Good-bye, but wait, Hello

Today was graduation for the 8th graders at Kassai. Not much to say - they paraded in, there were long, boring speeches and flowers and balloons, I had to wear heels, and in an hour it was all over. In the teachers room my contact teacher cornered me (heels = can’t run fast) and we had the following conversation:

Kati: Oh, it’s over.
Me: Yup.
Kati (in that tone I know so well): Emily, I wanted to tell you, we didn’t say good-bye to you.
Me (slightly touched that she cared): Oh, um...
Kati: I mean, we didn’t say good-bye to you because we will see you again.
Me (for a split second, I actually considered they might be inviting me to a farewell dinner or something): Really?
Kati: Yes, we will see you next year.
Me: Oh, of course, I’ll visit-
Kati: No, you will teach here.
Me: Whathuh?
Kati: Yes, Éva (our principal) talked to Laci (new school’s principal) and he says he cannot find enough hours for you*, so you can teach some classes here too. Fifth and sixth grade conversation.
Me: (slack-jawed amazement)
Kati: Okay, I must go.

So, apparently I’ll be teaching some classes at Kassai next year. I’m sure glad they consulted me about it - although sarcasm aside, I should probably be amazed that they’re coordinating it now and not September 1st.

But why would I teach the 5th and 6th graders? Why not the upper classes, who are preparing for English exams to get into good high schools and beyond? Instead, I’ll get in 6th grade this years 5th, one of my most terrible classes, and in 5th grade this years 4th, with whom I’ve had no contact. Sigh. I was so ready to leave Kassai on a good note - instead I’ll be not leaving on this bad one.

*which I later learned isn’t true, I could have had enough hours at Varga. Kassai just shanghaied me.

Goodbye Hello

Someday when I write my book about Hungary, I’m going to call it Goodbye Hello. Just so you know.

So a group of Americans (and a Spaniard, some Hungarians, etc) converged on Szolnok for one last weekend. In some ways it was similar to many other weekends; I could cut and paste what we did from any number of other entries: we lazed around, we drank, we ate lots of food, we wandered around aimlessly, we lay in the sunshine, we played in the water, we slept in piles, we made ATCs (rather, Sara and Bridge and I made them until the boys got fed up with us), we sat in bars, and outside of bars, and we talked.

But it was in the chatting where there was a clear difference to this weekend. Instead of talking about teaching, we talked about home. Instead of planning future weekends, we talked about summer jobs and grad school and flight prices. Instead of comparing lesson plans, we talked about American restaurants and stores.

In the end, it wasn’t a real goodbye anyway; almost everyone who was here I’ll see again, next week or in the summer. Still, it’s such an odd feeling for me now to look around a table and see both the past and the future: one year ago, I was sitting in a restaurant saying goodbye to a group of departing Americans. One year from now, I’ll be in the exact same place, sitting at another table with another group of departing Americans. It’s an unfriendly feeling that they’ll always come and go while I remain a static point.

Anyway, onward to new adventures, namely: moving. How the hell I accumulated so much junk (and heavy junk, lots of books) in less than two years is beyond me. How I’m going to pack it up and move it to the new flat.... sigh.

Peace

The strangest thing happened to me Sunday morning in a bathroom in Balatonfüred. I was sitting there at about 8am, surrounded by a hostel-full of slumbering Americans (and Brits and Aussies, etc). And it suddenly hit me how at peace I was. Everything in my life has just come together:

- although Kassai (my current school) finally let me go officially, within an hour I was offered a position next year at Varga (the super-nice, way prestigious gymnasium). So next year, if all goes to plan, I’ll have a cushy job teaching near-fluent teenagers, full pay, and free flat.

- having finally kicked my two-month stomach flu, I’m completely healthy. Maybe better than I’ve ever been. I’m just glowing with good health.

- for once, I’m completely at peace with all relatives, friends, boyfriends, and colleagues. No drama, no fights, just harmony. Too bad all but one of the Americans are abandoning me.... sniffle.

- I got a bike (inherited from one of those sniffle-inducing leaving Americans)! I’m still way too scared to actually use it on the streets, but... someday.

- Hungarian lessons are going well. I might actually be learning something. In any case, at least I’m thinking about it every day.

- the Balaton weekend was good - much better than I would have thought, given that hanging out with large groups of foreigners in a strange place is my personal idea of hell. There was a minimum of drama and a maximum of hanging around drinking and enjoying the sunshine.

- thanks to Bridget’s curiosity, I’ve gotten back into making ATCs, and having a creative outlet again has made me so much happier and more productive feeling.

- as much as I love my school, I’m accepting moving on. I feel bad about leaving my students because, next year, they likely won’t have a native speaker, but I’ve already got plans to offer them cheap private lessons or some sort of English club.

- not to mention, the majority of the kids are gratifyingly disappointed with my leaving. Today, one class stayed 10 minutes extra just to hang out.

Anyway, that’s it... coming up roses. And in the future, look for more frequent updates, since I’m about to embark on a whole new teaching adventure, both over the summer and in the fall, AND on a whole new adventure in my personal life...

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

The best part of teaching is the weekend

Oh, Sunday mornings. This has been my day so far:

- got up. Actually: woke up, rolled over, watched SpongeBob for half an hour, then got up

- got “dressed” (pajama bottoms and oversized sweater)

- drank two coffees

- started but not finished my Hungarian homework (writing a page about my family)

- started but not finished my other Hungarian homework (memorizing the complete forms of the 7 most important verbs)

- started but not finished updating my resume

- started but not finished creating some ATCs

- pestered various people unlucky enough to have MSN Messenger (oceannia@hotmail.com; I’m usually on and frequently bored)

- gave two whole seconds of thought to my school’s upcoming Project Week, and the “tasks” I’m supposed to be planning. Well, maybe slightly more than 2 seconds. About 2 seconds, plus however long it took to write this sentence

- ate lunch (cold pizza leftovers) and cracked a beer

- dwelled on and enjoyed being in my PJs and doing nothing

- wrote this

Distraught

This week, I looked at my calendar and realized that I only have 6 more weeks of teaching, and only 3 of them full weeks. This happy realization prompted me into a fit of lesson planning, wherein I managed to plan almost all my lessons for the rest of the year. It goes without saying that I was pretty proud of myself and my work.

This morning when I opened up the plans, they were ruined. I don’t know why, but both files, a spreadsheet and a text, reverted themselves back to very, very early versions. All my work is gone.

And the worst part is, I don’t understand why. I saved both files as I was working on them, frequently. So what’s my motivation for recreating my work if there’s a possibility of losing it again?

I’m not a happy person. The only thing keeping me going right now is... well, coffee. And the ever-so-slight hope of being able to enjoy the upcoming 4-day weekend.

Two happy stories

After reading Kat’s most recent post, it occurred to me that for some strange reason beyond my comprehension, the last few weeks of teaching have been... strangely normal. It’s almost like (dare I even think it???) I’ve finally gotten some control over the kids. And (surely I won’t finish this sentence without the finger of god reaching down and crushing me) not only that they’re under control but.... actually.... learning.

Whew.

I don’t know what caused this and I doubt it’ll last, but while it does I’ll celebrate, and pass the love on by sharing two good student stories.

Story one, Robin: A bunch of the students have my msn address, and message me whenever I’m online. Emily how are you? Emily what’s your favorite color? Emily what are you doing? Emily do my homework for me. Emily Emily Emily hi hi hi. The same things every time.

A bunch of 8th graders just added me as a friend recently, so when someone unknown started messaging me the other night, I assumed it was one of them. I didn’t recognize his picture, but his English was pretty good. He asked thoughtful, well-written questions, albeit slowly, and gave full answers to my questions. We talked about me living in Hungary, how he would like to live abroad, how difficult living away from family is, how learning a foreign language is hard but fun, etc. Finally my curiosity won out and I had to know who I was talking to. How old are you? 12. Where do you go to school? Kassai, my class the 5b. My blood went cold. 5b is the terror class, the class that prompts meeting after meeting where all the teachers ponder desperately what is to be done with this group of ignorant, disobedient monsters. And then I asked his name: Robin. The leader of the monsters, or so I’ve only heard - he’s in the lowest level English class, which I don’t teach.

