. Back to solitude. Well, for 24 hours, at least - hopefully Gaines will come for the weekend.

One of my goals for the new year, one I have both the means and the will to keep, is to not spend any more weekends moping alone in Szolnok, unless I absolutely need to recharge. I have to either have visitors, or get out. Weekends keep me sane like very little else.

Happy New Year!

Theme song for the New Year: Foo Fighters, DOA

Yeah, you know I did it, it's over and I feel fine
Nothing you can say is gonna change my mind
Waited, and I wait at the longest night
Nothing like the taste of sweet decline
et cetera. And no one's getting out of here alive.

The remainder of our sweet decline, I mean break, played out about like you would think: we sat around, we drank, we watched a lot of MTV and movies. One day, we ventured out of the house to go see King Kong in the theater. Despite being dubbed, it proved to be an excellent movie - it even cured a hangover!

On Friday, Erin arrived, with some minor train-related drama. I had a mini-adventure which involved going to Bp. Keleti at 5 am, then waiting in the freezing bitter cold for hours, for a train that was three hours late, and which Erin wasn’t on anyway. But in the end, I bought a new hat, and she made it to Szolnok all by herself so all's well that... blah blah.

The other arrivals on Friday night were Kat, Jeremy, and Harpswell, freshly returned from their Grecian conquests. We had a relatively calm night without leaving the apartment to brave the nasty wind. Saturday morning, the three of them got up at an absurdly early hour (8 am! It’s still break, people!) to make it to their hostel in Budapest. The rest of us lazed around until mid afternoon, when we finally left the house. A highly entertaining train ride, involving beer, music, dancing, and random blurts of radio, got us into the city slightly before dark. Having not found anywhere better or cheaper, we begged a room at the Kollegium.

After dinner at Marchello’s, we met up with Kat, Jeremos, Harpswell, and Steve, their Aussie roommate from the hostel. After walking up and down the same street a couple times, we found Harpswell’s friend’s Tibi’s flat, where we made ourselves at home. As is usually the case when the Americans go anywhere, none of the Hungarians were dancing when we came in. We changed that.

We danced and drank right up until midnight. Actually, I had forgotten to be paying attention to the time, but the sudden shouting of “Tizenöt!... tizennégy!... tizenhárom!..” got my attention. Proudly, I was able to count backwards right along with the screaming Hungarians (Laura and I had been practicing earlier). Champagne (and beer) flowed. We all puszi-puszi-ed (the cheek kiss). Some people puszi-ed more than others, but hey, it’s holidays.

After Tibi’s, we headed to a bar/club down the street. I’m torn between which was better: the bonfire in the courtyard, the people capering madly around it, or the snowball fight that ensued. Or who knows?

Well, that’s half the story. I’m tired and I need to consider what to write further, so tune in later for the rest.

Movie Madness (and further adventures with my hot water)

First, the continuation of the water saga: for the past few days, once again, my hot water has been working off and on. It finally cut out yesterday, after I had showered but before Laura had. She ended up taking a two-inch bath using water boiled on the stove. Just like a real third-world country!

Today, I decided that official holidays were over, and if my contact teacher didn’t want to be bothered, she should never have given me her cell number. I messaged her, pestered, and she called the school. The vízszerelõ (water mechanic guy, who has been to my house three times, and each time claimed that he had fixed the problem) was unreachable, so the school sent over Páli, the older of the two handymen, who is well used to dealing with me and my lack of knowledge concerning gas, water, and Hungarian appliances. He showed up, tinkered, told me repeatedly how incompetent the vízszerelõ is, explained to me that everything in my flat is old and that's why it keeps breaking, fixed my broken faucet, called up the vízszerelõ to tell him what an idiot he is, fixed my water (for now, at least), and told me to call him if anything else went wrong. Páli is my new hero.

So, about the movies... although Laura and I remained dedicated devotees of MTV (and the newly discovered Animal Planet), we’ve also become great fans of the Turner Classic Movies Christmas Collection, which plays two or three English movies every night. So far we’ve watched the following:

Saturday night: part of The Searchers, followed by Hearts of the West (with link and quotes in the previous entry).

Sunday night: Kelly’s Heroes and Marlowe. The latter included quotes such as:
Marlowe saying to Bruce Lee: “You’re pretty light on your feet. Are you just a little bit gay?” and then Bruce Lee cartwheels off a building in rage.

Thug: Car.
Marlowe: Beep beep.
Thug: Car.
Marlowe: For a guy with a limited vocabulary, you sure do manage to get your point across.

Monday night: Cool Hand Luke and The Big Sleep. I don’t have quotes to back it up, but Humphrey Bogart was hilarious. Mostly due to the fact that racy dialogue of 1946 is still damn funny today.

Tonights is... neither Laura nor I remember. So you’ll have to tune in tomorrow (or whenever) to find out.

Poor Girls' Christmas Festivities, so far

On the first day of Christmas (Wednesday), I spent the day: rediscovering the joy of sleeping in (until 9 o’clock, at least), followed by a midday of collaging and drinking, completed by an afternoon and evening of Christmas shopping with Juli.

On the second day of Christmas (Thursday), Laura arrived for the duration of the holiday. We bought beer and food (including some highly unsuccessful “bratwurst”) and settled down to an afternoon of watching MTV and Animal Planet. We also called and messaged persistently the three unlucky people still in Hungary: Janos, Jenna and Yerik. We convinced the latter two to visit.

On the third day of Christmas (Friday), Jenna and Yerik arrived. As we were waiting for them at the train station, we discovered an amazing secondhand store in the second floor. In Hungary, they sell old clothes by the kilo, and at this particular store, the prices drop each day of the week until Friday (the day we were there), it’s 200 forint. So, for a grand total of 150 Ft (75 cents), I bought two shirts and a pair of pants. Laura made out similarly well.

