Accepting the Magyar Mission

2007-02-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

My Expat Interview http://www.xpatloop.com/interviews_list_detail.php?id=261

2007-02-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

The Return to the U.S. - Death of Anna Nicole Smith A week after I returned to the States Anna Nicole Smith collapsed and died. Sadly, I don't think the public in general could appreciate her but I think to a lot of women she was somewhat (and I say this hesitantly) modern-day Lady Diana Spencer. Anyway, I was a real fan and was very sad to hear the news. There have been some great things about being back in the States, but I miss the kids and the weekend trips.

2007-02-08T11:57:00.000-08:00

Turning Hungarian - Global Warming Last week it was very warm in Szarvas. Sunny and bright and looked like a September day. I asked at least five of the kids - Is this normal? And they said no. "Why is it so warm this week?" - And they answered, globális felmelegités (global warming). Classroom management was a MAJOR problem: voices were raised, kids were asked to leave the room (before minutes later being told, "OK, you can come back in - but please, no talking"), and diets got very broken.

In Hungary everything gets blamed on the weather. They don't share our concept of stress as it pertains to psychosomatic ailments. So a headache isn't from stress - it is from a warm or cold front coming in. You will hear that explanation every time someone has a headache. It is a totally different way of thinking and when you see it in action it's a shock. Similarly, they told us during the August Orientation that Alzheimer's or any sort of "syndrome" ( i.e. "middle child" was an example) is just attributed to someone's character. They don't have a word for a lot of the (vernacular or layman) medical terms we use!

So - because of global warming, me and two girlfriends (Eve and Lisa) were forced to blow some cash on a wine-tasting weekend in Eger. Enjoy the pictures (below)!

2007-02-08T11:54:00.000-08:00

Parish Rehab
So, today was my first day back at the school in three weeks. There was a two week Christmas break and the week prior I had the nastiest flu/fever/sore throat, not to mention problems stemming from being a cheek-biter. Sheesh, it wasn't pretty. I saw a doctor, alone, and wrote down Hungarian translations of the following (they don't speak English here): flu, fever, body aching all over, sore throat, c*nk*r issues, can't sleep. She chuckled at my list; I guess it came off as self-diagnosis when really it was my only way of attempting to describe what I thought might be wrong. She listened to my heartbeat, and then gave me tablets - no temperature taking or anything like that. Kinda odd. Well, it probably didn't help that she had a grown woman kinda crying in her office - but I have never been sick like that.

It was nice to be back today - the kids all looked older or different for some reason. I saw my beloved 5.b. today - this class contains several I want to adopt; I just want to take them home, make dinner and read stories. In particular, there is my Victor, who is the most charming, bright, charismatic little guy. I'm tellin' ya - at times I overidentify with this new teacher role and am pretty attached to my ten year-old fifth graders. There have been a few times where they have burst into tears in the middle of class (once from bullying, once from the stress of (voluntarily) singing "Rudolph" for extra credit, and the other time because the girl got bad news from the office). Anyway, this breaks my heart and I just have to think on the spot what I can do to make sure they have a smile on their face in five minutes or less. I just feel thankful that in general the school seems to be a happy place and refuge in a lot of ways - so if there are problems at home, at least they have a nice school to go to. Statistically speaking, there are surely a lot of problems and it makes me sad to think about it. Will be sad to leave but staying for the year just seems like too much. In addition, among other things, I am applying for a Master's degree in ESL from the College of Notre Dame which leads to teacher certification in the State of Maryland, so fingers crossed. That degree program begins in late May and only takes a year to complete.