We continued chatting, and I continued to be amazed at this boy, who I’ve never met but have heard horror story after horror story about. Amazed that these stories could be true about a boy who I had mistaken for one of my polite, well-spoken upperclassmen.

Story two, Dávid: I’m always thrilled when the students use English when I’m not forcing them to. I overheard this jewel as I was leaving a first-period class (after which there is only a five-minute break; they're always worried about being late)

Imi: Dávid, várjal csak (wait up)!
Dávid: No, Imi! I no lating because you!

It made my day.

Working for the weekend, again

Q: What’s worse than getting up at 6:30 AM to go teach on a weekend?

A: Spending a sleepless night tossing and turning, half sick, heartsick, stressing and worrying about every possible conceivable thing, falling asleep for a few minutes of twitchy nightmarish dozing, and being woken by a text message at 6:14. Oh, what a glorious day it’s going to be.

Two unrelated stories

I was going to post these two things separately, but I realized that they go together somehow. Or, I’m just too lazy to push the publish button twice.

Story One: For some time, I’ve known that the Szolnoki Fõiskola has an English club which meets weekly. I’ve been meaning to go, but like my ever-present good intentions of making lessons plans, cleaning my flat, getting my life in order.... somehow I just never went.

This week, I finally coaxed Petra into going with me (I’m too much of a coward to go alone). Then she backed out, but after a couple of hours of debating with myself, I decided to go anyway. I checked and re-checked their website to find what time and where. Then I overslept (or over-napped) and woke up with 10 minutes to get fixed up and run over through a windstorm and under a heavy, cloudy sky. And for all my stressing, what did I get when I arrived? A sign on the locked door, announcing a postponement until next week.

Story Two: I mentioned above how somehow, my lesson plans are never finished? Well, on Thursday afternoon when I should have been making them, I was instead watching episode after episode of Spongebob and dozing like a cat in the afternoon sunlight. At one point as I rolled over and stretched, it occurred to my sleep-fuzzed brain how awesome it would be if I had a Spongebob pillow.

Fast-forward a couple hours, and what do John and Donna bring me? A Spongebob bag, into which I promptly stuffed a pillow form.

The moral of these two stories (to be taken with a large grain of salt, of course)? That English-speaking Hungarians let you down, but Americans will always come through for you.

Spring Break in Cyprus

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. That being true, and I being extremely lazy, I present to you Cyprus through pictures, with limited captions, and links to more info courtesy of Wikipedia:

No trip should begin without a beer at the Szolnok train station. Followed by a beer on the train, a beer at Kobanya-Kispest, a beer outside the airport, a beer inside the airport...

Donna and I at our villa's dining table, planning out our first day.


The villa was well-equipped with a full kitchen, comfy couches, coffee-maker, flat-screen tvs, etc etc etc.


And a pool table. We played several times, for various stakes....


... which included the loser taking a dive into our slightly-above-freezing pool.


The market in Nicosia, very similar to the market in Szolnok except for that watch tower.


Walking down the street in Nicosia (the last divided capital in the world, according to Lonely Planet) we suddenly came to one of the streets blocked off by a wall of barrels.

Donna and Attila in Lefkora, a tiny village which is famous for it's lace and silver.


Myself and Attila in Lefkora.


The Roman ruins at Kourion.


More of the ruins.


A typical road in the Troodos Mountains. I successfully navigated our way in and out of the mountains, driving an unfamilar right-hand-drive car on the left side of the road. (Just in case there's a single person left on earth I haven't mentioned it to yet... I was the only driver in our group who managed to avoid hitting anything. John and Attis both whacked the passenger side mirror, while Donna wisely refrained from driving.)


The mountains. I wish I had better pictures of the tiny villages and narrow roads through them.


At the top of the mountains, we abandoned the car and took a horse-back ride through the woods.


The last shot, a sad picture: me leaving our villa complex at 1 AM to go catch the plane home.

Two Conversations

I’m working on updates, namely on stories from Spring Break: Cyprus, and I promise to get that up as soon as I get the accompanying pictures. In the meantime, two conversations that happened my first day back after break:

One: my plane-bus-train combination was running late. I would arrive in Szolnok at 9:45, giving me about 20 minutes to sprint across town, dump my luggage, and run to the school. So I lazed out and smsed my contact teacher that I wouldn’t make it.
About 10, having gotten no response, I called her:

Me: Hello, Kati?
Kati (sounding just thrilled to hear from me): Yes, Emily. Hello?
Me: Did you get my sms?
Kati: Your sms?
Me: Um, yes, I sent you a message?
Kati: Oh, yes, I saw that you sent me something a few hours ago, but I didn’t read it (I almost banged my head against the wall) because I didn’t know if it was important or not (I actually banged my hand against the wall.) Why, was it important?
Me (deep breath): Um, yeah, kind of. My train is late, so I don’t think I’ll make my class this hour. At 10.
Kati: You will come late? We will start the class and you come later?
Me: Well, I could do that. Just, I don’t have any idea when I’ll be there.
Kati: So you will be late?
Me: Um, right. I don’t know how late.
Kati: Hm.
Me: Maybe it’s better to just cancel the class?
Kati: You have classes later?
Me: Yes, at 1 o’clock. I’ll be there for that one.
Kati: Okay, bye.
Me. Bye- wait, what?

So I didn’t go to class, and didn’t get in trouble for not going, so she must have covered it somehow. Seriously, who on earth gets an sms and doesn’t read it??

Second conversation, with a brilliantly perceptive little 6th grader:
Balázs (very politely, as always): Emily, help?
Me: Yes, what is it?
Balázs: Hogy van angolul shblahblah?
Me, confidently: Dragon.
Balázs (after thinking for half a beat): No, nem ‘sárkány,’ hanem ‘sátán.’
Me: Oh, Satan! Sorry.
Balázs: No problem, Emily.

The fact that I have students who can switch quickly enough between English and Hungarian to recognize my own mistranslation is amazing to me.

My mom always complains that I don’t email or call enough. I’ve been particularly bad the last few weeks - probably the same lethargy that makes blogging such a chore. But it seemed like there was just nothing interesting, worth writing about.

I realized last night that that’s not true; I was just in a rut. A deep, safe comfortable little rut where I thought everything would be the same in the future as it is now. Until last night when I learned, via Hajni, that my school won’t be rehiring me next year. They say they don’t have enough money for it.

The twelve remaining weeks of school used to seem so long - at least now they’ll fly by. Every second that ticks off shoves me one second closer to the time when I’ll be jobless, homeless, prospectless.

How am I supposed to go in and teach like this isn’t weighing on my mind like a ton of bricks? What can I do? Do I want to fight for my job at Kassai? What would I sacrifice to keep this job? The free flat, the shorter hours? Would I go over CETP’s head and contract directly with the school? Could I get the Varga position? Ken might leave anyway; if he doesn’t would I be desperate enough to push him out? Could I get the position in Újszász? Do they only hire couples? But maybe that would be a worse place to be in, so close to Szolnok but not actually in it - would be better to move to a whole new city? Is it possible to stay in Szolnok and support myself by private teaching? Can I do it, and do I want to? How would that affect my future with CETP? What the hell am I going to do over the summer, homeless and incomeless? Why am I so attached to Szolnok? What do I really have here? Nothing I can be sure of, nothing secure, so why is the thought of leaving so terrifying?

Another story from the Porn Kids class

At a loss of what to do with the 8th Grade Monsters (aka the Porn Kids) last week, I decided to make them write circulating stories (i.e. each student writes a few lines of the story before passing it on). This was one of the stories they handed in, written by four boys and one girl (guess which part the girl wrote):

Yesterday when I met my girlfriend (illegible, three words). We went to my bedroom and started to take off clothes. We started (?)ly but later we were (?)er and (?)er. / When the girl and a boy stat the fuch (sic), before they play the frontgame. They go to bed, and they / made a children. They were lived in a flat in London and they have f***ed every day. When they get bored they called some more people do in groupper. / And they had more than 50 friend. When they did it together the neighbors called to the police. And they had to go to the police and they f***ed (illegible, two words). / She very likes animals. Her favourite food is the pizza.

