Negotiations, I Mean Conversations

Don’t get me wrong, I do like my contact teacher. She is grudgingly helpful, she’s an amazing teacher, and I know she’s under a lot of stress right now. She really is a good person.

Having said that... we seem to be unable to communicate, and I don’t think it’s a language problem. A typical conversation for us:

Me: So, am I teaching this 6a class today, or not? (I knew full well that that correct answer was ‘or not,’ I was just looking for confirmation)
Her: How many classes do you have a week?
Me, thrown off by the change of topic: Um... Twenty. Well, now 19. Why?
Her: Oooh, it’s not good. You should teach 20.
Me, becoming irritated: Why?
Her: It says in your contract that you should teach 20 classes a week.
Me, scoffing, said quickly and under my breath: Huh, well, my contract also says that my classes should only have 15 students or fewer, and that’s sure not true.

She looks puzzled, so I repeat myself.

Her: But, the class with 20 students, is only because this 6a class is switched. Because these students can’t come any other time.
Me: I know, and I don’t mind about that one class. But almost all of my classes have more than 15.
Her: Yes...
Me: (staring, waiting for her to continue)
Her, said firmly and in a tone indicating the conversation is finished: Yes.
Me, sighing: So I’m not teaching this 6a class today, right?

Tuesday Trifecta

In the spirit of good weather, classes being canceled, and being talked into happy hour between classes (my arm was twisted), I give you three completely unrelated tidbits:

1) False Friends...

...(also called false cognates) are a topic close to my heart - I once forged an entire thesis’s worth of research about false friends in German and English. If you don’t want to click the link, the short explanation is that false friends are two words in two languages which look or sound the same, but have different meanings. Like, how ‘kuki’ does not mean ‘cookie.’

Today I discovered that the Hungarian word ‘harmonika’ means... what do you think? It means ‘accordion.’ Of course it does!

2) Kind Colleagues

Typical situation at my school: I go to teach a class, and only one girl is there. I know that I should just send her home, but trying to be professional (and save myself from a scolding later), I look for one of the other English teachers to confirm it. They’ve all gone home.

After I stood in the teacher’s room for a while, clutching my books and looking forlorn, one of the older teacher/administrator/secretary ladies took pity and tried to help me. It was interesting, because our only common language is German, despite the fact that we both speak German at about a 4th-grade level.

Not only did she give me official permission to go home, as I was leaving, she explained to me that on Thursday there’ll be a fire drill. This is the type of thing that people (ahem, contact teacher) never tell me... and which inevitable leads to me looking incompetent. So I really appreciated her making the effort.

3) and Ten Little Geniuses

Today I had a realization about my 6b class. Not only can they put sentences together (the 6a can’t even do ‘There is...’ ‘There are...’ yet), but for some reason these ten kids have near-perfect accents. Really, it’s amazing; they’re better than any other class, any other grade - better than some of the English teachers. I have no idea how this came about. But I plan on studying the phenomenon further.

And having a class I look forward to always makes the week better.

Weekend Debris

My flat looks like a tornado hit it. My body feels the same. The living room is covered with blankets, clothes, dishes, food, misplaced furniture, CDs, papers, ATC-making supplies and ephemera. Do I have a floor? My kitchen is filled with food, but all of it half-eaten and/or been sitting out overnight (or longer). The dirty dishes make such a pile that it escapes the sink. There’s bags of trash behind the door. The only cold drink in my fridge is an overlooked half-can of beer. I feel like I just ran a marathon (which is some sort of twisted karmic irony, considering I spent the majority of the weekend in bed). I’m dirty, I’m bruised, my hair looks like straw, my skin is blotchy, my throat is swollen, and I’m so tired I can barely stay upright.

It was a good weekend.

Great Minds ...

Or maybe it would be better to forgo the claim to greatness and say, Like minds think greatly. Here’s what happened: imagine me sitting in my flat, yesterday afternoon, pondering what I was going to do with myself on a lonely Friday night. I figured everyone already had plans, but on whim I sent off an email to John and Donna asking if they wanted to come to Szolnok for dinner.

Five minutes later John smsed me, “Dinner?” and we made plans from there. We ended up, them plus me plus Larry (the new teacher in Varga), in some trendy-ish place by the creepy communist ‘water tower’ (if you’ve been to Szolnok you know what I mean). All around, a fun evening. After much squabbling, they finally let me pay them back for their hospitality last weekend.

But here’s the catch - it wasn’t until John and Donna got back home later that evening that they even got my email. Like I said, great minds.