So, back to Parish Rehab - over-identifying, detoxing, reforming, and regressing (to "safe" celebrity crushes) all at the same time. This morning I read that the band Blue October is playing at the 9:30 Club (an old haunt in Washington D.C.) on the 23rd of January. The lead singer, Justin Furstenfeld, is a dream. Just a vision of heaven in every way; well, minus the eyeliner. MTV and VH1 Europe were playing the "Hate Me" video every hour for weeks. Apparently I like round faces with a "mean, bouncer build", according to my girlfriends here. Sh*t. For a second I thought about changing my return ticket from the 25th of January to the 22nd just to see this god in the flesh, but that's pretty ridiculous I think. I also saw the movie Dé J a Vu recently and Denzel Washington is looking a dream these days as well; probably right up there with Blue October guy. At least a celebrity crush can't end with, "Other than not telling you about my 15 day fiasco of a marriage, I'm not sure how I wronged you." Classic, and right up there with being e mailed a 15-week Amazon Transformation Workout Plan from a latent homosexual doctor. I can't ever imagine dealing with that kind of nonsense ever again and thank God for Parish Rehab is all I can say. This last year, my poor friends had their ears talked off many a time regarding, "I can't figure him out" or "I haven't heard from He-Who-I Shall-Not-Mention" in days, maybe he's busy?". Well, I can assure you it will never happen again! What a waste of time and energy.
Anyway, I went with my buddies Sara and Ian to Slovenia from Christmas Break. This is the country where Melania Knauss is from, leave it to me and my tabloids to know that. The capital, Ljubljana, is a really charming little place; very fairy taleish with the castle, river and little streets. We also went to the Istrian coast, "The Green Mediterranean" (very beautiful even in winter) and spent a day in Trieste (on the Italian border) to see a castle called Miramare. Slovenia was in the news recently because as of January 1st, they switched over from their currency (the tolar) to the Euro. That day Romania and Bulgaria were officially welcomed in to E.U. as well.

Well, a new year is here! Hope everyone's is off to a good start. If looking for a good book, check out The Secret Life fof Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. Also recently read and very much enjoyed Arthur Goldman's Memoirs of a Geisha.

2006-12-03T08:04:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving!

Hey guys, I promise to send a proper update within a week, in the meantime here are some pictures of my 5th graders (total sweeties) and 6th graders (somewhat sweeties).

It's funny -- more than a few of the teachers in the Program agree that half of the battle is "putting on a show", i.e. being an entertainer to keep their attention. I swear that I could win probably any game of charades after acting out so many random things. The other day the local TV station, Körös TV came to school to film various classes, and they filmed my 7.b. class. There are about 29 kids in that class (only 6 are girls), so you can imagine. For the TV, we put on such a show. To begin with, over half of the class was sent somewhere else, and we re-did a chapter on golfing that we had done in September. Eva (the only other English teacher here and the one I was co-teaching with for the first weeks) and I taught the class together. One of my duties was to teach the kids 5 new golf-related words, using just my hands and voice (golf course, golf bag, golf club, competition, and hole). I was afraid that my "teacher hands" would become the next Elaine Benes dance on the streets of New York, but I seem to have escaped that fate!

Anyway, after a class goes really well, I am in a good mood and feel positive; I always imagine myself saying to the class. "Thanks, you guys have been great audience" ..so the point is we are comedians to a degree. The 5th and 6th grade love to laugh, not so for the 7th and 8th classes. It is hard to get them to speak and the kids don't know how to make sentences, especially for conversational purposes. So we have worked a lot on pronounciation and the crafting of sentences.

The other day I went to a conference of sorts put on by a publishing company trying to sell their line of English Language training materials. (At my school we use the Oxford "Project" series). Interestingly, they had a selection of Level 1 "abridged classics", including Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince (http://www.oscarwildecollection.com/). It is one of my all time favorite stories and a total tear-jerker. I was hoping to perform it as a play during my Monday English Club with ten 5th grade girls, but they claimed to be uninterested in reading books or having a play. So far we have just sung songs in English ("This Old Man", "Three Little Kittens" --ok so yes these are nursery rhymes, but everyone is a little younger when they are learning a foreign langauge and these are really catchy songs and the girls really enjoy it! We also do "hidden pictures" activities from Highlights magazines -- the goal is they have to find about 12 hidden objects and tell me the the words in English.

I hope this all made sense, I am in a bit of a rush and am making Thanksgiving stuffing tonight for 15 people for a 4-day Thanksgiving blowout in the east of the country, so I gots to get cookin'!

