And so it was Farsang

Today Daniel and I attended our first Farsang party at school with the kids. Farsang seems to be a Hungarian celebration that heralds the end of Winter, and for some reason it involves everyone getting dressed up in costumes. When we asked our colleagues why this was so, no one really seemed to know, so we just rolled with it and came up with our own costume idea - Rubik's Cubes!

This seemed like an absolutely awesome idea for a costume - basically a big colourful box - until Daniel decided that he wanted his Rubik's Cube costume to be a little more advanced. Not content with a fixed solved or unsolved puzzle, Daniel wanted to add some realism to the costume by having his Rubik's Cube spin and move. Fortunately, this turned out to be easier than we had originally thought, and the biggest problem that we encountered during construction was a brief moment of panic when we realised how narrow our doorways were.

Anyway, fast forward to this afternoon's party. All the kids were excitedly getting changed into their costumes when Daniel and I showed up dressed as Rubik's Cubes. That's when we encountered our first actual problem. It seems that the youth of today are somewhat unfamiliar with classic toys from the 1980s. So none of them knew what we were!

Happily, kids being kids, our weird coloured box costumes were soon forgotten and we all trampled into the gym for the party. There was lots of singing, a few plays and of course, the main event, the costume fashion parade and judging. Each child was allocated a numbered piece of paper and when their number was called they were given the opportunity to describe their costume and recite a short poem or perform a quick dance routine. It was kind of neat. I think my favourite costume belonged to a kid named Balázs from our Grade 2 class. He looked like he was dressed as a regular person, but when he got up to explain his costume, he revealed that he was actually a comedian. Then he performed the world's speediest, pause-free comedy routine. Gotta love that creative thinking!

The costume judging was presided over by a panel of five teachers, and like everything in Hungary, it was a very serious affair. Each child was scored individually by each of the five judges according to a set of criteria and there was a lengthy break from the festivities while the judges tallied their scores and came to a consensus. Unfortunately, Balázs didn't win a major prize, but all the kids from the lower grades did get a small gift, so at least he didn't walk away empty-handed.

As for Daniel and I, we didn't get any prizes either :( It's one of the few elements of being a teacher that I dislike - sometimes we have to let the kids win.

- Amanda

PS. If anyone is interested, instructions for how to make the basic Rubik's Cube costume are here.