The couple from NYR arrived. After massive grocery shopping, we came home and made tacos and hot wine. Best holiday dinner yet. In the evening, we headed over to Panorama, where we proceeded to drink, try to play good music between the techno, make fun of the drunken Hungarians (particularly the one who fell asleep on a bench, still wearing a plastic cowboy hat), and try to score free drinks (failed). After a couple hours, when we finally got some good music going, we got up and danced. Then the drunken Hungarians made fun of us. But one of their girls got up on a chair and did a sweet little dance that involved clothing coming off so I don’t think they should laugh too hard.

On the fourth day of Christmas (Saturday), the four of us had further cooking adventures involving the misuse of meat. Namely, some of the saltiest bacon on the face of the earth, and the “bratwurst” from days ago. Even Jenna’s cooking prowess couldn’t save the day. She did make us some great eggs...

Laura and I spent the rest of the day as we do best: watching MTV. We watched the European Music Awards again; just as good this time around. Um... I think we cooked something. In the evening, despite good intentions of waiting ‘til Christmas to tear into presents, we tore most of them open. Then we watched Hearts of the West, a movie which defies description, but contained such wonderful quotes as the following:

Andy Griffith saying about a pants-wearing woman: “Could be that her sexual interests are deviant.”
Random cowboy saying: “I know one tenderfoot gonna get his pecker shot shot off, he don’t turn in.”
Jeff Bridges saying to his girlfriend, after finding another man in her flat: “It’s just like back home - every time we have super supper, I get a peppercorn on the first swallow!”
Mull on that one.

Today, the fifth day of Christmas, isn’t yet over... so I’ll write more tomorrow.

The Sweet Taste of Freedom

I’m free! I’m free! For the remaining days of December, I have exactly one obligation (meeting Erin at the train station). No more school, no more private lessons, no more anything. Just lazing, watching MTV, eating and drinking.

This evening, my school had it’s end-of-the-year-and-Christmas party. We sat at the tables in the teacher’s room, which had been rotated and decorated. They brought out food and poured champagne. We were not allowed to touch either, however, until after students had recited some Christmas poems and played us some music. This was followed by a dramatic reading of a super-long poem, a tribute to Kassai and the teachers. Each teacher was mentioned and his or her various quirks or exploits mentioned. Finally we toasted, and ate. From what I hear, at some schools, the alcohol was flowing: not so at my school. We got one glass of champagne each. It was funny to see the stodgy older teachers get tipsy and jolly off just this. By 7, the other English teachers were standing and saying their good-byes, so I made my exit with them. But not before picking up my gift bags from the school. Everyone got the same selection of gifts, which include: a bag of coffee, a stick of sausage, a bottle of champagne, and a large bag of laundry powder. I pondered the meaning of this last item on the walk home. Is it something traditional? Does it signify the washing away of the old year? Is it a hold over from past times when major laundry was a once-a-year occurrence? In the end, I settled on the most logical explanation: my school is super cheap. But if anyone else received the same present, or has a better explanation, let me know.

It's apt... APT!

As we were trekking from Laura’s flat to the train station yesterday, Yerik made a rather crafty observation: he compared the CETPers to Roma. My immediate reaction (proof that I’ve been in Hungary too long, see below) was hesitation, offense even. But he laid out his comparison cleverly: we walk around in gangs; we drink copious amounts of alcohol; we’re poor; we dress differently; we speak our own language; people frequently stare at us with bewilderment and uncertainty. Really, between us and the gypsies, I’m not sure who the comparison is less kind to.

On a completely different topic, today I got to celebrate a completely inane and pointless event: today was my 119th day here in Hungary. What does this mean? Since last time I stayed for 118 days (yes, I counted), this is now the longest I’ve ever lived in Hungary. What makes it seem so odd to me is the fact that last time, I was already home by now. This time, I’m not even halfway done. If I were in a worse mood, that would depress me. But I’m not. Get thee behind me, gloom!

And because I just killed an entire afternoon reading trivia, check out this website: www.mindlesscrap.com.

Unrelated Incidents

The title is meant as a semi-warning. Just in case you expected me to write continuous, flowing prose: it’s not going to happen tonight. Right now, disjointed paragraphs is what I feel up to.

So how did my second Oxford class measure up to the first? I don’t know, because none of them showed up for class on Friday. Well, Jacek did, but since it was only him, I got to cut out early and make it to Laura’s a whole half hour earlier. It was dark, cold, and snowy. I got about 20 yards (or meters, if you prefer) down the highway and when a car stopped and offered me a ride. I debated with myself, for a good 5 seconds, if getting into strangers’ car, on a dark, cold and snowy night was a good idea. It was, and I did, and I made it to Laura’s. Unfortunately, Laura and Mariah had started walking out to meet me halfway, and neither had their cell phones on them. Long story short, they made it back, we drank, we had Jell-O. I love Jell-O. We called many, many people, some at unacceptably late hours. Sorry, guys.

In the morning, Laura’s bathroom exploded. There was a pool in the bathroom for a while. They shut the water off to the whole building, which was a problem because Laura, Mariah and I (some more than others) were in a certain Saturday-morning state where being able to drink water was crucial. Various town-dwellers stopped by to examine the excitement at the American’s apartment. Eventually, the plumber from Miskolc arrived and fixed the problem. Life went on. Other Americans arrived. We drank, made cookies, watched Monty Python. An excellent weekend.

On the way home, I was on the train from hell. It was as hot as a furnace, filled with people, and many of the windows were painted shut. Maybe the heat fried my brain, because as I was falling in and out of semiconsciousness, for the first time I was hit by a smidgen of Christmas-related homesickness. Part of it was the knowledge that some people (Chad and Gaines) are already home, and that several more are leaving this week. My every-second-Sunday phone call home didn’t help either: I mentioned getting a cat to my mom. She asked what I would do with it at the end of the year. I balked for a second, then blurted out something like, “Oh, well, maybe I’ll stay a couple of years... or maybe I’ll give it to someone else.”

