Máriapócs Primary School Fundraiser

Actually, the school where we work isn't really called Máriapócs Primary, its full name is Magyar-Angol két tanítási nyelvű általános és alapfokú művészeti iskola which translates to something like Hungarian-English Bilingual middle and elementary art school - which as you can imagine is a troublesome place of employment to fit into a standard resume layout.

Anyway, that's besides the point, on the first day in Hungary, as we were being driven from the Budapest airport to Máriapócs over six months ago, our colleague Ili mentioned that we had to start preparing for a ball that they held every year. But, you know, the ball was in February so we weren't too stressed. So anyway, the ball was last night.

It was awesome fun, the night began with the kids doing their preprepared songs, dances and plays then they all went home and the staff and parents drank until they were stupid and sung karaoke. I especially excelled at both these activities. The night raged on and was continuing to rage when we left at 3am.

A big thanks to Christie for coming along to our school ball and taking some video for us!

- Daniel.

A Hungarian rap song

Recently I discovered that one of the members of Children of Distance, a Hungarian rap group, is originally from Máriapócs. This was a very exciting discovery and I immediately set out to discover what I could about this famous Máriapócsian.

Unfortunately, the information available online is fairly slim, but I did learn that the rapper's name is Carp-E (derived from the English word carpenter) and that he was born in 1987. That made me feel pretty old and creepy so I quickly stopped Googling him and started looking for some of the group's songs instead.

And guess what? I found one that I really, really like!

I'm posting the Youtube video here, complete with the Hungarian lyrics. I don't know if it's just me, but even with the words right there, I still find it difficult to follow what is being said. It's such a tricky language...

- Amanda

Sof Away!

So we left Sofie in Budapest yesterday, secure in the hands of a dodgy looking hippy who took her into a dark unsigned apartment building up an almost derelict lift and into a tiny room guarded by an iron gate with a shonky lock. I'm sure she's fine.

We had a lot of fun on the weekend though, after getting the hire car and sending our car to the mechanic's on Saturday, we headed out for a bit of a road trip on Sunday. It seems that Sofie hadn't much experience handling a manual transmission previously, so we decided that she should do most of the driving. She took up the challenge easily, going from asking what each pedal did to driving through the twisty roads in the small country towns (which is harder than it sounds, considering all the horse drawn carts) and cruising down the freeway at 130km/h. She was changing gears like a champ.

Our first stop of the day was my personal favourite town in Hungary: Eger. We've been there previously but its well worth seeing again. The city is so pretty and of course you can never go too wrong with some castle exploration. We climbed the bastions, walked the castle walls and viewed the city. We also seemed to get lost at some point and wandered into a strange art exhibition that was sponsored by a push bike manufacturer. Every piece of art had a bicycle powered dynamo light pointed at it. It was classy and we loved it. Once we left the castle, we made our way down the cobbled streets and had lunch at a quaint little restaurant.

The GPS then sent us over one of the few mountains in Hungary. A small one lane road with plenty of blind corners. As much as I love driving up and down mountains, and I do, why does the GPS seem to go out of its way to find every goat track between here and anywhere and decide that it'd be an awesome way to go? Anyway, I was driving, so Amanda lost some hair and Sofie caught up on some sleep but we made it to our next destination. The cave-baths of Miskolc-Tapolca. We love this place, and if anyone is planning to come over and see us then make sure you bring your bathers as we're going to take any excuse to visit. Unfortunately, our mountain trekking took longer than expected so we only had an hour to explore before we were chased out of the cave by bears with whistles (Note: They might not have been bears, they might have been lifeguards).

On Monday we jumped back in the car, Sofie leading the charge, and took ourselves to Budapest. It took most of the day to get there, but we had the afternoon to explore the palace areas of Buda before it got too dark and we had to go home. We discovered a few new areas that we hadn't seen before including an awesome church that I'm going to call Mattias Church. That shall be its name. By the time we got back to the hotel, we had time for a relaxed dinner then went to bed.

Like all good stories we begin and end with a dodgy looking hippy. Sofie seemed to be quite accepting of the new accommodation that we led her to the next day and we've since recieved emails showing that she survived the experience. It seems like she's had an awesome amount of fun on her trip and it certainly sounds like she's got some great things coming up. We can't wait to hear about the dog sledding in Norway!

It was great to see ya, Sof!

- Daniel

We're in the newspaper - again!

A few weeks ago several of our grade three students wrote an article about the recent Australia Day Party and submitted it to one of Hungary's regional newspapers. Last Thursday their article was finally published.