I’m going to refer to this story the next time someone asks me why I started calling this group the Porn Kids. At least they’re creative.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get more unfair...

- What’s worse than being simply awake at 6 am on a Saturday morning?
- Being fully awake and upright, fully dressed and caffeinated at 6 am on a Saturday morning.

- What’s worse than being fully awake and upright and dressed and caffeinated at 6 am on a Saturday morning?
- Being awake, upright, dressed and caffeinated at 6 am on a Saturday morning the the purpose of going to work (see Sara’s blog for her rant about why we have to work on a Saturday).

- What’s even worse than being grudgingly awake and alert for the purpose of working on a Saturday morning (at 6 am, have I stressed that enough?)?
- Being with someone who is willingly and cheerfully awake, upright, dressed, and caffeinated at 6 am on a Saturday morning for the purpose of leaving on a week-long vacation. Grrrr.

After wallowing in the general unfairness of life for a good minute and a half, I went to work, played games, and generally enjoyed seeing the kids in a different light. And kept my mind on things to come: a Saturday in Szarvas, a weekend in Wien, a spring break in Cyprus.

Women's Day part 2

I must admit, I was ever so slightly put out yesterday at my lack of Women’s Day loot. I mean, only two flowers?? Today, I got two more presents, and what they lacked in quality, quantity or timeliness, they totally made up for in presentation.

Situation one - I go to my first class of the day, 5th grade. I notice out of the corner of my eye that one of the little boys is carrying a flower. When I turn around after putting down my things, the flower is sitting on the desk and the boy is studiously ignoring me (he is NOT a shy child, which makes it funny). The girls in the back of the class start teasing him, “Martin, what are you doing? Don’t you have something to say? Don’t you want your puszi (the double cheek kiss)?” Martin avoids eye contact with me and the girls wish me “Happy Women Day” on his behalf.

Situation two - in the teacher’s room before school. I’m getting some papers together when a bottle of wine appears on my desk in front of me. “Here you go,” says my contact teacher cheerfully (she is NOT a happy person, which makes this one funny). “I thought of chocolate, but - eh.” She smiling widely, which is so strange that it creeps me out a little. “This is more useful, you can drink it with your friends.” And damn if she wasn’t right; I’d prefer wine over chocolate any day. Sharing with my friends, however...

Women's Day

Today marks the third year I’ve been in Hungary on Women’s Day, and the third year that it caught me completely by surprise. The first year, my semester abroad, I was at my roommate Anna’s house for the weekend. Her father gave us flowers and little candies, but between my nonexistent Hungarian, his nonexistent English, and Anna’s limited English, I didn’t really comprehend the reason why.

My second year, my students showered me with flowers and candy, and once again I got through half the day without having a clue why. Eventually some kind English-speaker clued me in.

This year I did slightly better. When I walked into the flower-filled teachers’ room this morning, I knew immediately that it had to be either Women’s Day or Teachers’ Day, and that was soon straightened out.

I got fewer flowers this year. The best present I was a little conversation with one my 6th grade girls. Imagine her speaking Hungarian, me answering in English:

Kinga: And next year, what will you do?
Me: I don’t know.
Kinga: Okay, fine, but will you be here?
Me, more forcefully: I don’t know.
Kinga: Oh, please stay! Otherwise who knows what kind of stupid new person we’d get.

Even thought it’s not really a stunning endorsement, it was still heartwarming.

Az üzenet az üzenet (the message is the message)

“Don’t worry, there are many hours in the day.”
“Yeah, and I’m sure you’ll find a way to waste them all.”

My waste de jour: Two-Tailed Dog Party

(click on the British flag for a language similar to ours)

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

Elkúrtuk. Nem kicsit, nagyon

The original title of this post was “Better late than never,” but I don’t really believe that. Anyway, because it’s just as funny now as it was four months ago, I finally tracked down the text of Hungarian Prime Minister Feri G’s infamous “we fucked up” speech. You can read excerpts here in English or the entire thing here in Hungarian.

For those of you lazier than I, the two most important lines:

"Nincsen sok választás. Azért nincsen, mert elkúrtuk. Nem kicsit, nagyon. Európában ilyen böszmeséget még ország nem csinált, mint amit mi csináltunk." (There isn’t much choice. There isn’t, because we fucked up. Not a little, a lot. No other country in Europe has fucked up like we have.)

"Majdnem beledöglöttem, hogy másfél évig úgy kellett tenni, mint hogyha kormányoztunk volna. E helyett hazudtunk reggel, éjjel, meg este." (I almost died because for a year and a half we had to pretend that we were actually governing. Instead, we lied morning, noon, and night.)

Nevetséges. Nem kicsit, nagyon!

Damage

What did we do this weekend? Again, it involved three different cities, transportation adventures, the eternal kaja-pia-nõk trifecta, and various injuries. Like like weekend, I think it’s best summed up in picture form.


Ouch. These weekends will kill one of us by the end of the year, mark my words.

When I grow up...

This week I finished a unit on jobs with a quiz. One of the questions to the 8th graders asked what job they’d like when they grew up. I love free-answer questions because there’s always surprises. Here’s my favorites (with original spelling and punctuation):

From the always-perfectly-coifed-and-dressed playboy of Kassai Primary: I dont know exactly but I want to get a lot of cash. I don’t want to do anything phsyhical work because it’s hard and I don’t get enough money. Maybe I’ll be a computer repairer becuse my father to do it and I like it. It’s interesting

From a student whose highest ambition I always assumed was making it to high school: I want to be a teacher, because I’d like to give bad marks. I think it is very funny. :-) To be teacher (is very) isn’t very easy, but I want that. My students will love me. :-)

ps. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a lot of things. I never, ever, ever, voiced the desire to be a teacher. And yet, here I am...

Can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man

I walked into one the classrooms today and found, inscribed on the board in a child’s painfully careful cursive, in faint green marker:

Run, run, as fast as you can.

I don’t know how they learned this line. I can’t believe they’re studying the poem, so maybe it was just a secret message for me. Anyway, the randomness of it made my longest day go a little faster.

Can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man

I walked into one the classrooms today and found, inscribed on the board in a child’s painfully careful cursive, in faint green marker:

Run, run, as fast as you can.

I don’t know how they learned this line. I can’t believe they’re studying the poem, so maybe it was just a secret message for me. Anyway, the randomness of it made my longest day go a little faster.

Worth a thousand words

Instead of actually trying to sum up the entire weekend, I’m reducing it to three pictures, and three things I took away.


This is the castle in Gyula. I didn’t actually make it into the castle itself, but a couple of us braver ones made it into those pits you can see in the outermost wall. Since they were about 2 meters deep, what I took away was several strained muscles from trying to climb out again.


This is a crappy map of Gyula. We thought we could walk to Romania (read more about that disaster on Arlo’s blog). But at some point we got close enough for my SuperCell to pick up the Romania network and send me the welcome message.


This is a street sign. From Vasút utca, in Mezõberény. Not really sure where that is, but we must have been there, because I’ve got the sign.

For a much more interesting story, continue reading the Cepters Saga over at Laura’s blog.

Push it

Chad used to tell the following story (hopefully he’ll forgive me for butchering it here): he was sitting in a restaurant with a colleague. On the table were various dishes and glassware. In the middle of a conversation, the colleague interrupted with a two-word command: “Push it.”

“What?” asked Chad. “Just push it,” the colleague repeated, this time throwing a sideways glance towards a water glass near the edge of the table. “Push it.” So he did. The glass fell, shattered, made a racket and a mess.

Why did he do it? More importantly, what made her think if it? What is it in any of us that makes us look at something - or someone - on the edge and instead of thinking “I’d better move that/him/her back,” we think, “all it would take is one small push...”