I guess I never realized that she assumed I was only staying one year, because it’s such a given to me now, and to everyone that I’ve met here, that I’ll be staying here pretty much indefinitely. What can I do in the States? I’m not qualified to work as anything worthwhile, I don’t have the money or the scores to go to grad school yet. Here, simply by having had the luck to be born and raised in an English-speaking country, I’ve become a hot commodity. Why would I not take advantage of that?

After that conversation, I banished my gloom by decorating my tree. Yes, I bought a tree, a cheap, plastic, Cora tree. It’s a good size; with the special branches on top, it’s almost as tall as me. I decorated with tinsel and szaloncukor. So it’s scrawny, but shiny. I like it.

Wow, this turned out almost coherent. Good job, Em. I'm amazing.

Merry Christmas to me (or, being corny: The Four Christmas Gifts)

In an earlier entry, I think I promised to stop bragging about working at Oxford school. Fair warning, I’m about to reneg on that promise, but I think I have ample justification. Judge for yourself.

Today was the last meeting of my elementary-level class. It was a small class, only four students today; from the four of them I received four wonderful gifts (and maybe this will get cheesy, but too bad). The first gift was the fact that although I felt under-prepared at the beginning of class, we ended up not even using any of the materials I had. We just talked, simple, wonderful conversation, for the full 90 minutes. I told them about my American holidays, they told me about their Hungarian ones. We explained, we shared traditions, we laughed.

The second gift(s) were the physical, touchable kind (edible as well). They gave me sweets, a candle holder, a box of chocolates, and a bottle of Tokaji that Juli informed me was actually quite nice (read: expensive). Looking over the list, it probably doesn’t seem like much, so I guess to me it really was the thought that counted.

Gift three is the humor (mostly unintentional) and kindness they used in filling out their evaluations of me. Overall, their single complaint - and only from two of them - was that I talk too fast. But I was interesting, I was funny, I was nice, I was good. Which leads to gift number four, the fact that the majority of them will be continuing in the new classes next year. Maybe I oversell it to myself, but to my mind, nothing could verify my abilities as a teacher more than the fact that the students would willingly return for more.

All right, that was cheesy. But I won’t apologize. Besides, I can have some cheese now that I have a kick-ass bottle of wine to go with.

Another weekend, in Budapest

Well, I didn’t die. I’ll pause for a moment to let the obviousness (yes, it’s a word) of that statement sink in... okay, moving on. My gift turned out to be from the big man himself: St Nick, via Juli, gave me a bagful of Hungarian chocolates. Plus a packet of golden branches, which Juli explained is the equivalent of getting coal in America, only the bad children get them. I got just a small bundle. Hmph, St Nick needs to check his list better.

I also received some wonderful gifts on Friday night. First was the fact that both Laura and Jenna decided to show up together in Szolnok for the Oxford party. The party turned out not to be a drag after all (not that I ever thought it would be, ahem). Actually, I think we might have had a better time than the folks in Budapest, because when we drunk-dialled them at midnight, they were still hanging out, seemingly sober, at Roz’s.

But I get ahead of myself. The first part of the party went off as planned: musical performances, little plays, singing, and Chad’s (and Laura’s and my) presentation about American Christmas. After, Anita assigned each of us Americans to sit at a table of Hungarians and force English conversation with them. Oh, fun. Eventually, people drifted home, and Jenna, Laura, and I spent a good chunk of the evening talking to Csaba, one of my adult students, and his friend Geri. We discussed which country has the hottest people, why Hungarian women don’t drink beer, traded slang for various body parts and functions, and other vitally important things. I was forced to do the Gaines-face several times. It was great. If I were grading these classes, Csaba would totally get an “A.” He also gave me a Christmas card, my first one of the season. Another student, Dávid, gave me a pogacsa, because in the last lesson we talked about food and he remembered my raving about them. They’re my new favorite class.

Even after Csaba and Geri took off at midnight, we continued hanging out and drinking and dancing with Jacek and Dóri. I think this was the point we called the flock in Budapest, or they called us... who knows. When we finally left, Chad and Juli took off before we could hitch a ride with them, so Jenna and Laura and I walked a few blocks before giving up and hopping into a cab.

The next morning, we waited around in Szolnok, walked through the Christmas market, ate more gyros, and finally called Chad to make plans, only to find out that the punk had gone to Budapest without us. We plotted revenge. Eventually, we made our way to the train station, but not before stopping at a csemege to buy booze. Lots and lots of booze. And various other things for mixing. Drinking on the train turned out to be a surprisingly good idea; I think I may have to make it a regular habit. So we drank through the train ride. Drank through the metro ride. Drank through the extremely long walk across Árpád híd and to Roz’s. We were very happy to see everyone there.

The rest of the evening played out pretty much like every other time CETP gets together: we drank a lot. Ate pizza. Went to a club. Danced. Various people made out. Same old, same old. I remember thinking at one point (and, according to Allison, saying aloud several times), “I wanna go back to Szolnok. I’m going home now.” But I didn’t.

Sunday morning, again typical. Lazed around. Eventually, everyone was up and dressed. Janos ventured out and brought back Burger King and beer. Hajni stopped by; it was great to see her again. People took trains out at various times. I ended up on the same train with Mariah, Laura, and Jenna. After drama with the train tickets and reservations, we ended up sitting together in the dining car.

I don’t know what else to report. This entry’s really boring, but what I can I say? Nothing interesting happened that hasn’t happened, to some extent, every single other weekend we get together. Small things, sure, but the basic elements are all the same, since they have been from the beginning: booze, hormones, drama. Just sometimes the order changes. Not that I don’t love it, I really do, in all sincerity. I’m just pissy today. I’ve been feeling ‘twitchy’ lately. I don’t know any other way to describe it: it’s like a continuous caffeine high, like I have too much energy buzzing inside me, like I have to keep fidgeting to keep from exploding, like I want to run away. I don’t like it, it feels uncertain. Usually when I get twitchy, it precipitates me doing something impulsive. Frequently stupid.