More to come soon!

Rebeka néni
(it means Auntie - this is what the kids call the teachers)

2006-12-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

The Visa Journey to Kosice, The Über-hosts of Kolacsa, and the Vineyard Row of Eger

Last Tuesday morning got the call - be in Budapest tomorrow to get the visa! The school (http://benka-gyula.uw.hu/) gave me the rest of the week off in order to embark on the journey to Slovakia (and what a journey it was)! I left Wednesday morning and got to Budapest Wednesday afternoon. The program booked beds for me and two other teachers also going on the journey at Eötvös Kollegium, which is one of the best colleges in Hungary, but you wouldn't know it from the lack of funding; some buildings are a little dillapidated and so on. I met a French girl there who is teaching French at the college. She's been in Hungary just three weeks and has been repeatedly warned of the anti-French attitude here. The infamous Treaty of Trianon, which was signed in 1920, took place in Versailles and determined that Hungary would lose 2/3 of its territory to the neighboring lands and 1/3 of its Hungarian-speaking population. In particular, Transylvania became part of Romania. Please read here for more information on this devastating treaty: http://www.webenetics.com/hungary/trianon.htm. Has a lot to do with the pessimistic national character. Incidentally, the program (Central European Teaching Program) is taking us on a 6-day trip to Transylvania where we will stay with Hungarian families. The trip is open to any of our friends, so if seeing Vlad's castle on Oct. 31st sounds once-in-a-lifetime, let me know! Though it's worth mentioning that my mom recently remarked, "Everything is once in a lifetime with you".

So, that day was the 4th day of the riots and demontrations, the latter of which are still going on; its day 11 now. In case you haven't heard, the Prime Minister was kicking back with his colleagues one night and was caught on tape admitting that he had grossly lied about the economy to get votes. It's a huge deal - among other things, now that the true amount of the country's deficit has been revealed, it will indefinitely delay when Hungary can switch from its Forints currency to the Euro (scheduled for 2010).

On Thursday morning at 6 a.m. the program director, Hajnalki, met us outside the college and packed me, a girl named Jori, and an older Canadian man named Larry into her little car. Well, I could write pages about that day because it was one laugh after another. We were supposed to go to the Hungarian Embassy in Bratislava in Slovakia (in the west), but instead we went to a Hungarian Consulate in the Slovakian city of Kosice in the east. We only saw a bit of the town (main squares and the main shopping street), but it was gorgeous. We got there around 10 a.m. and after getting the paperwork done, had about half an hour to walk around. I went on a mad search to find walking shoes since I came here with nothing, but it was the usual fate of the tall girl - no shoes in my size. Is it a crime to wear American size 11 or 12 (European 42 - 44)? Apparently!

We left at noon and on the way back we wound up making a stop at a small town, Tiszauvaros, where a new teacher had recently arrived and was refusing to pay the program fee. So after killing two hours there, we got back in the car and arrived in Budapest around 6:30. Jori wound up taking me back to her town of Kolacsa where they were having a Paprika Days Festival that weekend. Kolocsa is the paprika capital of Hungary and there are fields of the stuff everywhere. Jori (22 and from Chicago) is actually rooming with another teacher from the program, though he is 52 and ran for Governor and a seat in the Senate of California a few years ago. Since I am known (affectionately, I hope!) as the first to get news and follow the goings-on, I had to see this for myself. So on Friday I visited her school and the next day the three of us were invited to attend a parade/festival about ten minutes away in a very small village called Homokegy and ride on a horse-drawn cart. That weekend we ran into two Über-hosts, one male and one female, in the sense that they were over the top. I will have all of the photos posted online later today I hope, but in the meantime here are three from the weekend. One is of a paprika field; one is of me and the female Über-host, Maria, who is Jon's contact person and fellow teacher; and the other is of me, Jori, Jon, a priest, and the male Über-host. The latter picked us up from Kolacsa at 8 on Saturday morning and took us all to his house where his wife and daughters were all in traditional dress and getting ready for the parade. This was at 9 a.m. and he wanted us all to drink Jagermeister, and his home-made red wine...mixed with Pepsi. Because you can't say no to an Über-host, we had to oblige. After a bit the parade began and all it entailed was about six horse-drawn carts pulling five loads of tradionally-dressed villagers, and then us, going through the village and stopping at various houses for home-made wine and snacks . It was supposed to just last the morning so that we could get back to Kolocsa for the Paprika festival, but that didn't happen. And I was the only sober the one the whole day. At one point during the day Maria mentioned that she had a former student who was home in Homokmegy for the weekend, but was attending a small college in Szarvas, and that he could probably give me a ride back on Sunday.

