Boo

Happy Halloween everyone!

Even though Halloween isn't usually celebrated in Hungary (much like in Australia), Daniel and I have been doing a lot of Halloween-insprired activities with the kids over the last few weeks. They were introduced to Halloween by their former English teacher, Tara, who was from Canada, and now they can't seem to get enough of it!

At first Daniel and I were both a little reluctant to encourage the kids to celebrate Halloween, but then we saw how much they enjoyed it and more importantly, how easy it was to find Halloween colouring pages and craft activities online, so now we're huge converts. Besides, it's really hard not to like such a fun and crazy holiday - when else do kids get to dress up as ghosts and ghouls, carve spooky faces into pumpkins and be given lollies as a reward for not defacing people's property?

Anyway, our Halloween celebrations culminated in a party in the school gym on Thursday afternoon. Our colleague, Ili, did most of the work and I think she was pretty stressed about how it was going to go, but she needn't have worrried. The kids loved putting on their costumes, participating in the songs and games and receiving their sugary treats. I've attached some photos from the party below.

Tomorrow, November 1st, is a public holiday in Hungary for All Saints' Day. It's a pretty big deal over here. People visit cemeteries all over the country and place flowers and small candlelit lanterns on the graves of their deceased relatives. In addition to tomorrow's holiday, Daniel and I also have the rest of the week off for Autumn Break. Being a teacher is awesome!

- Amanda

Happy name day to me!

Guess what? I just found out that today (October 26th) is my name day!

Some of my Grade 3 students burst into one of my classes this morning to share the exciting news and to present me with some lovely flowers. Then this afternoon, some of the kids from Grade 1 also gave me little gifts and celebratory drawings that they had made.

Names days are a pretty big deal in Hungary and are treated much like a second birthday.

According to a website I found, name days are a tradition of attaching personal names to each day of the year, and celebrating the association of particular days with those for whom that day is named. Name days originate from the Christian church calendar and the tradition of naming children after saints.

Boldog névnapot nekem!

- Amanda

1956 Hungarian Revolution - A short history lesson

On Friday night Daniel and I attended a ceremony at our school commemorating the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Yesterday (October 23rd) was also a national holiday in Hungary.

My understanding of the events that transpired in 1956 is quite limited, but as it was such an important episode in Hungarian history, I feel that I should at least try to provide a quick summary.

In the lead up to October 1956, a number of events took place which created an atmosphere for revolution in Hungary. These included the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the creation of the Warsaw Pact in 1955, changing political and social conditions in Austria and Poland, and the removal of Mátyás Rákosi as a powerful political figure in Hungary.

Sensing that the time was ripe for wide-ranging change in Hungary, students, journalists and academics began to be more active and vocal about the country's political situation. This eventually culminated in a group of students drawing up a list of 16 demands and taking it to the parliament in Budapest on 23 October 1956. By evening, a crowd of approximately 200,000 people had gathered.

When the Hungarian government officially refused to agree to the students' demands, the crowd began to take matters into its own hands - some of the protesters dismantled a massive public statue of Stalin and cut out the communist logo from Hungarian flags (this act became a symbol of the Hungarian revolution and was incorporated into the www.google.hu homepage yesterday).

Eventually the protests spread to other buildings in Budapest and then escalated into violence when the state police began to arrest protesters and shoot at the crowds. The news of these atrocities spread quickly and disorder and further violence erupted throughout the capital and across the country. Eventually the government fell.

In the days that followed, impromptu resistance councils sprung up all over Hungary and demanded political change. A new government was quickly formed and soon announced its intention to disband the state police service, withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and re-establish free elections. By the end of October 1956, fighting had slowed and things seemed to be returning to normal.

After initially declaring a willingness to comply with the new Hungarian Government's request to withdraw Red Army forces from Hungary, the Soviets soon backflipped and moved to crush the revolution. On 4 November 1956, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and other regions of the country. Hungarian soldiers and civilians fought fiercely against the invading Soviet troops until 10 November 1956 when the last pocket of Hungarian resistance called for a ceasefire.

During the conflict over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed, and more than 13,000 Hungarians and 1,200 Soviet troops were injured. In addition, some 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees.

By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public opposition. The Hungarian revolution had failed.

It was not until 1989, over three decades after the initial revolution, that Hungary finally implemented many of the reforms that it had been fighting so long and hard to realise. Between 16–20 October 1989, the Hungarian Parliament adopted wide-ranging legislation that transformed Hungary from a People's Republic into the Republic of Hungary. This long-anticipated feat was officially declared on 23 October 1989, the 33rd anniversary of the 1956 revolution.

- Amanda

Interesting Hungarian word #2 = Kukac

As part of my job over here, I teach English to my Hungarian colleagues twice a week. This is a nice change from teaching the kids as I find that the adults generally have longer attention spans and are less likely to cry, need to go to the bathroom, whack each other with their pencil cases, talk incessantly, etc during the classes.