This is particularly stressy, because my single December goal (other than various food-related ones) was dedramafication. Jenna and Laura agreed that this is an excellent goal, not only for me but for the world in general. I am failing.

English Competition: Day Three

Just a quick note about the final day of the competition phase of English week: today was a game for 5th and 6th graders in teams of 4, like a quiz game show or something. There was a complicated scoring system that involved a lot of adding, and which changed frequently. Despite this (or possibly, because of it) one of Kassai’s teams tied for first place. I don’t remember the other school exactly, either Hunyadi Mátyás or Mátyás Király.

I should write more, but I’m too distracted: Juli sprang it on me, just before they dropped me off, that there is some sort of gift waiting for me at Oxford. We played a super-fast game of 20 questions, from which I learned that it is of indeterminable size, left by a male, either very old or very young, who may or may not be one of my students from Oxford, Kassai, or somewhere else, and who Chad met yesterday; that it’s a present just for me, not in return for something I did but just because. And that I have to wait until tomorrow at 10 am to get it, because after I failed to remind Juli that she had something to give me, she and Chad refused to indulge me by returning to Oxford to get it.

If I die in my sleep tonight, it’ll be from anticipation.

Kassai Úti Á. I. English Competition: Day Two

If day one of the competition was fun and games, today was all business. Today, the judges - who were myself, Chad (aka “Varga’s American”), and Anita from Oxford - had a solemn responsibility: to determine the best English pronunciation from a selection of 6th graders and 7th graders. There were two in each grade representing Kassai. They each recited one story they had prepared, plus one that they had just been given. We picked 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places in each grade. I don’t even remember who got the 2nd and 3rd, because:

Kassai’s students walked away with both First Places.

And just to dispel doubts, I did not rig the jury. Both of the first place winners were just so clearly above and beyond all the other students, and Chad and Anita both independently came to the same conclusions before I even put in a word. So congratulations to Feri and Márton. For the first time, I have a warm and cozy pride-like feeling towards Kassai.

Kassai Úti Általános Iskola English Competition: Day One

I rescind my gloomy statement at the end of the previous entry. I do have something to keep my interest, for this week at least: my school is having a week of various English activities. There are recitals, competitions with other schools, plays and an English newsletter (for which I was interviewed last week, and had mostly forgotten about). And guess who gets to help judge all the competitions? That’s right, yours truly. I think half the reason Kassai organized the events was to show off their native speaker.

This afternoon was plays and poems by the 3rd and 4th graders of Kassai plus three or four (I couldn’t tell) other primary schools. There was no judging, because the children were too young, and they all got certificates of merit for participating. Highlights included:

- the 3rd grade girl in miniskirt and tank-top who recited with a cherubic smile, “I like coffee, I like tea, I like boys and boys like me.”
- when the wolf in “The Three Little Pigs” missed his line and improvised with “Rrrr! I eat you!”
- that Kassai’s 3rd graders chose “Brother John” (“Frére Jacques”) as an traditional English song.
- the big finale of Rákóczi School’s 3rd grade dance number: fire. They gave each little angel and devil (and old man, and granny, and cat, and dog) a sparkler to wave around in the dramatically darkened gymnasium. Amazingly, no one was harmed.

The other highlight of my day was when, in the course of talking about what we want for Christmas, one of my 8th graders offered to be my boyfriend. The conversation went something like:
me: For Christmas, I would like a digital camera, and some new clothes, and-
him: Underwear? A bra?
me, slightly thrown off: Um, yeah, maybe. Maybe my boyfriend will buy me some. I mean-
him: Maybe I can be your boyfriend?
me: I think that might not be legal. Among other things.
him: Yes, yes. I’m only joking.
me: Okay, moving on...

In most cases, this whole episode would make me terribly uncomfortable. Because it was this specific student, it came off as being just sweet and funny.

Weekend in Szeged

Having spent the last two weekends in Szolnok, then Nyíregyháza, this weekend I moved a step further towards a real city by visiting Szeged with Juli, Chad, and Janos. Any weekend that can involve such varied amusements as death metal one day and ice skating the next has to be a great one. Highlights, in roughly chronological order, include:

- Gyongyi, the kind and generous friend of Juli’s who vacated her apartment for a night so we could have it. My favorite part was the fact that she forgot to bring extra clothes to her boyfriends, so we had to deliver them to her this morning, and she came out to meet us wearing only a big, blue bathrobe.

- getting Juli to drink alcohol for the first time (theme song: “Californication”)... and having her admit the next day that she liked it.

- the first bar we went to was this cave-like cellar, in which the walls were covered by the scrawlings and doodlings of past patrons. My favorite: “Az alkohol az emberiség ellensége” (alcohol is the enemy of mankind).

- the four giant men sitting hunched on stools like gargoyles, guarding the entryway of the second club we went to

- the Hungarian death metal band with the trombone player... surprisingly good

- when Janos bought me beer in a bottle, just in case I needed to bash someone’s head with it. Apparently I looked twitchy enough to take someone out. I did try to strangle Chad later in the car, but only because he tried to crush my kneecaps.

- Chad trying to cheer up the depressed Hungarian teenagers sitting in a McDonalds at midnight by giving them his Happy-Meal toy and Coke.

- Janos knocking the picture off the wall at 4.30 in the morning, making a huge crash and nearly taking out Gyongyi’s massive towers of CDs

- Chad wearing Gyongyi’s red and black rayon shirt, two sizes too small... and actually letting us take pictures of him, which will be posted here as soon as possible

- seeing the sights of Szeged with Juli as our expert tour guide - namely, the Dom tér (pictures here and here), then walking around, through the Christmas markets, and drinking hot wine

- going ice skating, not falling, having a beer, skating more, and still not falling. Amazing.