Finally 4:00 rolled around and we pulled up to the dinner site and after some more dancing, we sat down to a big table for a cabbage/pork/paprika stew. Well, poor Jori wound up sitting next to the male Über-host and made the mistake of requesting Palinka, a clear fruit brandy. They were speaking German and after a while the German was getting butchered and filled with a lot of giggles. By this point Jon was nearing the end of his story on his second failed marriage to a Russian woman, and how he wants to write a book on the experience called, The Rose in My Thorn. Long story short, it was around 7 by this time and very quickly Jori went to a very bad place for the next three hours and it was scary as hell. The Über-host's wife drove us back to Kolacsa but oddly she wouldn't fall asleep, just was stuck in this very bad place. Anyway, she finally did crash as everyone was out on the street partying for the paprika festival. The next morning the phone rang at 9 o'clock and it was Maria, giving me an update on whether I could get a quck ride back to Szarvas. All she said was, "I have talked to Gabor and please meet us at 11:30 by the fountain. And your bus leaves at 1". It was classic, I was like, "But why am I meeting Gabor if he can't give me a ride?". And the answer was, "You will see". Oh my God, does it ever end?! You can't say no to these people so I dragged everyone along with me for this blind date or whatever it was and luckily it was painless. Gabor is a big tall boy and 22 and wants to own a farm one day. Luckily, we found out that he was only in Szarvas on Tuesdays. Then after that ended Maria called up her nephew and asked him to come pick us up so that I could see the Danube about five miles away -- and it was lovely! Then she gave me water and a sandwich for the road. Maybe it was one of those things where you had to be there, but there was enough laughter between Budapest/Kosice/Kolacsa/Homokmegy) to keep me entertained for days.Got back to town on Sunday and it's back to work! It's still hard being alone here, but I am strategizing; am hoping to start some sort of tutoring but the people in the program haven't met with much success in their towns/cities. I finally found a good coffee (LavAzzo) and found the sleep timer on the tv (someone is suddenly afraid of the dark)!

A quick note about the weekend of September 14th - I met up with two friends in the program, Sara and Nicole, to go to Eger, a beautiful and very popular town in the north. Eger is one of the wine regions of Hungary, along with Villany, Balaton, and Tokaj. We met up on Friday night in Sara's town of Gyöngös, in the Northern Uplands part of Hungary (the other regions are Trans-Danubia and the Great Plains, where Szarvas is). Gyöngos has about 30,000 people and the only thing that puts it on the map is the fact that it has a museum with a baby wooly mammoth -- a one of a kind thing, apparently. Anyway, we left for Eger the next morning and oh my God, it is the most gorgeous town and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Eger is known for its wine, castle, minaret, stunning baroque town center, heavy Turkish history, not to mention spas. Click here for a virtual tour ( http://www.egeronline.com/guide/guide.php?show=sightseeing&lang=en). After wandering a little festival in one of the squares, we went to "The Valley" where exists what can only be described as Vineyard Row - roughly twenty-five vineyards back-to-back in the shape of a horseshoe. Eger is famous for its red wine and in particular a variety called Bikaver, or Bull's Blood. For the story behind the name, read this: http://www.citytour96.com/wine-region-article. I stuck to the Merlots and then it was straight to Bikaver. Since one is getting the wine right from the source, it is CHEAP. We had so much fun and I woke up the next morning feeling kinda confused, with purple lips and stained teeth. On a final note - yesterday the European Union decided to admit Romania and Bulgaria! Among other things, this means that Bucharest and Sofia will get cleaned up and will have to come up with a solution to the thousands of stray dogs that run around in packs on the streets.