Freedom's Fury

The only people who read my blog are those who already have some sort of vested interest in Hungary. So no doubt y’all are up on the latest Hungarian political scandal, and there’s no need for me to recount here how beloved Prime Minister Feri G was caught on tape talking about how his government has absolutely nothing for the past four years, unless you count the difficult job of lying to the public ‘morning, noon, and night.’ Oooh, savory.

And you’ve probably already heard about the riots and protests which resulted Monday night in Budapest, when several thousand right-wingers converged on Parliament, and proceeded to harass police, flip and burn cars, and take over and loot the MTV building before finally being ‘subdued’ by the police (read: they ran out of booze and matches, got tired, and went home). On the plus side, they did desecrate that hideous Soviet statue on Szabadság tér... so there’s some good in everything.

And I’m sure you’ve already heard about the newest movie commemorating the 1956 revolution: Freedom’s Fury, A szabadság vihara. It’s the story behind the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games’ ‘Blood in the Water’ water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union.

So I guess I can’t tell you anything new. Except to say that last night, as I was sitting in the cinema watching Freedom’s Fury, protesters were gathering on Szolnok’s main square. As we left, the street was being blocked off and the mist in the air made it look smokey. We sat some blocks away at an outdoor cafe and had a long conversation about politics in our loud English-speaking voices. It was surreal. Unique, and just a little unsettling.

Self-Description

This week, I should do a lesson about adjectives. Specifically, adjectives to describe people. How many ways can one person be described? Well, let’s see - recently, I’ve been called all of the following:
kimért
ügyes
aranyos
discredited
heartless
crazy
kurva
ribanc
naïve
But my favorite description came from John, who said I was like a “soft-spoken sponge.” Meaning, I look sweet and innocent... until I soak up all your beer.

Excuses, excuses

So I do have a couple excuses why I haven’t been posting lately. Please choose from the following list the ones you would like to believe:

- I got busy spending my days planning out every single lesson for the remainder of the school year. Complete with charts and worksheets, and everything together neatly in a binder arranged by month and grade level.
- Having never properly registered with the police, I was technically an illegal worker. Therefore, I was trying to lay low and not call attention to myself.
- I became drunken with such frequency that even ‘sober’ moments were still hazy. No drunken blogging allowed.
- I was on vacation somewhere sunny and warm.
- After a very minor ‘incident’ with a student, I was forced into the Hungarian version of community service.
- I got really sick, to the point where I couldn’t eat for days, which of course led to further sickness and weakness and other unwellness.
- I got really lazy.
- The pipes in my wall finally exploded, and I got to spend the week in a hotel while they fixed it. Nice, but unfortunately a hotel without internet.

So which are true? Let’s just say, about half.

First Day Teaching

This morning at 7:30, still schedule-less but armed with lesson plans for any eventuality, I reported to school. My schedule (see entry below) was sitting on my desk, and it turned out I had two classes, first and second hours.

With my lesson plans in hand, the classes were relatively successful. There was the usual first-week confusions about who should be in which class, with which teacher, in which classroom. There was the problem of me forgetting to speak Hunglish (“What did you do this summer?... I mean, what you do this summer? You go to Balaton?”).

But overall, a good first day. It’s hard to think of the students as one year older. In my mind, 6.ab still means the class with Hella and Krisztina and all those loud boys, not this new 6.ab with Akos and Virág and the Vikis. It’s funny how the class changed, or didn’t. Today’s 6.ab is exactly the same loud, clever, not-so-bright but well-intentioned group that they were as 5.ab last year. On the other hand, the former 4.a - 26 munchkins running around the classroom, jumping on desks, shouting and playing football - has transformed into a 5.a of diligent, notebook-and-pencil-carrying, attention-paying students. I can’t wait to see how / if the other classes have changed.

Wait, did I just say I’m looking forward to teaching? Wow, maybe I’ve changed too.

My Schedule

I got my teaching schedule today. It’s, um, interesting. They made some changes from last year:


First, I’m not teaching fourth grade (unless they’re going to spring that on me later). I’m a little disappointed, because I was looking forward to a fresh crop of kids, a group I can start from scratch with. But I guess it’s for the best. I did spend all of last year wondering out loud what possible good it was for me to teach 4th grade... who knew someone was listening?

Another change: you can see on the plan red lessons (“compulsory lessons”) and blue lessons (“voluntary lessons”). These voluntary lessons sound like a great idea: kids sign up for an extra hour, and we do something fun (movies, field trips, etc). In reality, I’m afraid they will turn out just like last year: remedial classes for the kids whose parents decided they needed extra English. And this year I have a lot of these lessons.