- two fantastic lunches: chili on Saturday, followed by Mexican food on Sunday. My usual diet of pasta, bread and butter has lost all appeal.

To be perfectly honest, after spending such a great lazy, chill weekend, most of my normal routine has lost all appeal. Right now, I’m living for Christmas break. Weekends have to keep me sane until then.

A month in review

First and foremost, I apologize again for the cop-out and general poor quality of the previous entry. I have no excuse but to say once again that the feast-booze-lethargy combination fried my brain.

Getting to the business of the day: if you recall (as I’m certain you all don’t), at the beginning of the month (the 6th; you can read the entry here) I created a list of “November Goals.” How did I do? Hm, not great. I would give myself a 3. Or a B-. The goals and results follow:

- Home repairs and interior decoration. Hot water fixed, check. Furniture moved, albeit slowly and painfully, check. Postcards made into wall art, which I look at every day and still makes me happy, supercheck. I’m satisfied that I’ve fulfilled this goal to the best of my financial and physical means.

- Getting a library card. I had a meeting with a new potential private student, and she chose the library as a neutral meeting place. We met in the library entryway before walking to my place. This was the closest I got. This goal: complete failure.

- Making onion rings. I tried. They were okay. I feel they could only improve with practice, so I’ll make that an informal December goal. Note to self: perfect the art of onion rings.

- Collage and fabric. Obviously, rubber cement made my “Thankful List.” Rach, you’ll be happy to hear that I’m back on track. I’ve made two 4x6s, which I’m sure is pathetic next to however many wonders you’re cranking out. Like the onion rings, this is one to continue next month.

- International Driver’s License. Near-complete failure. The only thing I did was take some passport photos. Whenever they get developed, I can move to whatever the next step is.

- And being a better teacher in general. Well, the whole long month of November had been one long downhill for this goal. The first, second week after break I was good. Oh, I was so good. I had lesson plans, I had attentive students, I even had some days when I was excited for my 7.30 classes. Third week, I was mostly back to normal: some good lessons, some bad. Some preparation, some nothing. This last and fourth week: I’m awful. Apathetic. Unsympathetic. Unplanned. I’m hoping that next week, as a fresh week of the last month, I’ll become inspired again.

So that’s it. I’m working on a list of December goals, but so far I haven’t come up with any that are interesting or publishable. Next week.

Untitled

To continue directly from the end of the previous entry: there was a massive feast. And yes, booze. Way too much. That, combined with an excessive amount of lying around, has effectively atrophied my muscles. Walking up and down, up and down the stairs at school today felt as if I were being beaten. It was a wise man who first proclaimed, alcohol is poison.

Pain aside: an excellent weekend all around. Friday afternoon, Gaines arrived. We did some shopping and catching up (not having seen each other for a whole... 3 weeks? But really, reading blog stories just isn’t as good as having them told in person.) Friday evening, Anita (from Oxford) invited us, Chad, Juli, Támas & Dóri to her house for dinner. Her husband Jacek (who is in my class at Oxford) not only made us a fantastic meal, he also kept the wine, beer, and goldwasser flowing.

Saturday morning, Gaines and I actually made it to our 7.52 train. Chadwick did not, and caught a later one.

...continued the following day (now Tuesday morning):
all right, I admit defeat. Although a typical entry on this blog inevitably falls short of perfection, in this case, it’s just hopeless. Two days of mulling and several false starts have given me no insight as to how to properly record the events of the weekend. Maybe in a week or several I will try again. Until then, I refer you to the storytelling abilities of Jeremy, the elegant prose of Gaines, and the pictures and text of Yerik. Sorry if this is a cop out, but I am a fundamentally lazy person (as home-friends plus my fellow Poorgirl can attest to), and I won't attempt something when three other people have already done it, and done it so spectacularly.

Lazy Girl out.

Thankful

Although maybe it’s a bit cliché, today I can earnestly say that there are several things I am purely and singularly thankful for. In no particular order (except for the first, which is more important than the rest combined), they are:

1) Hot Water! Yes, indeed. After, wait let me count.... after 40 days (and 40 nights, how convenient), hot water has been restored to my humble flat. Oh, the joy of doing dishes. Oh, the wonder of washing my hands with burning hot water. Oh, the exquisiteness of a warm or hot shower - and the ability to choose! It’s beyond description

2) Oxford School. I know I’ve gloated about this before, so I’ll keep it short. I love them. They’re great. Thank you. That’s it.

3) Juli (from Oxford), who has become my new Hungarian teacher. In addition to being generally an awesome person, I discovered today that she is also an amazing teacher. Very patient, which is probably my number-one requirement. She actually told me that when we were “conversing,” I didn’t make a single grammar mistake. I don’t believe her for a second, but it was kind anyway.

4) Art Supplies! (Like hot water, this also deserves an exclamation point) With the help of Item Number 3 (Juli), today I discovered a little art store on Szapáry út. We went in looking for Item Number 5 (see below), and I discovered a whole wonderful world, one I had almost forgotten, of fabric, papers, floss, beads of any shape and form. And paint for Laura.

5) Rubber Cement. Rachael, I think you might be the only one to understand my appreciation for such a mundane item. But I didn’t have it before, and you can imagine my distress at having only glue to work with. Thankful, indeed.

6) Attempts at Baking. I say attempts, because the second batch is yet cooking. And I haven’t tasted anything. It looks a bit sketchy. But smells delicious. And, in the end, I’m thankful that I could successfully cook anything without a recipe, without certain ingredients, without a real oven, and without pans.

