Oh cruel fate, why do you mock me?

Yesterday Daniel and I received a package from my dad containing all our mail that he has kindly been collecting for us since we left Australia. While most of it was fairly mundane stuff, there was one letter that was a bit special. In fact, it was such a special letter that I had been eagerly awaiting its arrival for the last 12 years! And possibly even longer.

Yes, as you may have guessed (or maybe not), it was a letter from the Juries Commissioner's Office advising me that I had been selected for jury service.

I have wanted to be on a jury for as long as I can remember. I know that lots of people think it's a pain and try to get out of it, but I have been willing them to pick me for jury duty ever since I first enrolled to vote in 1998. But now that the good people at the JCO have finally decided to pluck my name off the electoral role, I can't do it because I am not even in the country anymore. SO ANNOYING!!!

Anyway, after sobbing myself to sleep last night, I have decided to contact the JCO tomorrow morning to find out if there is any way that I can defer my jury service until I return to Australia. Hopefully they will say yes and my dream will remain intact.

Until then, I must distract myself by taking even more photos of Iago. Here is one I took today of him curled up in his armchair.

It's starting to get pretty cold over here - I suspect that we will need to start using the heating at home soon. I'm actually a bit scared to do so because I'm worried that I might somehow blow the place up. After all, we seem to have slightly dodgy wiring and there are about 12 heating units scattered about the place. Not exactly a good combination!

Thankfully the school is going to send someone over to help us with the heaters when we are ready - which means that I won't be the person standing closest to the explosion when things go bad. Yay!!

- Amanda

The train to Kecskemét

View Larger Map

This weekend we headed off with our friend Christie to a party organised by a number of other teachers within the CETP Hungarian English program of which we are a part. The party was located in Kecskemét which is around 3 hours from Nyiregyhaza by train or around 2 and a half hours by car. We chose to take the train so we could drink. It's always nice to be able to have a beer or two (or perhaps a shot or two of Palinka) without worrying about the upcoming drive home.

Of course, we did end up having to drive from Nyiregyhaza back to Mariapocs after the party, but we figured that after 3 hours on the return trip we had cleared enough alcohol from the blood to risk the quick flight back through the deserted country roads. Before anyone gives us crap about this, we were well and truly clear by the time we got back (well, Amanda was - that Palinka really goes to my head), besides the Mariapocs train terminates in the middle what is basically a field around an hours walk from our house, and it then bubbles along at 20km/h turning a 20-30 minute drive into a two and a half hour train trip (including walk-time). So anyway, we decided to drive at least that far.

Once we got on the train at Nyiregyhaza is was really cool. It was our first time on an intercity train in Hungary, and we were happy to see that it was all cabins like something out of a Harry Potter movie. Christie flexed her Hungarian skills and quickly chatted to the locals in our cabin. Amanda and I in our less social mien pulled out our books and read for the duration.

We arrived a little later than we expected (around 4pm) then had to leave a little earlier than expected due to the train timetable (around 6:40) but overall it was definitely worthwhile. The trainride was quite fun, and catching up with the other teachers was good. Both Amanda and I are in agreeance that we should host such a party ourselves in the not too distant future.

- Daniel.

Guess who?

Here are some pics taken in the classroom last week of Daniel playing a homemade version of "Guess Who?" with some of the kids. The class seemed to really enjoy the activity and some of the kids even wanted to make extra copies of the gameboard so they could play at home with their siblings.

The Apple Festival

View Larger Map

Yesterday, we drove from Mariapocs (A) to a small town on the border of Romania called Csenger (B), to celebrate their Csengeri Almafesztivá. It's a small town, with a population of around 5000 people who are mostly employed in the vocation of... apples. There are a multitude of orchards in the area and a rather huge juicing factory where they make not only apple juice, but the absence of apple juice in the form of apple chips. If you are not employed by the apple industry, my understanding is that you make shoes at the local joint Hungarian/German venture (which make rather nice shoes according to Ili, our colleague). Ili lived here for around 20 years, working (in spite of my previous description) at the local high school, teaching English. It was a nice trip for her as she got to catch up with many old friends.

The day started off wet, but that was no hindrance for the locals who were out there in force with their large pots cooking up all sorts to stews, soups and cakes. Each "organisation" within the town, i.e. the tűzoltóosztag (fire department), Posta Csenger (post office), the primary school, the high schools etc, all decorated their stall with apples, pulled out a large pot and spent three hours or so cooking up these awesome concoctions. The stalls were then judged on their presentation, the quality of their food and the "specialness" (we and no one else we asked could figure out the qualities of "special"). As mentioned, Ili knew just about everyone so we had a very good selection of the local produce, including some awesome pork stew, any number of apple cakes, crumbles, slices, preserves, chips, juices, and of course the ubiquitously eye watering and throat burning Palinka. Actually, I think I'm starting to enjoy the vile stuff. As they seem to say in Csenger: "Most people drink Palinka after eating, whereas we drink it before and after... also quite a lot in the middle."