2006-09-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Magyar Mayhem: The River Körös Runs Through It (Oct. 2006)

Ever wonder why we answer the phone with "Hello" in the States? According to one of the program participants/teachers, it is because the telephone is a Hungarian invention. True, Alexander Graham Bell toyed with it and introduced it to the masses, but it was a Hungarian that first put it together. In Hungarian (Magyar), "hallo" means "can you hear me". I tried to look this up online to learn more but wasn't able to find anything.

So, I'm almost through my second week of teaching. Most of the classes assigned to me I have co-taught with one of the two other English teachers. There are good days and bad days but things seem to be going pretty well so far. I am teaching Grades 5 - 8. The two fifth grade classes are total sweethearts. They are adorable! I love them! The three Sixth grade classes are really hard to manage when I'm alone (I have stories!) and the same goes for the 7th grade classes. At those times it is madyar mayhem but hopefully it will get better. The 8th graders seem to be ok so far. When I walk down the halls the kids are really sweet and say: Hello Miss Young!, Good Morning Miss Young!, Hi Miss Young! etc. There is a word here, czia (pronounced see-ya), which is the equivalent to ciao in Italian; an informal way of saying hi and bye. Some of the kids think "hello" in English is the same as czia so at the end of class or when they are leaving school they'll say "Hello Miss Young!"

Some of the popular names here are Norbert, Béla, Bence, Attila, Ferenc, etc.

Last weekend I met up with Laura, Jenna, and Sara in a town up in the Northern Uplands, Hernádnémeti. I am in the Southeastern part of the country near the Romanian and Serbian borders. I got there around 9 p.m. (it took 4.5 hours by bus to get from Szarvas to the hub of Miskolc and then another 45 minutes to get to Hernádnémeti) and it was sooo much fun; a good old-fashioned slumber party and we were talking nonstop as a result of not really being able to converse during the week. On Saturday we went to the Aggtelek caves in the tiny village of Aggtelek way up north on the Slovakian border. Just getting their involved a train to the hub of Miskolc, then a train to Aggtelek, and then a bus to the top of the mountain where the caves take up roughly 12 kilometers. We had an amazing one hour tour of the caves where actual cavepeople once lived and at times we were on the Slovakian side! A huge concert hall was carved out at some point in time, which is where they presented a spectacular light show - very Phantom of the Opera. All kinds of events are held their year-round in this underground cave concert hall. It looked like they were preparing for some sort of wedding when we were there. Then we got a bus back down the mountain to the train station, hopped on a train to Miskolc, and then splurged on a taxi back to Hernádnémeti.

The Habitat for Humanity group arrived a few days ago and yesterday I met them. There are three Americans (S.F., Portland, and Annapolis) and ten Canadians (all from Toronto, Victoria, and Vancouver). The Szarvas Habitat spokesperson met with me beforehand to tell me the current group's itinerary and then invited me to a ceremony they were having at the worksite. The Szarvas Mayor was there as well as the four families the house is being built for. Then we had dinner - they're a fun bunch. It looks like I will be helping out in the office and with upcoming groups (one from the States is arriving next month) -- I jumped at the the chance since I have a lot of free time here. And the best part: at the worksite there's this handsome and totally playful gaurd dog. He looks like some sort of big lab mix and is probably a good 130 pounds and I hope to be able to take him for some walks and runs in the woods here.

So far, the hardest part of this whole thing has been adjusting to life in a foreign small town and not knowing the language - very stressful and at times I feel like a mute or a mime. From talking to the others, it sounds like I've been having more of a hard time than the majority. For a while there I would just tune out the language but now I am really trying to learn something. In addition, things were weird in the beginning with the whole Lutheran connection that exists since I am living on church property and teaching at a Lutheran school. My next door neighbor and contact person, The Pastor, was expecting me to go to these daily prayers in the school cafeteria and I was like, "But I'm not Lutheran". This was after he told me to come to the church on one of the first days here for what I presumed was the opening school ceremony, but instead it was simply a service. Anyway, I've definitely gotten a bit of a bad vibe from the pastor since the whole "I'm not Lutheran thing" - but my program confirmed the obvious. Anyway, I'm really glad I'm here, it is certainly a challenge -- but after all I asked for a change and got one!