7) The traditionals: Family, Friends, and Health. Stop me before I descend into sheer, tearful corniness. But what can I say? Family: it isn’t my first holiday away from home, but I miss you and I love you (in my book, even hot water comes a distant second to you). Friends: the new ones I’ve found here, the old ones I’ve re-found, so to speak, and the home-friends who are kind enough to keep in touch, even though I bore them with the same stories over and over (for you, hot water can be moved back to third place). Last but not least, health, which I am especially thankful for due to my recent recovery (recent being within the last few hours) of a quick-but-killer 48-hour cold.

On that note, now that I’m healthy again, I am ready to go to Nyíregyháza and make myself sick stuffing my face with various goodies. And booze, god willing.

Snow, Glorious Snow!!!

First snowfall of the season (not counting the sparse flakes on Saturday morning)! As much as I enjoyed the snowball fight with my students, their complete inability to concentrate, the choice English words written in the playground snow, and the discovery that my sneakers have no traction, I’m tied for my two all-time favorite snow-related sights today:

1 - the look on the face of one of my brattiest 7th-graders when my snowball nailed him square in the chest.

2 - the 3rd-grader who had made an 8-inch snowman and was carrying it around like a baby.

No, who am I kidding? I’m much more spiteful than I am sentimental; number 1 wins hands down.

Being a Real Teacher

I will say right now that most of the time, I don’t take my job at Kassai seriously. I’m trying to change that (one of my “November goals,” if you remember). This past week, I can say with some pride, was a success. And this, despite the fact that in several other ways, it was a disaster. It started on Wednesday, when my 8a wasn’t in their classroom. Having played “let’s make Emily look for us” with them once before, I searched the school for them until eventually, someone told me that they really weren’t anywhere, but had gone to an open house at one of the high schools. I savored a free hour. I should have known it would haunt me - the following day they decided to meet during my normally-free second hour. Which no one told me about until the school’s handyman showed up at my door and announced that I had a class. Yes, right now.

The remainder of my misadventures were due to the fact that the three regular English teachers all absconded on Thursday and Friday to attend teacher training in Nyíregyháza. So what happened to their classes? Like some terrible game of musical chairs, the students were just funneled into whichever class had empty desks. Regardless of subject or level. I ended up with classes of 33 8th graders, 35 5th graders, 20-some 7th graders, and 28 6th graders. Next time, I’m going to insist that I need English training as well.

In any case, in the spirit of being a real teacher, here are some of the activities that I successfully pulled off this week. Some are more time-fillers than they are educational, but they served their purpose well.

Activity: Following Orders

This comes from Penguin English Photocopiables: Pair Work, although I altered it a bit. When I did it, I did all the steps on the board to show the kids what I meant.

1) Have your students draw two grids (A and B), each 5 squares by 5 squares. Try to stress that they shouldn’t draw little tiny squares.

2) Have them write the number 1 in the center square of both grids. After that, they shouldn’t do anything else with grid B; set it aside for later. They should fill in grid A by drawing or writing something in each square. Things to draw could be: a heart, a circle, a tree, a house, your face, a dog, a cat, a bike, a car, etc. Things to write could be: your name, my name, your favorite color, your age, how many people are in this room, a word starting with “m,” your favorite subject, etc.

3) Have the students work in pairs. The goal is to have their partner fill in their grid B with what the other has in their grid A. You can put the following sentences on the board to help them: Start at the square with the one. Start at the square with the face. Go one square up / down. Go two squares left / right. Draw a cow. Write my name.

Variations and other things to consider: you can vary the things to draw/things to write. In some classes, you might want to control this part more (in my 6th grade, I heard one student say, “Go right two squares and draw an Arab terrorist.” When I asked to see his paper, sure enough, this was one of his drawings).

My fifth graders were terribly confused by “go right one square and write ...” So I tried using north, south, east and west instead. This went over better.

With the younger classes (and the ones I didn’t trust to work by themselves), I had them draw one empty grid, and I had one student give the “orders” to the entire class.

I did this activity with several classes, including 5th, 6th, and 7th graders, and they all seemed to enjoy it. I even did it with a combined group of 28 of my worst-behaved 6th graders, and since it managed to hold their attention for 40 minutes, this game has earned a special place in my heart.

Activity: Making Similes

Copied from Penguin English Photocopiables: Top Class Activities. But even without the book, all you have to do as prep is make up two lists of words that the students know. The words should be mostly nouns, but some can be verb phrases.

Write on the board “A is like B because....” and some examples. The one from the book was, “Love is like learning English because both are easy at first.” I don’t think I have to explain too much more; have the students make up, orally or in writing, similes using the words you provide. Some of my favorites, for either their insight, humor, lack of understanding, or all of the above:

Insightful:
A war is like a thief because it is stealing lives.
A fashion like sex because it always change each other.
Funny:
A friend is like a toilet because you need it.
A woman is like a dog because it always loves you.
The kiss is like the strawberry cause they are both red and sweet. (This one is funny to me and probably me alone, because my normal description of strawberries is not “red and sweet,” but usually “red and toxic.”)
A man is like a zoo, because he is crazy like an elephant.
Just wrong:
Teenagers like pizza because it is delicious.

Activity: Conversation on a train

Again stolen from Top Class Activities. Depending on the level and creativity of the students, you might want to give them a handout. Or you might just go to it. The idea is this: working in groups of 2-4 students, pretend you are traveling on a days-long train ride. You have been on the train several hours and no one has spoken yet. Decide who you are, your background, and why you are traveling. Then make up a conversation with the other people in your train compartment.

The book offers the following characters as possibilities: a woman with a child, a travelling [sic] student, an English teacher, an electrician, a film director, a spy (my students latched on this one), a photographer, a Chinese, Russian, or French person, a prisoner on the run, a soldier going home, someone who is slightly deaf, etc.