Random bits of Hungarian

Although the new Americans have been doing a fantastic job of distracting me from my ambitions of learning Hungarian, I have been being sucked into this language recently in spite of myself. Two recent conversations (you have to imagine them in Hungarian; for authenticity I’ve tried to render my mistakes into English):

1) On my two-minute walk to school, I was stopped in the middle of the street by a sweet-looking elderly lady:

Néni, extremely politely: Excuse young lady, I don’t live in this neighborhood myself but do you happen to know if there’s a paper store somewhere near here?
Self: Yes, a paper store (in the three seconds it took me to get this out, I contemplated the option of making some excuse and walking away, or breaking out my classic “Sorry, I don’t speak Hungarian,” but in the end I decided to be a good citizen, because after all I can’t avoid it forever. In three seconds, people - I think well under pressure). Yes, is a paper store just there, over there. I don’t know that, how they are calling the, um, the street, but it’s just there, the yellow building behind.
Néni, smiling widely: Oh, you’re not Hungarian! How adorable, how wonderful! Thank you anyway.
Self: No no, but, no I’m not Hungarian, but the shop is there surely, just over there-
Néni: Don’t worry, I know where there’s another one, I just go there. Thank you again, goodbye.
Self: Goodbye, thank you.

2) I’m sitting at home mushing my brain watching episode after episode of Arrested Development. The brain-mushage was probably why I broke my rule of never answering my doorbell unless I’m expecting someone

me, on the intercom: Hello?
Postman, extremely politely: Kezét csókolom! I’m terrible sorry to bother you, but it’s the postman.
me: (I buzzed him in and opened the door. He, after taking one look at me, immediately dropped all formality)
Postman: Hey, hi (szia)! I’ve got a special delivery for Mrs. György S. It’s a money order, that’s always a good thing, huh? Just sign for it here, okay.
me, puzzled that I would be mistaken for Mrs. Anyone: Um, good. That’s, great that’s. But, but I’m not Angelika.
Postman, also puzzled (at least he didn’t say, “you’re not Hungarian, how adorable”): Oh, Mrs. S is Angelika? You mean she’s not here right now?
me: No, she doesn’t live here. She’s just the um, the um...
Postman, quite intuitively: The landlady?
me, pleased at his guesswork: Yes! That’s it!
Postman: No prob. I’ll just write a delivery slip, and you pass it on, ’kay?
me: Okay.
Postman: Here you go, bye.
me: Bye, thanks.

Like I said... despite my best efforts, I am being sucked into this language. I kinda like it...

“...yet with one swing she knocked them all down”

Forget me writing about new teachers’ orientation. Just read Laura’s saga here.

Lost and found

Instead of writing the promised account of orientation, I’ve become distracted by the Find of the Day website. In that spirit, here’s a note I confiscated from a class of 7th graders last year (this is the group who are now the 8th Grade Monsters, aka the Porn Kids):


A rough translation, as best I can render in English (with some help from Juli):

boy: CAN WE DO SOMETHING FEBRUARY 5th (SUNDAY) OR SATURDAY?
girl: Well, on Saturday and also on Sunday too I’m going camping, on Sunday I’ll get home about 9 or 10, so I’ll already be tired, but I’ll go on Monday. Okay?
boy: OKAY. But come anyway Monday I can’t go out partying.
girl: I’m going camping! Anyway what are we doing on Monday?
boy: I dunno. but I can’t make it til summer without a party. On Sunday pleez let’s go to TEQUILA (sketchy bar, popular with the underagers) PLEEZ!!
girl: But I’m going CAMPING
boy: but in the evening

I wish I knew how the situation might have played out if I hadn’t grabbed the note. Was camping fun? Did they meet? On Monday or Sunday? Was there a party?? If not, did he make it til summer???

Somebody likes me...

Or else I’ve done something good, karma-wise.

Sorry for the lack of posts (and yes, that’s a Bart Simpson apology; I’m not sorry at all), but I have a good excuse, having spend the last week in Budapest. Laura and I helped again with the CETP orientation of the new teachers. More about that later. Back to the title of the post:

Who are the Amcsik I miss the most from last year? Gaines and Chad and Jeremy. What are the new teachers like? Chill like Chad, fun like Gaines, hilarious like Jeremy. Basically, awesome like us, and they fit into our group like they’ve been here all along. Laura said it best when she looked around the table and said, “Wait, which of you are newbies?”

Spring semester is going to be good.

Na!

I think from spending time with Laura at x-mas and again last weekend, I’ve picked up her use of the all-purpose Hungarian exclamation, “na!” It’s like “tessék,” you can use it to mean many things - well, so, okay, hm...

The other day I used it in front of a Hungarian friend. Her reaction? She looked surprised and exclaimed excitedly and proudly, “Emily! That’s actually a real Hungarian word!”

Yes, after 15 months I’ve now mastered the use of pointless two-letter exclamations. Congrats to me, I’m a genius.

Na, anyway: beginning next week, my main English-speaking companion in Szolnok is leaving on a three week holiday. So what better time to throw myself learning this wicked language? I’m calling it ‘the Three-Week Spree’, or rather I should call it ‘a Három Hét Muri’. Goals include:

* finding a teacher
* finding conversation-mates
* learning vocabulary daily
* watching less MTV and more Hungarian tv
* writing in Hungarian daily
* memorizing grammar and verb conjugations
* finally getting my letters and numbers down (after all, even my 5th grade students can do this is English, and hopefully I’m slightly smarter than they are...)

ps. note the time stamp. Yes, I am up this early on a Sunday morning, and yes, I have been up for over an hour now. Yuck.

Good things come in small packages

Of course, this isn’t true in all areas of life...

But still, today I got two small envelopes which contained a total of almost 12,000 forint ($60). One was a belated x-mas present (much love to relatives who give me holiday money in forints). The other came from my school - normally, I would suspect that them giving me money is a sign of some impending disaster, but since many of the teachers got the same envelope, I think it’ll be okay.

The receipt that came with the cash states I’m being paid for “kiemelt munkavérgzésért járó keresetkiegészítés,” which Juli kindly translated as “bonus salary for extra or outstanding work.” I’m not sure if this is outstanding-like-excellent or outstanding-like-not-yet-paid. But I’m going to believe the former.

GHE2, version 2.0

Following in the footsteps (rather, reluctantly dragging myself down the path so far behind that the footsteps have nearly been obliterated by time) of Kat, Laura, and others, I’ve upgraded to the new blogger. And got rid of that old template (so 2005!)

I chose this template for the nifty colors, without noticing it’s quirks of capitalization (using capital letters, not the economic thing). This may or may not drive me crazy.

I updated my links (got rid of the link to myself), and everything seems to be in order. Except... look at my profile and see if you notice anything off. I don’t know how it happened, but according to blogger I was born in 1756. Awesome.

The Monster 8th grade takes a test

Looking for sometime to do with the 8th grade Monsters this week, I hit on the idea of giving them an end-of-the-semester test. I was in a dark mood yesterday afternoon, but the idea of preparing a test which I knew they were doomed to struggle with cheered me up immensely.

Still, I didn’t want to set them up for complete failure. So this is what I did: I looked back on the various worksheets and activities we’ve done this year, and selected 5 which summed up the basic grammar points they’ve learned so far (passive voice, reported speech, and relative pronouns, mostly). I added a listening section and two speaking sections as well. After all, I am supposed to be teaching them conversational English.

But let me reiterate what I thought was an important point: 5 of the 8 sections (and 55 of 100 points) were exercises that we had already done. Somewhere, jammed in their bottomless backpacks, they have these very exercises which I so carefully corrected, graded, and gave back.

That being said. The test grades, out of 100 total points, were as follows: 42, 90, 73, 76, 65, 81, 51, 79, 83, 58, and 81.

You can see the range. The problem is: the good grades mostly belong to the calm, normal students, who will, when I hand back the tests, take it with a smile and thank me politely. The low and failing grades belong to the troublemakers, the kids twice as big as me, the ones who are capable of harming me. At least two have been in scuffles with teachers before.

Tomorrow should be interesting.

Kicsi a világ (it's a small world.... after all)

És ha kisci a világ, akkor micsoda kisfalu Szolnok.