And the worst change: starting every day at 7:30 and finishing everyday at 2. I don’t care about the times, I understand that life in the real world often includes less-than-perfect work hours. But the gaps in the middle of the day always feel like wasted time.

But because I’m being positive this week, I’ll end with the upsides: First, I don’t have to teach the “voluntary lessons” until next week. And second, most importantly, this won’t be the final schedule. Far from it - last year they made three or four versions. So there’s always room for change.

First Day of School

As it is everywhere in Hungary, September 1st was the beginning of classes at Kassai Úti Általános Iskola (Kassai Street Primary School). You can see this is a short entry; that’s because it was a short day, especially for me: I went to the school. My schedule wasn’t ready. I chatted with the other English teachers. I mentioned that I’m planning on leaving in October. They asked who would replace me, but not why I was leaving, or where I was going, or with who. Hm, priorities.

Then they left to go teach their osztályfõnök classes (the only classes of the day), and I went home.

A Lesson in Conditional

After I wrote this, I hesitated to publish it because it’s so complaining and whiney. But I promise I won’t complain anymore after this... for at least a week or two.

Things I would like to do:

- I would like to spend some time outside. But I’ve been kept in by the nasty, cold, rain-spitting weather. Apparently, autumn has decided to come hatefully early to Szolnok.

- I would like to take a hot bath. But I can’t, because of the viscous orange goo dripping from the ceiling pipes into my tub.

- I would like to watch some TV. Part of my Hungarian-learning plan was to watch an hour a day of Hungarian TV. But I can’t, because the TV has sound but no picture.

- I would like to do laundry. Actually, that’s not true - I’ve gotten so used to the washer being broken, that I’ve accepted the fact that laundry involves either hand-washing in the sink, or a trip to Juli’s flat.

- I would like to know who in Szolnok reads my blog.

- I would like to vacuum up all the spiders in my bathroom. For that matter, I’d like to vacuum the entire flat, it sorely needs it. But I can’t, because the vacuum has no suction.

- Alternatively, I would like to squash-and-flush all the spiders in my bathroom. But I can’t, because my toilet doesn’t flush, at least not without plunging and poking.

- I would like there to not be puddles on my bathroom floor. Unfortunately, they occur every time I use the sink. Which I kind of need.

- I would like to know my class schedule. It’s kind of difficult to spend the weekend planning for classes on Monday, when I have almost no idea what or who I’ll be teaching.

- I would have liked to go to my school’s opening ceremony. But I only learned when it was one hour after it happened. And only then because I had to ask my contact teacher to tell me when it was. Kind of her.

- I would like to leave this cold, dreary city. I would like to finish. I would like to pack my things, orient a new teacher to Szolnok, and then get on a plane. I would like to start anew on a sunny Mediterranean island.

2 Weeks, 200 Words

It’s been two weeks since I posted. I could write in detail about all the wondrous adventures I’ve had since then; about meeting up with the old teachers who were brave enough to stay a second year (even if they copped out and moved to Budapest); about how my Balaton trip failed but I had a great holiday anyway; about how Laura and I ran all over Budapest helping Hajni with the 37 new amcsi teachers, plus two dogs, plus one three-year-old-child; about how great and diverse the new group is; about orientation, both the official one and the after-hours one; about the drama which led to me being the only American teacher in Szolnok, as well as allowing me to raid Chad’s old flat and steal most of the books he left behind; about how I came back here to find my flat in disarray (new shower head installed, but TV, internet, pipes and toilet not working); about my reunion with Juli and the Oxford school, in it’s fabulous new location.

I could write about any of these things in detail. But I’m lazy, so I won’t.

Woke Up This Morning...

...and got myself a gun.

No, not really. But it’s a good song anyway.

I woke up this morning at 11, after sleeping terribly since about 4 am. I’m still trying to fight my body into submission on the jet-lag thing. It’s not working. I kept dreaming that strangers were in my flat.

I walked (stumbled) into the bathroom. Orange water was dripping down the wall from the pipes above the tub. I stumbled into the living room. I tripped and hit my head on the door. I turned the TV on. Sound, but no picture.

Here’s what still does work in my flat: My cell, my computer. My backpack, my legs, and my front door. So my plan is: I’m running away*. I’m packing some clothes and hopping the next train to Pest. And godwilling, I won’t be back until the end of the month.

*And if you think I’m irresponsible for going away and leaving the dripping pipe? Too bad. I hope it does explode, and the flat floods until water flows out under the front door and the neighbors complain. Because if someone else complained, maybe it would actually get fixed.