The rain cleared up eventually, and it turned out to be a really nice day. The sun was out, there

was plenty of music, folk dancing and eating. We ended up going on a bit of a walk around town, as it turns out that Csenger always employs the services of a famous Hungarian architect: Imre Makovecz. This tends to make the town have the same kind of feel all the way through, which is really very pretty. In fact, Ili's house was designed by Imre so I get the impression that it should be fairly well sought after (this said, I think it has been on the market for two years due to the fact that the only advertising she has done has been to post an Eladó sign out the front). Still, many of the buildings looked very impressive.

After the tour, we visited a few more stalls, bought some preserves, ate kürtőskalács which are a traditional Transylvanian pastry. They were pretty awesome, basically a cylinder of dough, cooked in front of you then powdered with either cinnamon, cocoa powder, coconut, walnut or vanilla. Here is a picture of Amanda enjoying her kürtőskalác with Ili standing behind enjoying the crowds.

- Daniel.

Primary school in Hungary

I thought it might be interesting to provide a quick run-through of a typical day in the life of a Hungarian primary school student at our school in Máriapócs.

The school day starts at 8am. The first class runs for 40 minutes, then the kids get a 10 minute break in which they are allowed to play in the corridoor outside their classrooms. During this break the kids tend to separate into two groups - the first group (mainly boys) plays loud, rough games such as running down the corridoor, then sliding along the floor into a wall, while the second group (mostly girls) crowd around someone's desk and worship whatever new toy the desk's owner has brought with them to school that day. Both groups eat snacks (chips, lollies, pretzels, biscuits, etc) while they are playing.

After the break there is another 40-minute class, followed by the morning snack break (20 minutes). During the morning snack break, the kids produce a plastic placemat and plate (or bowl) from their desk and line up in the corridoor to receive their snack. The snack is typically a large pastry or sandwich. They then bring the snack back to their desk and eat it in the classroom. Many of the kids also eat other snacks that they have in their lunchboxes.

After the morning snack break, the kids have two more classes. The first one goes for 40 minutes, but the second one is a little more flexible depending on when the kids are scheduled to have their lunch break (the time varies each day). The earliest lunch break is at 11:40am and the latest is at 1:30pm. When the time arrives for the lunch break the teacher walks the kids next door to the cafeteria in the aged care home. The kids line up and they each receive a tray loaded with a massive two or three course meal. Generally there is soup, followed by some kind of pasta or rice dish with meat, and either a bowl of accompanying vegetables (such as gherkins) or a dessert (such as preserved fruit).

For the last two weeks Daniel and I have also been getting our lunch from the cafeteria and I am not kidding when I say that they are huge. Here is a picture of one of our meals from last week:


After their 30-minute lunch break the teacher walks the kids back to school and they go straight into three more back-to-back classes. These classes go through until 3pm when the kids have a 20 minute afternoon snack break. The kids whip out their placemats and plates again and one of the serving ladies brings a tray of snacks into the classroom. The snack is generally a large sandwich filled with cream cheese and capsicum. One of the kids (or the teacher) also collects a jug of warm tea and pours a cup for each student who wants one. Most of the kids also have their own cup for this purpose. The tea is really nice - very much like the honey lemon tea that my dad makes - and I often end up drinking half the jug by myself! Luckily there is a massive urn and the tea jug can be refilled many times for each classroom. During this break many of the kids also eat other snacks from their lunchboxes - including even more sandwiches!

After the afternoon snack break there is one more class and then the kids pack up and go home at 4pm. It's a very long school day, but the numerous breaks do help to keep things moving.

One thing that really surprises me about the school schedule is the absence of a long break where the kids can just run around and play outside. Apart from the 10-minute break in the morning, the kids don't have any dedicated time allocated just for play. Although they do have some classes set aside as "freetime". Daniel and I have been given a number of different explanations as to what freetime actually is, but it seems to be an extra class that the teacher can use to do whatever they like. Many teachers seem to use these freetime classes to take the kids outside where they can run around for a while. At first this seemed like a wasted class to me, but once I realised that the kids didn't get any other outside breaks, I could see the value in spending freetime outside. This is especially true for the really young kids who are pretty rowdy by the end of the day if they haven't had a chance to expend some energy during freetime.