As Sara was leaving Sunday morning, I asked casually if she had anything: wallet, keys, cell phone? No, cell phone was missing. She and Laura and I tore my flat apart looking for it, to no avail. Eventually we gave up and she hopped on a train without it.

Fast forward 6 hours, I’m in a cafe when my contact teacher calls me (I really need to stop answering “Unknown” numbers, it always gets me in trouble) and demands that I return to the restaurant to pick up “the Gyöngyös girl”’s phone. She was very vague about how she had heard that the restaurant was in possession of Sara’s phone, so I had to wait until Monday to piece together the details of a truly bizarre sequence of coincidences:

The waitress found the phone and called the numbers in the phone book. After getting hold of several English-speakers, she dialed the first Hungarian name she found. Which happened to be Péter, a loose acquaintance Sara hadn’t talked to for weeks. Péter called his mother, who teaches at Sara’s school in Gyöngyös (still with me? Here comes the leap). Mother/teacher (I don’t have her name) called Edit, who is an English teacher at my school in Szolnok but who used to teach in Gyöngyös. Edit called Kati, my contact teacher, who called me as I already mentioned, and I hastened to the restaurant to liberate the troublesome phone, dragging Petra along in case I needed help.

The funny thing is, Sara, Laura and I walked past the restaurant on our way to the train station, and had we thought it’d been there could easily have asked for it. Instead, it took 7 people to get the phone from Sara to me... and god only knows how many it’ll take to get it back to her.

ps. And during the several hours it took me to finish writing this, I heard from Laura that her phone was stolen today by gypsies! My phone’s not leaving my sight until this crisis is over.

Good things always happen to me, part II

(you can read part one directly below)

So let’s review: I was in trouble because of the cat; they wanted to make me pay for my own flat; I got reprimanded, yet again, for not doing enough speaking activities with the students; and Éva, the school director, wants to come watch one of my lessons. One of my chaotic 5th grade lessons, at 7:30 Friday morning.

And let me explain why this is so worrisome. I can’t speculate why she suddenly decided to observe a class. Last year they mentioned observation once or twice, but in actuality I’ve been teaching for 14 months and have had exactly one observer, who wasn’t even from my school. But it occurred to me (thankfully, after the lesson was over) that sometime in the very near future, I need to formally announce my plans to stay and teach a third year. Despite whatever nonsense I may have had in my head at the beginning of the year (plans of moving away and all that junk), I now realize that my plans for the next few years involve Szolnok. This is my home, no one can make me leave... However, Kassai does have the power to not rehire me, which would be an inconvenience.

So I planned a game to do with my students (the Questions Game, which you can read here if you’re that interested). I couldn’t remember if I’d done it with them before or not, but in the end I decided they could handle it.

I got to school a few minutes early. At 7:30, the bell rang and there was no sign of Éva. I thought I was saved. My contact teacher Kati told me how lucky I was. I shrugged (inside, jumping up and down with glee) and said “Maybe she’ll come later.” “Probably,” Kati agreed. “But no problem, I’ll come watch.”

Great, I thought. The one person scarier than Éva is Kati. The students won’t say a word the whole class.

Long story short: Kati came. Two minutes later, Éva came too. Kati stayed anyway. They sat in the back and whispered to each other and occasionally yelled at the students. The students were like mice. I was overly bouncy to compensate. The classrooms had zero energy.

But 40 minutes is a long time, and eventually the kids loosened up. I calmed down. The game was a bit stilted but still fun. We finished a couple minutes early and did a game of hangman which could have been the model for all other games (they raised their hands, talked one at a time, etc). When the bell rang, Éva and Kati left smiling, thanking me on the way out. When I made it back to the classroom, Kati was in the middle of telling the other teachers about the lesson, and it seemed like a good review. She mentioned that Éva wants to come see an 8th grade class next week (specifically, she wants to come see the Porn Kids, aka the 8th grade Monsters, aka my absolute worst class of all time, in every way), but there’s half a chance that she was joking.

So, WHEW! Picture me wiping my brow dramatically. That’s over. I repeat Laura’s manta: Good things always happen to me (although I’m not Laura, and no matter how many times I repeat it or how good things seem, I’m still going to expect something to go wrong).

Good things always happen to me

I’m stealing Laura’s motto as my title, because it’s strangely appropriate. I say strangely because I am not in any way an optimist; I definitely more of a “if something good is happening, the other shoe is about to crash down” type.

And this week I was due for a crash. Between the new library card on Tuesday and the upcoming basketball game this weekend, I knew something bad had to happen.

Sure enough, on Wednesday it did. I finally got around to complaining about the broken washing machine (side note: it’s been broken since last year, and I don’t mean last calendar year, I mean last school year). In the back of my head, I vaguely remembered there was some reason I was avoiding this confrontation, but couldn’t put my finger on why. Only later I remembered that it was because every single time someone from the school comes to my flat, it results in bad things for me.

So the handymen came. They took away the washer. And then they promptly ran to Luca (the school’s banker, and a friend of my landlady) and reported me for having a cat (side rant: which everyone else in the school already knew, seeing as how I’ve been putting up signs to try to get rid of it). Luca came and yelled at at contact teacher how cats were NOT allowed, how it would scratch the furniture and pee on the floor and blah blah blah. The most dangerous threat was that the school pays for ME to live in the flat, not others, and if I wanted to keep pets then maybe I should pay for my own place. Yikes.

And then... yes, there’s more. Thursday, the flat/cat situation calmed down (apparently when they returned my washer (fixed!!) they looked around and reported that the cat was NOT, in fact, destroying anything). Thursday afternoon my contact teacher announced, out of the blue, that the director Éva would be visiting one of my classes Friday morning.

My first reaction was, Oh crap. Why? Why now? Why this week, when the activity I had planned for the 5th grade was both second-rate and chaotic? What was the point of her visit anyway?

... to be continued

Library = Love, Books = Happiness

I always say that one of the things I miss most is going to the library (the other thing at the top of the list would be my car, and driving). So I’m not sure why the idea of getting a library card here never occurred to me before last week. And it wasn’t really my idea - I had met my friend Petra at the library cafe (which was actually the first time I’d ever been in any part of the library) and she brought it up.

We went back a few days later, armed with my passport and other necessary paperwork. With minor hassle, I got my card and we headed upstairs to where Petra thought she remembered seeing English books. She led me... to a shelf and a half of dictionaries. I looked at her. She scrunched her brow worriedly and said there must be more elsewhere. I nodded hopefully, and followed her upstairs to the information desk.

While we waited, she continued to look worried and promised that if they didn’t have English books, she would demand a refund. I brushed it off, saying that I would just have to learn Hungarian faster. She showed me how to use the catalog, and while she looked up some things for herself I wandered around and discovered:

1) a massive stack of English National Geographics, which alone was enough to make the library card worth it for me

2) an entire corner devoted to English-teaching materials, many of them brand new

3) the illusive English section: six shelves of dusty, B-quality literature, most of the books twice as old as me. I wanted to wrap my arms around the shelves and cry with joy.

Spinning

I just got back from my second spinning session, sat down in front of the computer cross-legged like always, and just about snapped my leg off.

Gaines wrote frequently about the hell which is spinning on her blog.

Seeing as how I’m one of few people who didn’t make any fitness-based New Year’s Resolutions, I don’t really understand how I’ve gotten sucked into this “sport.” Need for human interaction, I guess.

And why did I only notice today that I have a link to my own blog in the links at right? Brilliant, Emily. (I did remove it eventually)

First day of 2007? Not so sucky

I figured that the first day back at school after a long break would be, shall we say, slightly stressful, and I wasn’t let down on that expectation. But two awesome things happened:

First, I gave my 8th grade monsters a worksheet, which prompted a fit of complaining wherein they came up with a hilariously creative metaphor of me being Hitler come again, complete with concentration camps where I made them break their fingers writing 10,000 sentences daily, and devised ingenious punishments for each mistake made (“No, in present perfect! Two mistakes, I beat you four hours! Five mistakes, I shoot you!”). Although I know I should be insulted, I could only laugh myself to tears, raise my hands to god and chant, “Oh, if only!”