ID Withheld

Generally, when my phone rings and displays “ID Withheld,” I don’t answer it. There are only three possibilities who might be calling, only one of them good:

1) It might be family calling from America. But this happens pretty infrequently.
2) It might be a wrong number, which inevitably leads to me having to explain in broken Hungarian. Although now I’ve just started using English. Hey, if you can’t dial a number properly, I don’t have to attempt your language.
3) It might be my contact teacher Kati. Which is who it was this morning. Three times.

The first time she called, it was to remind me that I needed to go reregister with the police. Actually, I was supposed to do it within 2 days of returning, oops. She’s leaving on holiday today and suggested I go alone, reminding me that the man at the foreigners’ registration desk spoke English. Diplomatically (especially considering that I hadn’t had coffee yet), I refrained from pointing out that before getting to the kind English-speaking foreigners’ registration desk, one has to navigate á la Indiana Jones The Seven Terrifyingly Brusque Hungarian-Speaking Gates of Entry into the police facility. Instead, I mildly said that I’d rather not go without a Hungarian speaker. She sighed and said she was going to call the school.

The second time she called, it was to tell me that her husband would accompany me to the police, tomorrow. I said (truthfully) that tomorrow I’m going to Pest. We decided to forget the whole thing until later.

The third time she called, it was to tell me to gather up my passport and papers and run over to the school, so that the secretary (Secretary Ági) could take me to the police, right now. I gathered, and ran. After loitering in the hallways and making stilted Hungarian conversation with the principal and the portás for fifteen minutes, Secretary Ági burst around the corner and greeted me with, “Ma nem tudom meg menni. Szia.” (I can’t go today. Hi)

She and Principal Éva suggested we go later; I haltingly explained that I’m leaving Szolnok tomorrow and not coming back until the 28th. They sighed dramatically, and asked me if this was a Hajni-program or my own program. Not that it’s any of their business, but I answered yes and yes. They stared at me and made me write down where I planned to be for the next two weeks. I wrote it (Balaton, my program; then Budapest, Hajni program), along with my phone number. And then I scurried away home.

So I don’t know what the plan is, although I suspect it will involve me ditching the Hajni-program for a day, training to Szolnok on my own forint, going to the police with whoever gets stuck taking me, and then training back to Pest again. Love-er-ly.

I’d almost forgotten about Hungarian bureaucracy. Oh, I missed it, I really did. It makes life so troublesome for my school but so interesting for me.

What Kassai Did, part II

So I spent Thursday and Friday pestering my contact teacher via sms, until she called the school and sent over Pali, the school’s handyman. I like him because when he talks to me (in Hungarian, of course), he doesn’t really expect me to understand anything, but he still slows down and repeats things, and acts like a proud father if I do catch on to something.

In about two minutes, he had the gas and the boiler turned on, and everything up and running. I mean, as ‘running’ as anything gets in this flat. Then he launched into a long description about why the shower doesn’t work, of which I caught about every third word. This is a classic example of my understanding of Hungarian:

What I did understand: “Kassai... Lucza... pénz... mint a bojler... fal... régi bérház... komplett rossz. Azt érted?”

Which translates as: “Kassai school and Lucza (I think she’s the owner of the flat) are fighting about who’s going to pay for the repairs, just like they fought for months before someone gave in and paid to have the boiler replaced (and only then after I was almost gassed to death) but it probably can’t be fixed anyway because the problem is inside the wall which is made of concrete block, and these flats are just too old, the whole thing is bad. Understand?”

So I’m back to where I left the flat last June: almost everything impossibly broken. But fun to struggle against. Home sweet home.

What Kassai Did

It’s pretty easy to explain what I did this summer: nothing. On the other hand, it takes a whole blog entry to describe what Kassai (the school where I ‘teach’) was up to these past two months:

* They did clean my flat. They cleaned almost everything, so I can’t complain about that.

* They didn’t come meet me at the airport and help with my massively heavy suitcases. Suitcases which were made massively heavy by being filled with teaching materials. Teaching materials I had to bring from home because Kassai provides me with neither materials nor money to buy them with.

* They did turn my gas off. I guess I can understand their logic, it might be dangerous to have it on all summer in an unoccupied flat. But...

* They didn’t turn my gas back on. Thus, I have no hot water and no stove.

* They didn’t fix any of the following: the coffee maker, the vacuum, the oven, the ‘washing machine,’ the crappy paint job, the peeling wallpaper, the shower, nor the leaky bathroom sink.