I haven't gotten a visa yet but the program did take a few people to Bratislava a few days ago. Hopefully they will call me soon! No one seems to know why we get Slovakian visas but a lot of things here don't seem to follow an order.

More about the town of Szarvas: the river Körös runs through it and there is also a small lake and a lot of woods. I usually walk through the woods in the afternoons, either attempting to go for a jog or while I'm attempting to read a book, or while I'm on the phone. The program gave us mobiles, so my number here is (36)30-372-4735.

Hello from the Land of Paprika, 8/24/06 - 9/02/06

2006-09-14T02:27:00.000-07:00

Hello! I arrived in Budapest on Thursday, August 24th to begin Orientation for the Central European Teaching Program (www.ticon.net/~cetp/). Right away I met some fantastic people. They had a welcome dinner for us on the 25th at a nice restaurant on the Danube and then we had four intense days of class on the following three topics: Teaching Methods, Hungarian Language, and Cultural Differences. The latter was extremely interesting. You don't hear much about Hungary but the country has gone through a LOT! The language is really difficult - it is Finno-Ugric in origin and not related to any Indo-European languages; instead it comes from a Mongolian tribe and there is a bit of Turkish in there as well! I've been spoiled with Germanic languages so Hungarian seems impossible at times.

There are about 30 teachers in this year's program and we are all American except for a British girl who was my roommate in the hostel. Half are in the 20s. The majority of us are here because we wanted to get experience teaching in Europe but were not able to get a work permit or visa in any other country but Hungary. So, they were a fun group and we had a lot of laughs and then on Wednesday the 30th we all had to leave for our respective teaching placements. Sad! I am working at a Lutheran school and living in an inefficiency next door to the pastor for the Lutheran Church, who is also the sponsor for the School, so he has been my contact person and was the one who had to come get me and bring me here to Szarvas. He spent a year and a half in Chicago and wants me to help him with his English and teach his 4 year-old son English. I haven't been approached about any tutoring opportunities yet but I have only been here for 24 hours and as usual expect everything to happen overnight! (Tidbit: A program participant (herafter referred to as a Teacher) was attempting to describe everyone in the program to a returning teacher using just one word, and mine was URGENCY. How true, woops!)

Szarvas is a little town of 18,000 people ( www.szarvas.hu) and is described in The Rough Guide to Hungary as a "pretty green town" - and how it is! It is very green, but also very small. There is a well-known arboretum here as a well as a Canoe and Kayak Club. I haven't had a chance to see either but plan on doing so tomorrow. Apparently some Americans will be coming here next week for a Habitat for Humanity project. Nobody speaks English here. This morning I was taken to the school, Benka Gyula Lutheran Primary school to meet some of the teachers and to get some paperwork done, but in the afternoon I was on my own to do whatever. About the efficiency -it is a cute little flat with an exta twin bed and a little yard (shared). It's missing furnishings at the moment but otherwise it is clean and cozy. So who's visiting? Next door is a dog called a Puli. The Puli breed is Hungarian -- they are the black dogs with the dread locks. Everyone has them here but they are rare in the States. Actually whenever you see a picture of Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale walking around (oh how I am missing Us Weekly right now!), they usually have their two Pulis with them.

I begin teaching on Monday and it looks like I won't have the chance to observe any classes before school starts. I was told I was teaching Elementary and brought along children's books and cool crayons and colored pencils and stickers -- but now I'm told I am teaching middle school! So. I believe I have to go to Bratislava, Slovakia next week with a few other people to get the visa-work permit. Additionally, I have to leave the country after three months. Luckily Romania is about an hour away. We don't get paid until October 1st so things are tight!