Second, my 6th graders had such fun with an activity (making up their own board games and playing them) that both they and I completely lost track of time and actually went overtime. A-maz-ing.

Third, non-school related, but something I realized in the, oh, six hours it took me to finish this post: new year equals new shows on tv. And in my tv-based life, this is huge.

New Year's on Oktogon*

Very, very briefly, let me sum up my New Year’s Eve (entire New Year’s Eve day, more accurately):

At dawn, I walked through an empty Oktogon on my way home, still a bit stumbly and not yet concerned about my impending hangover, not to mention the inevitable third-degree for coming home at dawn.

At dusk, I walked through Oktogon which was busy with people preparing for the celebrations, completely sobered up but still pranging out like never before from the idea of what I was walking into.

At midnight, I stood on the corner of Oktogon with hundreds of strangers (and four friends) and screamed, waved, sang, drank champagne, watched fireworks, danced with strangers, laughed hysterically, kissed each other, wished “Happy New Year” in multiple languages, and generally had a wild but comparatively chill time.

Updates on what I was up to over break to come later, once I’ve had some time to mull them over.

*since I write this blog mostly for people in Hungary or with Hungarian connections, I forgot to mention that Oktogon is a big crossroads on the Pest side of Budapest.

My neighbor the whore

Okay, she’s not exactly a neighbor in the sense that we share a wall. But I live in a block of flats at entry-door number X, and she lives at X+1.

And she is most certainly a whore, six thousand forint for half an hour. I know this because a couple weeks ago a friend of a friend visited her. And then dished about it.

But hey, whatever. As long as the law doesn’t get involved (ahem), we’re all adults. The disturbing part of this knowledge is what I overheard in my 7th grade class last week:

Boy 1 - ...and I heard that you can go for different times, it depends what you pay.
Boy 2 - Really? Like how much? What can she do?
Boy 1 - I don’t know how much, he didn’t say. But it costs more if you want to do more, of course.
Boy 2 - Right, of course. And near here?
Boy 1 - Yeah, Kolozsvári street, right next door to Emily.

I don’t know what disturbs me more - that my 7th graders know where a whore lives, or that they know where I live.

Extemporaneous English

I walked into my 7th grade today and found two students fighting. The girl had the boy pinned, bent over the desk, twisting his arm back and shouting insults at him... in English:

girl: You are hot boy! You stupid! You are ugly!
boy: Ackh! I am die!

Ah, I love it when they speak spontaneously.

Cell phone

Today I actually had a student correct me when I said “mobile phone.” “No, Emily,” he said with his typical lascivious half-grin, “You’re American. Say ‘cell phone’.”

Leery students notwithstanding, I did get a new cell phone last week, and have been so preoccupied playing with it that I haven’t got around to giving it the full post-of-praise which it deserves:

(2007.July.6 - I took down the picture of the phone because people searching for it were screwing up my stats. Anyway, if you're the curious / bored type, you can still find what it looks like with this link)

Sony Ericsson W300i

Featuring (according to the brochure):
- Walkman telephone
- built in camera w/ 4x digital zoom
- video recording and playback
- MP3 player, stereo FM radio
- 20 MB built-in memory plus 256 MB memory chip

and other cool things that I don’t know technical-type words for, like:

- the ability to make Gorillaz’ 19-2000 my ringtone (although that might be a bad thing; it makes me not want to answer the phone so I can hear it play)
- being able to take a picture and have it be my wallpaper
- ridiculously easy transferring any kind of file - MP3, video, pictures - both onto and off the phone (mostly that’s not ’cause of the phone itself, but due to the fact that I’ve got a Mac. And everything is easier with Mac)

So in short, I’m in love with this phone. It was totally worth the price. And mentioning price... I saved the best part for last:

This phone in American costs $230 (that’s 44,000+ forint)
This phone in Australia costs $313 (that’s 47,000+ forint)
This phone in England costs 139 pounds (that’s 51,000+ forint)
This phone in Western Europe costs 220 Euro (that’s almost 58,000 forint)

I got mine from the T-Mobile office at Interspar in Szolnok, Hungary for 25,000 forint. I don’t know who’s responsible for this miracle of capitalism, but yay, Hungary! Yay, Sony Ericsson! Yay, T-Mobile! I love you all.

On the difference between men and women...

I cut my hair today. It went from being just below shoulder length to a chin-length bob. Not that it matters, because I’m a big supporter of the ponytail. Still, the wispy bits in the front were noticeably different. Or so I thought...

I met up with a male friend, we’ll call him M. He helped me out with some business/paperworky things, and we went out for a beer afterward. During the two hours we were together, I asked him several times, in several forms: “Hey, guess what I did today? It’s something I’ve been talking about doing...” I eventually resorted to asking this while insipidly twirling a lock of hair, scratching my head, and playing with hairpins. Nothing.

In the street I met a female friend, let’s call her F. Our greeting went as follows:

Me: Hey F, how are you?
F: Oh, did you cut your hair? It looks great!

I love it.

A Key Victory

It came to my mind a couple weeks ago that it would be good for me to have extra copies of my house keys. Given my perchance for losing things, it’s amazing I haven’t locked myself out already.

I knew that my school had an extra set. They asked for them over the summer, so that they could go in to clean, fix things, pick up the mail and, I suspect, just poke around. The logical thing would be for me to ask the school to give me the extra set. After all, it’s my flat and there’s no reason they need the keys now. Still, it took me a couple weeks to work that thought firmly enough in my mind to override my reluctance to begin what I knew would be a major production... over the past week, the drama unfolded:

Me, after explaining the situation: ... so do you think I could get the keys:
Kati: Why?
Me: You know, just to have an extra set. In case I lose mine.
Kati: But you’ve been here two years and you haven’t ever lost them.
Me: But just so I don’t have to worry...
Kati: Are you sure the school has them?
Me: Yes, remember you were with me when we made copies?
Kati: Um, yes I maybe remember something like it...
(pause)
Me: Right, so...
Kati: You need them for this week? Or the weekend?
Me: No, I mean, I need them to keep. You know, forever.
Kati: Okay. By when you need them?
Me: Just whenever... (realizing that I need to set a date)... this week?
Kati: Okay, I’ll ask.

Some hours pass. As I’m leaving for the day, the handyman, Pali, and doorwoman, Juliska, corner me. Imagine the following conversation in Hungarian:

Juliska: Emily! Emily, come here. I heard you’re looking for your keys? Let’s ask Pali.
Me: Okay...
Juliska, to Pali: Pali, you know that Emily -
Pali, to Juliska, pretending that I’m not standing next to them: Emily? Who’s Emily? Oh, hm, I think I’ve met her once or twice. Nice girl (winks at me).
Juliska, hitting him on the shoulder: Stop being silly. What do you know about her keys?
Pali, to me: Right, I don’t have them. You know, whenever I have to go into the flat - (and why was this in present tense? have they been going into my flat recently while I’ve been teaching?) - into the flat for some reason, you know to fix things, or whatever, I have to ask Luca (the school’s financial secretary) for the keys. She has the keys.
Me: Fantastic!
Pali: But she’s gone today. And tomorrow, so you’ll have to wait until Monday.
Me, wishing for a job where I get to have three-and-a-half day weekends: Whatever, still fantastic. Okay, I’ll ask. Bye.
Pali and Juliska: Bye.

Fast-forward to Monday. I don’t see my contact teacher but I leave a note on her desk reminding her to ask for the keys. Then on Tuesday:

Kati: So I asked about your keys.
Me: Yes?
Kati: Luca doesn’t have them.
Me, slightly indignant: Um, yes she does.
Kati: No, she said she doesn’t know where they are.
Me: Wait, she doesn’t have them or she doesn’t know where they are? She must have them, Pali told me she has them.
Kati: Pali told you?
Me: Yes.
Kati: Hm. She said she would look in the safe.
Me, hopeful again: Okay, that sounds good. When?
Kati: Eeh, maybe today?