I did this with a double class of 7th graders. Since it was mostly boys, the majority of the stories involved a compartment of three spies, with lots of yelling, shooting, and poisoning each other. One kid managed to bust out some Russian-accent English (courtesy of Bond movies, he told me later). Anther story featured a souvenir Kalashnykov. On the lighter side, one group of girls put together a four-act show (the signal for the act change was for them to chant in unison, “Two years later”) with a rather complex story line involving a spy who pickpockets two innocent students on a train, only to be recognized by them two years later on the street, and then dragged through a years-long court battle, ending up in jail while the two students did a celebratory dance.

My own celebratory dance came later Friday night, when I was done with Kassai, done with Oxford, and safely back in my own hallway.

Lots of hot air, but still no hot water

Twenty-five days. This is how long my flat has been without hot water. I’m not a person easily moved to profanity, but this is fucking ridiculous.

In summary (because despite what you might believe, I do have better things to do with my time than post whiney entries), the week before break, my hot water stopped working. No big problem. I was at Gaines’ the weekend, then in Transylvania. I kinda hoped it might fix itself. I should be so lucky.

I came back from break. Laura and I put up with no hot water while we were here. I took a long, hot shower at her place, and came home to my now-routine of icy, 60-second showers.

On the first Monday back at school, I told Kati, who sent Páli, the school’s handyman, to take a look. He decided that an actual gas mechanic should look at it, and we scheduled him for Thursday. But whatever fiddling Páli had done had temporarily fixed the problem, lulling me into believing the problem was gone and, stupidly, canceling the appointment. Great, I got in one hot shower and one load of dishes before the water went out again.

Although I gripe a lot here in the anonymity of cyberspace, in real life I hate being a complainer. It’s one of the worst things to label a person. So 4 of the hot-water-less days are directly my fault: I waited until today to pester Kati again. She promised to send Páli and the gas man again. They came. They fiddled. They tested the water. They gave me a Look, gave each other a Look, and pronounced everything “minden rendben.” (Everything in order.) They left. I tried the water in the kitchen: lukewarm, then just cold. In the bathroom: lukewarm, then cold. Why, oh why, didn’t I think to try the water in the kitchen before they left?

So I’m back to square one, no hot water. I can manage a lukewarm shower if I keep it under 30 seconds. Lucky me. Twenty-five days and counting. At this point, to end on a hopeful note, I’d like to open the comments for a poll: How Many Days Will Emily Survive Without Hot Water? My own estimate is 32.

Actually, not true, I have something better to end with. My new logo, stolen from an under-the-breath comment by one of my “good class” eighth-graders:

Let’s go, Olaj, let’s go!

After spending most of the day listening to NPR and recovering from squash, this evening I went with Chad, Juli, Tamás and Dóri to watch our very own basketball team Szolnoki Olaj take on their evil arch-rival, Albacomp of Székesfehérvár. It was incredible. My only undamaged-by-squash body parts remaining, namely palms, throat, and eardrums, have now been battered down by screaming and clapping madly as Szolnok recovered in the final quarter from being 11 points down to win the game.

Having only Beloit to compare with (and Beloit not being what you would call an athletics-oriented school), I am amazed and enthralled by how sporting events here are as much about the crowd as they are about the game. They yell, they scream, they chant (including some things that were so vulgar, Tamás wouldn’t translate them for me. If you know Tamás, you know how serious this is). They blew whistles and noise-makers. They hissed and boo-ed the other team’s every move. They clapped, they stomped, the jumped up and down. They threw things onto the court. They taunted Albacomp’s fans (who were in their own section, behind a net and protected by police). There was no beer sold at this game because they were afraid of rioting. I think if Olaj hadn’t made their spectacular recovery, there might have been violence.

Overall, it was the most fun I’ve ever paid 1000 Ft ($5) for.

Further benefits of Oxford

1) They know everyone. Seriously, between Juli, Anita, and Tamás, I bet they either know everyone of note in Szolnok. For example, last night Juli, Chad and I were having a nutritious dinner at Pizza Pronto, and Juli pointed out that two of out fellow diners were the American and Brazilian members of Szolnok’s basketball team, Szolnoki Olaj (Szolnok Oil; don’t ask me). Chad, being the fearless person he is, immediately moved to their table and introduced himself. And me. And Juli.

2) Free Polish snacks, courtesy of Anita’s husband Jacek, who works for some sort of Polish company which, as far as I can tell, exists for the sole purpose of giving Jacek bags and bags of snacks and candy, which he turns over to Oxford. In theory, these snacks are for the students, but since they exist in the hidden recesses of the kitchen cabinets, they mainly just feed Chad and myself.

3) Squash. Not the snacky kind, the exercise-y kind. I went this afternoon with Juli, Chad, and Dóri (Tamás’ wife) for my first-ever attempt at what I assumed would be a strenuous, dangerous, rule-bound game. Nope. At least, not the way Juli and Dóri play. For those of you unfamiliar with the game (as I was 12 hours ago. Now, after one game, I’m an expert), a squash court is an enclosed room, Chad said like a racquetball court. I wouldn’t know. There are lines on the walls and floor (we mostly ignored them). Two people take turns whacking the ball against the far wall. Hm, that’s about it. I’m sure there’s some sort of scoring involved, but we didn’t bother. The only place where it gets complex is the running around while trying to hit the ball, but avoiding hitting the other person, the wall, or anything else. It was great. Despite having damaged myself slightly, I’m going again on Monday.

Life After Break (or, Pushing the Karma Envelope)

I admit, I thought the first week back after break would be hellish; in reality, this week has been a pleasant surprise. Nothing like diving back in: back to normal classes at Kassai, private lessons, and the new adventure of teaching at Oxford (a private language school, which as far as I can tell has only a tenuous connection at best to the well-known Oxford). I think Oxford might be the best thing that’s happened to me in Szolnok; here’s the deal: they’re paying me 5000 Ft ($25) for a ninety-minute lesson. I’m teaching two lessons a week, which amounts to the fortune of an extra $200 a month (in comparison, I make about $520 a month at Kassai, teaching 19 lessons a week). And what do they expect of me in return? To do some photocopying, follow the lesson plans that Juli makes for me (which are amazing), and teach classes of adults (my “big” class has 9 students). And, just in case you’re not turning green yet, the teachers / directors Juli, Anita, and Tamás are three of the kindest, funniest, smartest people I have met here. How did I get so lucky? God alone knows. I’m going to stop bragging now before I bring 515 years of bad Hungarian karma down on my head.