The other thing that really surprises me is just how much food these kids eat. My god! They seem to be eating alllllllllllll the time. Where does it all go? Our friend Christie told us that if you mug any random Hungarian on the street you are almost certain to find a sandwich. If these kids are anything to go by, I'd say she is right!

Another interesting observation is that these kids are not fussy eaters at all. They eat whatever they are given. And none of them have any food allergies. In fact, Daniel was told during his orientation program that not even peanuts are a problem over here. I think that's pretty amazing.

Anyway, I'd better finish off here - I have a class with Daniel in 30 minutes and we're planning to show the kids how to make compasses out of pins, paper, cups, water and magnets...so I need to see if I can find some pins, paper, cups, water and magnets before then!

Finally, this is a photo I took in our garden the other day of some mushrooms:

A church reopening

Twenty thousand people converged on Máriapőcs today to celebrate the finished renovation of the Greek Catholic church. It was pretty impressive, all the streets were blocked off, and they had an outdoor service. Amanda and I were prompt, and I wondered at the people around me who were setting up camp. They had big coats on, were gathered around in family groups with chairs etc. It turns out that they knew what they were in for. The mass was two and a half hours long. Amanda and I lasted twenty minutes before we went to the school to assist with lunch for the 200 odd priests that attended today's mass.

For the experience in it's entirety, please watch this video 3000 times.

A few classes later

Soooo anyway, Amanda and I are expert teachers now. We've had a few classes here and there and we figure we're ready to deviate from the syllabus as we clearly know better. We know what times of the week that the kids are tired and won't want to work, we know which kids will fight, and we know which kids will always answer the questions.

We've got this teaching stuff licked.

In other news here is Iago with tusks.

Our First Day of Teaching

Today was awesome fun.

That said, let's first talk about Monday. Monday was our first day of school, although perhaps this is a slight exaggeration in that we really only were on school grounds in the morning. There was a 2 hour staff meeting, lead by the Principal and almost exclusively in Hungarian. It was pretty boring after the first half an hour but as Amanda and I are both well versed in the traditions of long meetings from which we will gain nothing we quickly put our minds to other tasks. I to outlining a rough syllabus so the grade three Nature Studies that I am teaching as of next week, and Amanda to writing down some rough ideas for an "Australia Day" that we have to put together for early next year. After the meeting we got down to work to putting some tools together for the classes later in the week.

Tuesday was basically centered on preparing the rooms, so it was a lot of cutting out and pasting and making posters. All and all pretty fun. At 4pm there was an official school opening ceremony. All the children and their parents arrived to listen to the Principal describe the new features of the 2010/2011 year (of which we were one), then the students put on a little play which although it was in Hungarian we are pretty sure that it was either about a student's first day at school, or about a ~1944 soviet reeducation camp. Either way, it was quite entertaining. The last feature of the night was that Amanda and I had to give a little speech, which was diligently translated by our good friend Ilona.

Wednesday was the first day of classes for the kids and it was exhausting. My god these little buggers have a lot of energy. We didn't actually lead any classes, but we assisted Ilona. There are 18 kids in grade one, 18 in grade two and only 8 in grade three. Trying the grasp the attention of 18 kids at once and get them to understand what the hell you are talking about is really a task to behold. My only tool at this stage is to look more ridiculous and interesting than anything else in the room. This is working to date but only the future will tell how ridiculous I will have to become.

Today was awesome fun because it was the first day that Amanda and I planned and executed a classroom lesson. Mine was pretty simple, it was a progressively difficult sentence construction activity from "I have a" (type of toy), to "I have a" (number of) (colour) (type of toy). I held up cards, and by the end I was able to go up to a random student and get them to say things like "I have three yellow computer games". Not terribly impressive considering this is all revision, but there you go.

Amanda's lesson was a bit more interactive. She had the kids divide up into pairs and then according to a prefilled in sheet, instruct the other child on which colour a particular object should be. If we filtered out all the Hungarian communication, I'm sure than in the raucous that ensued we would hear perfect English. "Colour the dog purple".

Awesome fun.

- Daniel

BTW: We've already identified the bad kids.

Hmmm

I received this cute drawing from a student after class yesterday.

But erm, who exactly is Gabriel?

At first I thought that the student had simply misspelt Daniel's name. But then Daniel pointed out that the P.E. teacher at school is named Gabriel.

Perhaps the student was trying to not-so-subtley suggest that I should be spending more time exercising? Or perhaps she didn't realise that Daniel and I are married and was attempting to play matchmaker?

In any case, it was pretty funny!

- Amanda