On Wednesday:

Edit, one of the other English teachers: Kati, have you seen (some book)? I need it to sub for Vali’s class.
Kati: I don’t know, check her desk.
Me: I see it, it’s right there.
Edit: Oh, good. Hey, isn’t this (some other book they’ve been looking for for weeks)?
Kati: Is it!? Vali said she’d never seen it.
Edit: Well, here it is.
Kati, to me: It’s always the same. Whenever you lose something, just look in Vali’s desk.
Edit: Maybe your keys are in here.
Me: Yeah, hey! By the way -
Kati, hurridly: Is that the bell already? Let’s go to class.

But she must have done something - actually, she told me later that she had taken our case, as it were, to the director of the school. This morning:

Director: Are these your keys?
Me, thinking "why, how many sets of two house keys and one mailbox key do you have lying around in the school’s safe?" : Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.

ps. And I’m sorry about the awful, awful title. Truly. I don’t know what I was thinking... except that I was too lazy to think of anything else.

Uneasiness

This morning in my two hour break between fighting the 5th graders into submission and coaxing the 6th graders into using a single word of English, I was sitting in my bathroom (it being the only room in my flat which can be heated to a temperature which doesn’t require two shirts and a sweater) reading Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s Guests of the Sheik, and I came across one of my favorite passages:

As my Arabic (read: Hungarian) improved, I could occasionally get the drift of conversations and understand occasional fragments. It seemed to me that many times the women were talking about me, and not in a particularly friendly manner. If I could have been certain they were talking about me, and understood exactly what was being said, then I could have dealt with it, replied to the comments and brought it out in the open. But the terrible thing was that I could not be certain. Were they talking about me or not? What errors in etiquette or custom had I committed? What in heaven’s name were they saying? My uneasiness grew in this atmosphere of half-hearing and part-understanding.

If I ever get around to writing my book about life in Hungary, I’m totally plagiarizing that. I mean, more than I already have here.

Even when I understand, I don't understand

Not that I’m making the claim that I really “understand” Hungarian, just... I’ve noticed that recently, even when I understand the words someone says, I still miss the point.

For example, today in Spar. I put my bag of cleaning powder on the counter. The girl says, in perfectly understandable Hungarian, “Do you know what this costs? Two hundred something?” I, being the helpful person I am, say, “Just a minute,” run to check, and report back: “Two hundred ninety-nine.”

“Two hundred ninety-nine what?” says the girl blankly.

“The powder,” I reply, slightly confused at her lack of short-term memory. “It costs 299.”

Except it turned out, as she patiently explained to me, that she wasn’t actually asking how many forints it cost, she was merely remarking how cheap it was. In question form. Just like I would say in English: “Wow, do you know how cheap this is?!”

Lesson learned: in addition to processing the words I hear, I should also think for a second about how literal the speaker is being.

Emily and the terrible, horrible, not-so-great, mediocre, okay, not-so-bad, actually pretty good day

I woke up this morning not hungover, but actually still drunk. My house was cold, filthy, and smelled like cigi smoke and cat shit, both where the cat had gone and where it had been tracked all over the house. I got an email from home that our dog had to be put down. Then my phone died.

You could say it wasn’t shaping up to be such a good day.

But I went in and taught. I came home and slept, ate, drank a lot of water and miraculously escaped a hangover. I cleaned my flat, not to the level where I would let a stranger see it, but at least to where I don’t feel like I ought to just move to a trailer somewhere. With some help, I went to the T-mobile shop and, despite my determination to simply buy the cheapest model and walk away, I ended up buying a super-new flip-phone with digital camera and video recorder, MP3 player, FM radio, and 256 MB memory card. I suspect it’s also capable of cleaning my house and bringing me breakfast in bed. The only thing wrong with it is that it’s such a new model that it won’t go on sale until next week. So I’ve got a loaner phone until then.

You could say it turned out to be an okay day after all.

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Certain places, such as Tesco and Cora and others whose income is based on shopping, have been promoting Christmas since the last week of October. I kid you not.

About mid-November, Szolnok city began setting up lights along the streets and in the public trees. Tonight was the first time I’ve seen them on. Combined with the preternaturally creepy fog we’ve had for the past 48 hours straight, they were stunning.

My students have also been getting in the mood of the season. Today especially they were exceptionally nice (to me, at least - to each other they were just as bratty and violent as ever). They worked good-naturedly on their assignments and proudly showed me their finished work. They showed off work from other classes and told me about tests that they’d recently aced. They offered me candy and pogacsa. They complimented my hair and clothes. They complimented my lesson (one that wasn’t a game!). They approached me after class, just to chat in stilted phrases about random things. They offered to lend me books and burn me CDs. They walked me part way home en masse.

Is it possible that they’ll continue to be so good for the whole Christmas season? Or is the other shoe about to drop?

Monday night: a comedy in four acts

Last year, when I was traveling almost every weekend, I began the tradition of spending every Monday night home alone, relaxing. Even with significantly less traveling this year, it’s still nice to be able to anticipate one night a week to myself.

Not that I mind breaking the tradition, when a worthwhile event comes along. What happened this Monday night was that four events came along, one after another. Some planned, some unplanned.

Act One: Drinking in the train station. Supporting actors: Attila, random men coming off work, several bums, but this time none of my students. As the level of beer dwindles in our glasses and I cool off from my mad dash to the station, I add layers of clothing: from t-shirt, to shirt, then sweater, and finally jacket. The scene ends with me running to catch my train and ending up all flushed again.

Act Two: Dinner in Újszász. Supporting actors: John and Donna, plus another teacher from their school, Gabi. Good food (of which I wish I could have eaten more), good drinks (of which I wish I could have tasted more), good company (with which I wish I could have spent more time), and good conversation (of which I wish I could remember more). Ends with me carrying a bag of leftover spaghetti and speed-walking to catch my train back.

Act Three: In my flat. Supporting actors: Petra, and the kitten I’ve apparently just adopted. While she makes use of my internet, I pour litter, food, and water into their respective containers and set the kitten up in my spare bedroom. Scene ends with us abandoning the kitten in my flat and going to find a drink.

Act Four: Drinking at Panorama. Supporting actors: Petra and Zoli, a man I’ve met exactly once in my life, the best friend of my then-(now-ex-)boyfriend. With the intention of speeding up an awkward encounter, Petra drinks a beer faster than she ever has in her life. Ends with me home safe in my own bed, alone... except for being smothered by a mewing, needle-clawed little ball of fuzz.

The Explanation for the Assignment

So, one weekend, two nights. Both were good. One was kind of boring and ended bitterly; the other was fun like I haven’t had since high school, and it helped some to restore the loss of balance I’ve been feeling recently.

Speaking of losing things.... I promise, my mind is still firmly attached. The first part of the “assignment” post I wrote late at night (and, ahem, a bit bitter). I decided to leave it up, for no other reason that I find it funny. But I had to add the second part. Um... just because.

Normal posts to follow this week.

Your assignment is as follows...

I’m tipsy and pissed and I’ll probably remove this post later. Or not, we’ll see if it still amuses me as much tomorrow morning as it does right now.

I have an assignment for you. The next time you’re out with a group of people, observe the group dynamic as they speak to each other. Specifically note eye contact as distributed by the person speaking.

The second half of the assignment, a bit more difficult: go out with a group of people where your language is not the one spoken by the majority. Observe the same occurrence, i.e. eye contact. At some point, you will observe the following phenomenon: the majority speakers will cease to include you in their conversation, simply by denying you eye contact. This phenomenon is more noticeable in smaller groups.

You may indulge in the following recourse: disassociate. Drift away in the fantasy of your choosing. So long as you sit with a half-smile smirk on your face, as if you were deeply involved in the insipid conversation happening around but not including you, no one is the wiser. In fact, by the end of the evening they will congratulate and admire you for being the wise, all-knowing but silent type. And you will smile your Mona Lisa smile and pretend that you understand them telling you about how well you understand everything.

I’m telling you, it’s fucking amazing.

Update to the assignment, Sunday: Upon the successful completion of the preceding experiment, you are permitted to move on to Experiment Two. X2 embodies the search for the inverse situation as the one described above.