I have used the Google translate service to decode roughly what it says:

Australian Máriapócs-day organized a bilingual elementary school. Friend diacs informed of the incident: Thursday, January 27 Australia-days We were in the gym. Aunt Amanda and Daniel professor professor Bacsi prepared in advance of the classes adelun this doctrine, the first Australian flag, a green hat, second-, third-ers vuvuzelat prepared. Singing, and then divided into four four-player team competition we participated in the task. Location of Australia on the world map we liked the best, because, had to be blindfolded towards dato Then, to solve. happily took the whole afternoon. The winning team was rewarded koala worn teddy bear. Thank you dear to our teachers for alternative afternoon - wrote letter protection sztose selves. Grade 3 learner.

- Amanda

Interesting Hungarian word #3 = Püp

It's been an eventful weekend so far. Daniel and I took Friday off work so that we could head into Budapest to collect our friend Sofie from the airport. She's planning on staying with us until Tuesday and then she's travelling to Norway to check out lots of cool stuff up there (so jealous!)

Anyway, Sofie was supposed to arrive at 11.15am yesterday. Daniel and I turned up at the airport at 10am only to discover that Sofie's flight had been delayed. No problem - we grabbed a couple of drinks and killed some time sketching out some lesson plans in the airport's coffee lounge. But then, after waiting around for another hour or so, we discovered that the flight had been cancelled altogether - poor Sofie was stuck in Prague airport until the next available flight to Budapest (arrival time 6:20pm).

I won't go into all the boring details of how we spent the rest of the day, other than to say that we finally managed to find the time to thoroughly clean and vaccuum our car...and discovered our 'lost' GPS unit in the process. I was so happy that I cried.

Returning to the airport at 5pm, Daniel and I resumed our waiting game. There seemed to be paparazzi hanging around the arrivals area, so I was on the lookout for celebrities and had my camera at the ready in case someone famous suddenly appeared. Unfortunately, apart from one guy who vaguely resembled Ralph Macchio (aka Daniel LaRusso from the Karate Kid movies), there were no celebrities to be seen.

But here are a couple of pictures that we took of ourselves while we were waiting!

Soon after we took these photos, Sofie finally arrived in Budapest and the three of us piled into our car and set off on the 2.5 hour journey home, all of us a little tired and cranky after our long day. Unfortunately, about two minutes into the journey, our car chucked a massive hissy fit and we had to slow right down in order to ensure that we would make it home. Not fun.

Thankfully, today was a little better. In fact, we even managed to hire a car and get ourselves to Nyíregyháza for lunch. We also met up with our friend Christie who deserves credit for providing the inspiration for this entry's interesting word. Christie tells us that püp (pronounced the same as poop in English) means lump or hump. Hence, the delightfully fun expression, "Hey, I've got püp on my face". Classic stuff.

Anyway, welcome to Hungary, Sofie - we promise it will be more fun tomorrow!

- Amanda
 

Surprise long weekend

On Friday afternoon Daniel and I discovered that we were being given an extra long weekend. About 70% of the kids at school were sick on Thursday and Friday, so the decision was made that every student (and teacher) would be given Monday and Tuesday off as recovery days - even those who weren't sick. Of course, we were thrilled with the news!

Yesterday we set off on a day trip to Debrecen. According to the GPS it was only going to take us 40 minutes to get there. That seemed a little strange as it's usually a much longer trip, but we figured that the GPS probably knew a shortcut.

And it did.

Too bad the shortcut turned out to be the sheepiest, bumpiest, muddiest dirt road in all of Hungary.

Unfortunately, as soon as we saw it we remembered why the trip to Debrecen usually takes so long. Yes, we had made the exact same mistake at least twice before. D'oh!

- Amanda

PS. Here is another picture of Iago, as requested by Danni. He's turning into an old doggus right before our eyes!

Boggle Flash!

Amanda's dad sent us a cool new toy - Boggle Flash. It was supposed to be for the kids, but Amanda and I are having fun playing with it too. I first saw a prototype on TED a couple of years ago under the name of Siftables. Boggle Flash is based on that technology and is a set of blocks that display various letters that can be rearranged to make as many words as possible in a short amount of time. It's crazy fun.

The game was delivered straight to the classroom (as the postie knew where we'd be), so we threw aside our lesson plans and played Boggle Flash with the kids. They loved it.

- Daniel

Turtles for lunch

About two weeks ago this tank and its two turtle inhabitants appeared in the area where Daniel and I have lunch on weekdays. Since then they have been our regular lunchtime companions.

I have no idea where the turtles came from, why they are in the dining room or how much longer they will be there. Hopefully they will be released soon, but until then they seem happy enough to swim around in the tank and gaze out at us while we eat.

- Amanda