On Monday I decided to teach my colleagues how to say numbers in English. I soon discovered that they mostly knew this already, so I got them to practice using the numbers in more complex sentences. I had them ask each other questions such as "What is your telephone number?" and "What is your address?".

Once they had mastered these phrases, I thought that they may as well learn how to ask "What is your email address?" I'm not sure why, but it never occurred to me that the @ and . symbols would be pronounced differently in Hungarian, but of course they are. In Hungarian, the @ symbol is referred to as kukac and the . symbol is called pont.

My colleagues then advised me that kukac also means worm in Hungarian. I suppose if you look at the @ symbol it does kind of resemble a curled up worm, so this makes some sort of sense.

My colleagues then advised me that kukac is also a term that is used to refer to a small penis.

Um, okay.

So I guess this means that an email address could literally be translated as something like "whatever small penis gmail pont com"?

Very strange!

- Amanda

The Cave Baths of Miskolctapolca

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Today we went to the cave baths of Miskolc, another mediumish sized town in eastern Hungary. Both Amanda and I are really getting into the whole swimming deal, or at least the splashing around in the thermal baths and buying the necessary accessories (goggles, caps, bathers etc). One day, I'm sure we'll get around to actually doing laps, but for now we're quite happy relaxing in the mineral spas and bathing pools thank you very much. We have found a bath (read: swimming pool) at the nearby town of Nyírbátor, although I fell sick from an ear infection (are we /sure/ these pools don't have to be chlorinated?), I was convinced to try, what we are told are, the most beautiful baths in Hungary. The Miskolc cave baths.

They were, I must admit, awfully impressive. It seems that they have been in use since "ancient times" but have only become popular during the occupation of the Ottoman empire (16th-17th century). I'm sure there is a floating footstool joke lurking around here somewhere but I'll let it lie for now.

It seems that since the Ottoman's enthusiasm for the baths, they have gone through periods of disrepair (the 18th- 19th century were dark, dark days for the Miskolctapolca baths apparently), but luckily the 20th-21st centuries have been fairly kind thus far.

This said, it does appear that the global financial crisis has hit even the hardest working members of the cave bath community.

I certainly hope things pick up for this hard working mensch.

Anyway, we eventually did find a gainfully employed door and did our best to ensure that it would remain so by entering into the change rooms. The change rooms are worthy of note, if only to fill out this paragraph so that the pictures align properly and we don't rush ahead with the cave bath narrative, because they were co-ed.

Well, sort of, you enter in through a small cubical with a door on either end, both of which lock from the same mechanism. You get changed, then leave through the opposite door into the locker room.

Mmm... nicely spaced.

The actual caves were awesome. You entered through quite a wide opening into a fairly extensive network of caves. The entire network was basically flooded with the mineral spring water.

In addition to the main network, there were a number of warmer pools, bigger waterfall like things, rock bridges, saunas, and even a room that seemed to be strangely set up as a planetarium (if sticking some fluorescent moon stickers onto the roof of the cave and adding strange lights and music is equal to a planetarium). It was probably closer to a 12 years old girl's sleepover party. If you flooded their bedroom with salt water. And invited a cluster of half naked Europeans of varying ages and ethnicities.

Still it was pretty awesome.

I'd also like to point towards the awesome photography work to get the above picture while standing in a pool of running water trying to take a photo of a dark place inter-spaced with bright spotlights. Oooh yeah.

Anyway, once we were done swimming we had a picnic in the park outside, saw some very cute squirrels and ate some delicious donuts.

Waiting for the train

Last weekend Daniel and I were stopped at a train crossing and I decided to take a quick video of one of the local trains as it passed by. We both think that these little red trains are super cute and we always get a kick out of seeing them as they rumble along. Yeah....village life is such fun!

- Amanda

Meanwhile, in Chile...

I know that this isn't what this blog is about, but I just wanted to take a sec to point towards the first of the Chilean miners that have been freed after two months underground.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/americas/14chile.html

Just to give you an idea of how much of a feat this was, the depth of the rescue tunnel was almost 600 metres, which if you dug the tunnel out wide enough, you could drop two Eureka Towers into and still have enough room to fit an average two-storey house.

- Daniel.

Our first Hungarian lesson - oh boy!

This afternoon our colleague Orsi gave Daniel and I our first Hungarian language lesson. We started with some basic stuff.

szia = hello to one person

sziasztok = hello to two or more people

Then we learnt greetings for various times of the day.

jó reggelt = good morning

jó napot = good afternoon

jó estét = good evening

jó éjszakát = good night

And then we attempted to learn the Hungarian alphabet. It's now four and a half hours later and my head is still spinning!

To get an idea of what we're up against, check out this quick video that I found online.

Citera

On Friday, I had my first lesson on the citera which is basically the Hungarian word for a zither.

Here's the song I've been practicing all weekend. I think it has something to do with trying to swat a mosquito the size of a horse. I don't think it's supposed to be as depressing as it sounds when I play it.

And here is Amanda just jam'n after zero lessons. She's like a genius.

- Daniel