* They did unplug my fridge for me, and they did clean it, but they didn’t remove the various condiments nor the food in the freezer (the reason I’d left the fridge on). And they didn’t clean up the explosion of mold left by the thawed and decaying freezer-food.

* They didn’t pay my bills, neither the ones they pay normally (like gas, water and cable) nor the ones that I normally pay for (internet). In June, I gave them 6000 forint to pay the internet over the summer... and yet today I got a bill for more than 11,000 forint to because the bill wasn’t paid last month.

What I’m going to do about it:
* I’m going to whine about it on this blog.
* I’m going to whine about it to anyone I corner face to face.
* And I’m going to hope for a short school year.

I'm Back

That’s right - after 24 hours of travel by car, plane, foot and bus, I made it safely from one home to the other (it took 36 hors going the other direction in June. But I only had three flights this time instead of four).

It wasn’t a happy homecoming. Instead of trying to describe it, I’ll encourage you to read Kat’s post about the happiness of returning. And then imagine it’s opposite. And that was me, yesterday afternoon and evening. For the first time ever since I’ve been in Hungary, I would gladly have hopped on a plane and left.

But it passed. After wallowing in depression for a couple hours, I got up, went shopping (possibly hunger was adding to my general crankiness), re-messed-up my flat where the cleaning ladies had organized it, enjoyed having MTV and high-speed internet again, skyped and sms-ed with people who cheered me up, and then slept for almost 12 hours.

But it really hit me this morning, as I was washing my hair in ice water (the gas isn’t turned on, and my contact teacher isn’t answering my smses) and drinking my cup of lukewarm instant coffee (coffee maker is still broken): yup, for better or worse, mostly the latter, I’m home.

Would You Rather... ?

I think we’ve all played this game at some point in your life. The questions range from the culinary “Would you rather eat a dead snake or a live bug?” to the romantic “Would you rather kiss a frog or be kissed by creepy Mr. Dovin?” to the morbid “Would you rather die in a car crash or by drowning?” to the philosophical “Would you rather be happy for a lifetime or rich for a lifetime?”

Last night I had a dream, and in my dream someone had published a book with the following title: “Would you rather live without a soul for one year or live in Budapest for the rest of your life?”

What does this mean? It means I’ve been lazing around my parents’ house too long, am bored out of my skull, and am having weird dreams.

School's Out For Summer

... which means I'm at my parents' home in Minnesota, and since life here is dull and not part of the Hungarian Experiement, I prob'ly won't be updating. See you in August.

Good-byes, Round Two (and the paperwork of leaving)

Thursday was the last day of school. Or I should say, the last day of teaching. Therefore, Thursday night seemed like the perfect opportunity to go out and celebrate. Under the guise of celebrating, it was also a good-bye party, because it’s the last time we’ll all be together.

It was an excellent night, and not only because I didn’t have to pay for drinks. The night started with just Geri and I at Tisza-mozi (although the two of us had both started the night by ourselves, earlier. Much earlier). Ági joined us, and we moved to Jazz. We sat down with Nancy and Ann, two former CETP teachers who are back for a visit. Mike and Cori came over from Jazz 2. Juli and Chad finally showed up, so it was a complete group. We ate, we drank, I received presents (funny to me, because I’m coming back in less than 2 months). We stayed until Jazz closed, then drove two blocks up the street to Irish, where we met two former students of Nancy (or Ann). When exactly we left is a bit hazy in my mind. Or why we left. Or the ride home.

What I know is that when my alarm went off at 8:30 this morning (I had the foresight to set it yesterday before the drinking commenced), I thought I might die. But I got up, took some steps, and realized that by some miracle, not only was I not hungover, I felt okay. No headache or nothing, just tired.

I walked over to the school for what I assumed was a short meeting at 9 o’clock. Actually, it was a short meeting. I thought I was going to get yelled at for the debacle with the marks and the naplós, but no. Now that school’s out, everyone’s relaxed, so they just kindly reminded me to be more thoughtful about the marks next year.

The meeting lasted 10 minutes. Then my director announced that I needed to go to the police station. Why? To register me. For next year. It had to be done today, because I’m leaving super-early morning Monday. Long story short, I did not get to go home and go back to bed. Instead, I spent the next six hours (yes, six) following my contact teacher around to the police, to get passport photos taken, back to the police, waiting for the police, filling out oodles of paperwork, and making copies of my keys (in theory to clean my flat while I’m gone and take care of my mail, but I half think they’re going to rent out the flat while I’m gone. They mentioned wanting to). And then back to the school to drop off the keys and sign another bajillion forms. I couldn’t tell you what, probably they’re selling me into slavery next year.