The best-laid plans...

Today we went out to celebrate May 1st. Knowing full well that tomorrow I have to be up early in the morning to go to the graduatation ceremonies (and, ahem, knowing second-hand how much it sucks if someone forces you to get trashed the night before your graduation) I was super careful about alcohol intake. Meaning, I drank little. Very little. I was so restrained and careful.

Unfortch, two half drunks make a drunk, and when someone said, "Hop on, I'll give you a piggy-back," I gamely hopped. And he fell. And I fell. And faceplanted. Somehow, we landed only on my face, not his. So now I'll go to graduation tomorrow completely sober, and not at all hungover, but looking like a battered wife. I would include pics, but just google Rihanna and you'll get the idea...

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.

a typical Saturday

What do these three pictures have in common?


1. A baked spaghetti dinner (baked fusilli, technically)

2. Four guys and I (he he he) wandering around a forest

3. a table full of grafitti. Most of it crap, some of it brilliant...


ps. unfortch I don't have a picture, but we ate French ash-cheese. Cheese, with ash in it. It was awesome. It came from France.

BEER

This picture (this product itself, really) inspired me too much to settle on just one caption:


Look, Mom, I'm drinking apple juice!

(sip) "What is this? It tastes like crap."
"It's not crap, it's beer; can't you read?"

The Polish are well-known for their creative product naming.

I saw this in my local corner shop and couldn't beer not to buy it...
and so on.

The kids aren't alright

I can think of several stories which would fit that title, but... here’s today’s:

This morning, Varga had it’s October 23rd Commemoration. Because there’s no room in the school big enough for everyone, they held it Szolnok’s Cultural Center. At the end of the ceremony, the announcer concluded with, “So, it’s about 9 o’clock now. At 10 o’clock classes will begin; everyone please collect your coats and bags and meet your class teacher in the lobby to walk back to the school together.”

Which I thought was a bit dumb - these are high schoolers, after all, they don’t need their class teachers to chaperone them back to the school, four blocks away. Most teachers just let their kids go.

Problem: the unsupervised students had one hour to walk four blocks. Solution: they popped into a couple bars on the way. My first two periods were hilarious: students still dressed to the nines, slightly cross-eyed, and reeking of booze.

True or fasza

So we spent the weekend in Szarvas, that’s all I’ll tell you. Guess which of the following are true (check out Bridget's blog for clues). Answers / explanations to follow in a couple days:

- we spent the weekend (or a chunk of it) in a cottage on the river, complete with dock and rowboat
- we invented palingria (palinka + sangria) and enjoyed quite a bit of it
- we read about heavy-petting in a Hungarian magazine for children
- we all got very, very trashed/ stoned/ inebriated/ intoxicated/ smashed / soaked
- we rowed on the river at all hours of the night and day
- we reenacted several scenes from Moby Dick (I was Moby)
- we used the rowboat to sneak into the Szarvasi Arboretum
- we spelled out GHP (Great Hungarian Plain) with our bodies
- we went “fishing,” meaning we dumped bread crumbs in the water and watched the fish flock to them (can fish flock??)
- we saw a meter-long, inch-thick green snake sunning itself near our rowboat
- I went 72 hours without listening to my MP3
- we all managed to get to and away from Szarvas with no train/bus-related problems

Mr Boozer

Today I was paging through one of the books my school uses to prepare 8th graders for high school entrance exams, and I found the dialogue below. It’s funny because somehow, in a book full of grammatical errors and obviously-non-native-English, they managed to make a pun with the names, and a good one at that:

- Mr Boozer! I am afraid things can’t go on like this any longer.
- Why, Mr Totaller, what’s the matter?
- First of all you keep coming late for work and you are always leaving before the end of your working time.
- But, Mr Totaller, I only leave when I have finished my work for the day.
- That’s simply not true, Mr Boozer. More often than not you leave your work unfinished. And the other day you turned up at work completely drunk. Can you explain that to me, Mr Boozer?
- I am sorry, Mr Totaller, I was just a little bit tipsy. It was my birthday, you know.
- Well, Mr Boozer, if there is one more occasion when you turn up drunk for work, I won’t hesitate to dismiss you.

And as I was typing this up, Laura composed me a poem on drunkenness, which she graciously said I could include here:

Inebriated Under the influence Smashed intoxicated
Under the moonlight
Bars unknown, distances stumbled
A night not remembered
Wake up who knows where
The weekend