Proceed as follows: gather a group of people who, like in the first round, are speakers of a language other than your own. Excluding oneself, the group should be made up of no more than one of the same people from the first experiment's group. It is vital that the group dynamic be different from the first round. Because if so, you will observe the in X2 the opposite of X1: that is, the minority speaker will be included in the conversation. The group will interact well and equally, a good time will be had, and the world will be slightly more harmonious.

Oblivious

Leaving school one afternoon, I was cornered by two six-grade girls. Apparently, outside the school fence I become a fair target, because after the standard “Hello-Emily-how-are-you?” “I’m-fine-thanks-and-you” they proceeded to berate me in rapid-fire Hungarian: Why are your lessons so hard? Why don’t we play more games? Is it this cold in Minnesota? Where did you buy your coat? Don’t you think so-and-so is ugly/stupid/silly? Why aren’t your clothes more colorful? Are you wearing socks or tights? Why? Why are your shoes so ugly? Why are you like Mr Bean?

To which I could only look puzzled. I’m like Mr Bean? How?
Because, Emily, you always walk around and look like la-la-la (waving hand in front of face, mindless expression on face.)

Hm. Very astute for a sixth grader. I suppose I could have tried to explain how in a foreign place, where one doesn’t speak the language, it’s just too easy to escape into your own head and ignore the outside world.

Instead I went home and found my trusty copy of Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s “Guests of the Sheik” (which should be required reading for anyone living in a foreign culture). In one of my favorite passages, she talks about how it was only after many months of living in El Nahra that she began to have enough linguistic skills to participate in conversations:

Many months later Laila told a visiting Iraqi friend of mine that in the early stages of my residence in El Nahra the women had wondered whether I was deaf and dumb, or just not quite bright, because I smiled but often did not seem to hear what was said to me. Afterward, reported Laila, I had come to life and my company had improved immensely.

Sometimes when I’m walking with a Hungarian friend, I look at them and wonder enviously what it’s like to understand the world around you, and when I’ll be able to. I always took it for granted before.

cozy/crazy/creepy

Imagine this scene from school yesterday: I’m with the 7ab, who despite being made up of 3 girls and 11 boys is still a pretty good class, both in behavior and skills. They’re finishing up their assignment and I’m sitting at a student desk in the middle of the room correcting and marking their work. As they finish, they cluster around me, standing. It’s a bit claustrophobic, but not unpleasantly so.

The bell rings. In some classes, this is the cue to disperse like dandelion fluff in the wind, but this class actually stops talking and looks at me for instruction.

“Okay, if you got a mark, you can go. If you’re finished, leave your notebooks here for me; if you’re not finished then it’s homework. Goodbye.” I hastily continue correcting the notebook in front of me as they pack their things and lay their uncorrected notebooks on the table next to me.

Suddenly a notebook comes down directly in front of me. Not in the way they normally are, slapped down sideways held carelessly by one corner. This boy stood directly behind me, held his notebook open with both hands, and brought it down over my head, his arms around my shoulders. Like a hug from behind.

For a second, half a second, half a split microsecond, it was cozy. Then reality struck, my shoulders hunched in, the boy dropped his notebook on the pile, a couple students snickered, and they all ran away to their next class.

The best part? I don’t know who it was. I had a vivid memory of two skinny arms clad in a dark blue long-sleeve tee - but no face to go with them. Eeeeccchhh. I feel all warm and fuzzy and dirty.

Why I don’t speak Hungarian, the simplified version

At least once a week, I have the following conversation (or some variant) with a student:

Student: Emily, beszélsz magyarul? (Do you speak Hungarian?)
Alternatively: Emily, érted? Érted magyarul? Érted amit mondok? (Do you understand? Do you understand Hungarian? Do you understand what I’m saying?)
Me, always: Yes.
Student, always: Akkor miért nem beszélsz magyarul velünk? (So why don’t you speak Hungarian with us?)

I never have a good answer, at least not one that I could explain to them (“Well, children, I do understand about 90% of what you say, because my listening comprehension is about a 5th or 6th grade level. My speaking abilities, however, are closer to 1st or 2nd grade, if not kindergarten. I think it stems from lack of confidence...”)

Last week, one of the students finally answered for me:

Student 1: Emily, érted amit mondok?
Me: Yes, just like last week.
Student 1: Akkor miért nem beszélsz magyarul?
Student 2 (in Hungarian, of course): Because, stupid, she’s not allowed to! She has to speak English because the school pays her to teach English!

Apparently, this explanation spread around the school at the speed of light, because I’ve heard it now several times in the past week. And the incessant questioning of why I don’t speak Hungarian has tapered off. Well, slightly.

Lazy, so lazy...

The new DVD player and microwave seem to have exponentially increased my already innate laziness. If I get any more sloth-like, I... um.... I won’t be able to finish simple sentences. Eh, oh well.

I’ve got a new goal. Although I’m too late to join in the awesomeness of NaBloPoMo, I’m declaring myself an unofficial member. Meaning daily posts for the remainder of November. Um, starting tomorrow. And excluding weekends. Some other terms and conditions may apply.

In the meantime, here’s a list of topics which I’ve been too lazy to write full posts about in the past week:
- I discovered that several of the teachers at my school speak English. And they discovered that I speak (or at least understand) Hungarian. This miracle of modern communication came about from the students getting lectured about drugs, which led to scheduling nightmares, which led to many a frantic conversation about who was teaching which group when and where. Fun!

- I found out that I’m getting a digital camera for Christmas. A nice one, almost as nice as Gaines’, and instead of coming from a grandma who only shows love by buying things, it’s coming from my parents (who love me, in addition to occasionally buying me things).

- In a second camera-related story, I successfully (so far) translated between John and Camera Shop Lady both the purchase of a new lens and the repair of the camera’s switch. My favorite part was when I went into the shop the second time and the lady called into the back room, “Zoli, the lady I told you about is here, the one who speaks Hungarian rendesen (properly), not like the gentleman (i.e. John).” So if I can just find some beginner to preceed me everywhere, my Hungarian will always look spectacular by comparison. Hm...

- In an attempt at culture (ha! it must go along with my new sense of respectability (the comments thread)), I spent consecutive evenings last weekend at an art show in Újszász and a play in Szolnok’s Szigligeti Színház. Both were interesting, and I wouldn’t mind repeat performances of either. Don’t worry, both events were followed by boozing it up in a way no one would call cultured.

I guess it’s always good to end with booze, culture, or some combination thereof. More to come tomorrow.

What happened on my holiday, part II

About midweek, I lost my ambition of getting cleaned, dressed, and out of the house every day. I managed to rack up the following Accomplishments:

- Monday night, I did make carrot cake. It was awesome. I might make it again this week; I need to start building a layer of fat for winter anyway.

- Tuesday I went up to Budapest for the afternoon, just because I could.

- Wednesday I stayed inside, watched random things on TV, and frequently looked outside and thought how thankful I was to not to be Hungarian and have to go tramp around a cemetery honoring dead relatives in such grim weather.

- Thursday I... did nothing. Well, that’s not completely true, I made coffee cake. And watched the MTV Europe Music Awards, which were no where near as entertaining as last year. Although this year, I was missing Laura, Mariah, jug wine and Varda drinks.

- Friday I’m sure I did something... if I can’t remember, it was either something really good or really bad. I’m not feeling any sort of regret, so it must have been something good.

- Saturday I got up early (not by choice, but rather because someone was poking and singing at me) and went to Budapest. I can’t decide which part of the trip was better: A) running into my students as we were boozing it up in the train station at 10 am; or B) the fact that we went to Budapest and spent the day no more than 500 meters away from the train station.

- And Sunday: since it was the last day of break, I devoted the entire morning and part of the afternoon to some serious lazing around (after all, I won’t get another chance until... next weekend). And in the evening, following a trip to MediaMarkt, I watched DVDs on my new DVD player while eating microwave popcorn fresh from my new microwave (which together, including cables and wiring, cost 18,000 Ft, or about a fifth what I would have spent on a traveling vacation).

All in all, it was in no way the vacation I would have planned. But I wouldn’t have changed anything (except to make it longer, that’s a given).