Poor Girls' Vacation

So Laura and I spent the remainder of vacation hanging out, here in Szolnok and then in her lovely village (or, “willage”) of Hernadnémeti. The major event of our week was Thursday night: MTV’s European Music Awards. We watched MTV in the days leading up to it. We voted for our favorites. We persuaded Mariah (but not Janos) to jump on a train on the spur of the moment to join us. We braved Cora to purchase snacks and jug wine (oh, sweet college memories). We ate, we drank, we danced like fools (okay, Laura and I danced, while Mariah laughed at us). We SMS-ed with Jenna, who was watching the awards simultaneously at home in Nyíregyháza, and Janos, who I suspect had little to no interest in the awards, but was a good enough sport to not turn off his phone and ignore us. Oh, lucky the people who left the country and didn’t get our drunken (or sober) SMSes this week.

Friday, the three of us packed up and headed first to Nyíregyháza to pick up Jenna, then onto a train which dropped her and Mariah at Tokaj and Laura and I at Hernadnémeti. I like her town. Well, village. But a nice place. We watched TV, DVDs, had a walk around town, visited all three grocery stores, and worked on lessons plans. I’m jealous of both her apartment and her organizational and teaching skills. If I were a better teacher (as I should have made it one of my “November Goals” to be), I would be doing lessons plans now. Instead, I’m workin’ on the jug wine.

But seriously, silly as they are, these are my goals for November.
- Home repairs and interior decoration. Especially if I have to live here two years, I want a place that I like.
- Getting a library card. If Chad can do it, so can I.
- Learning to make onion rings. Really, this would make me quite happy.
- Finding collage materials. And fabric.
- Getting an International Driver’s License.
- And being a better teacher in general. More planning. Better discipline. Seriously, I survived college; how can this be that much more difficult?

Clarity, continuation, and conclusion (still Transylvania)

First, some clarity: the plan of exactly what we did and where we went, including map This may or may not be correct; I just took the text from Hajni’s proposed itinerary and modified it to what we did. Or, as best I remember what we did.

1. day: October 26 (Wednesday)
-Budapest and Nyiregyhaza
-Vállaj - border cross
-Nagykáróly - money exchange and lunch
-Kalotaszentkiraly (Sincraiu) – evening program with the villagers, staying with Hungarian families

2. day: October 27 (Thursday)
-Banffyhunyad (Huedin) – the protestant church from the 13th century, “The role of the church in the life of the Hungarian minority” (the minister)
-Korosfo - shopping stop!
-Kolozsvar (Cluj Napoca) – sightseeing, - “The problems of the Hungarian minority and the minority policy in Romania after 1989” (Istvan Horvath, professor of the Sociology Department of the Babes-Bolyai University)
-Torda Canyon - a “short hike”
-Torocko (Rimetea) – the medieval village is part of the world heritage protected by UNESCO, we will stay with Hungarian families

3. day: October 28 (Friday)
-Marosvasarhely (Tirgu Mures) – sightseeing
-Korond (Corund) – the most famous pottery makers live in this village (you can buy pottery if you want), meeting with the most famous artist of the village who will show us around in his workshop
-Zetelaka (little village) near Szekelyudvarhely (Odorheiu Seciuesc) – staying with Hungarian families

4. day: October 29 (Saturday)
-Csikszereda (Miercurea-Ciuc) – short sightseeing
-Gyimes - folk music and dancing program
-that night - no idea where we stayed.

5. day: October 30 (Sunday)
-Gyilkos to (Lacu Rosu) – the “Killer” lake
-Bekas szoros (Frags’ canyon) – 1 hour walking tour in the canyon
-Segesvar (Shigisvara)- sightseeing (and the saxon minority)
-Gernyeszeg – hotel

6. day: October 31 (Monday)
driving and more driving. Really, that’s all.

Next, continuation. As you can see on the plan, on the second-to-last day, which is where I think I left off, we went to the Killer Lake, which was slightly cooler this time, as it wasn’t covered with ice and snow, then the Frag’s Canyon, which was amazing, although sunless and cold. Laura, Mariah and I “linked” (arms, get your mind out of the gutter) and stayed huddled together. After the canyon, we went to collect our two sickies, then onward to Segesvár (birthplace of Dracula). We spent the evening at a hotel in Gernyeszeg. After dinner (and to some extent, during), we started dancing, which eventually turned into a full-fledged dance party in the lobby of the hotel.

The last day was mainly driving, bathroom stop, driving, Körösfö again, driving, gas station, driving, border, driving, driving, and yet get the picture. We watched a lot of movies. People got off the bus in Nyírégyháza, Tiszaújváros, and some other random town (Jeremy and Chad had a Plan. I don’t know what). Laura and I ended up staying at the Kollégium again, with Hajni and Rosemary. They chose a quiet (and warm) evening at home, while Laura and I braved the cold to meet Janos for drinks. An excellent evening, although freezing. And again, we got home at 2 in the morning and got only a few hours of sleep. Then, an adventure in the train station, which involved the concurrence of a national holiday, the time change (daylight savings) and no preplanning on our part. And, of course, not speaking Hungarian. Anyway, there was a long wait, then a longer ride on a slow train. But finally, Laura and I arrived back in Szolnok and have spent the afternoon watching MTV. So what time is is now? after 5. How long did it take me to write these few paragraphs? Way too long for such drivel.