Where there's smoke, there's a fireman

Daniel and I discovered yesterday afternoon that there weren't going to be any classes at school today. Instead, the kids would all participate in a Sports Day. Awesome!

For the first part of the day, the kids were divided into nine teams. Each team rotated around nine different activities manned by the teachers. Depending on how well the team performed each task, they were allocated points on a scorecard and the team with the most points at the end of nine rounds was declared the winner. Most of the activities were fun physical challenges, but at least one activity involved the kids answering questions about Hungarian history.

After the team challenge had finished, the kids were visited by the local fire department. About half a dozen firemen were on hand to talk to the kids about their job and to show them their firefighting equipment. The kids were able to don special masks, wind up an old (but still very loud) siren, climb the ladder on to the roof of the fire truck and even handle the Jaws of Life. 

While I thought the firemen were very patient with the kids overall, I was disappointed that at least one of them thought it was appropriate to talk to the students while he was puffing on a cigarette. I guess the anti smoking message still has a long way to go in Hungary. 

- Amanda

The Casualities of English

I had two major casualties today.  The first was in my Grade 4 science class where we have been learning about animals.  Last year we did a lot of work on the different animal groups, i.e. mammals, reptiles, bird etc.  So one of the ways that we differentiated one group from another was whether they were exothermic or endothermic.  This word was a little complicated however, so I simplified it to be "keep their temperature" or "doesn't keep their temperature".  I was able to do this because the kids in Grade 3 weren't really reading from the book very much.

This year however, they're doing a lot of comprehension tasks so they've had to run into the terms warm-blooded and cold-blooded.  I hate these terms and it was really through gritted teeth that I taught it to them.  We practiced many times what these terms really mean, so hopefully they won't get confused.  So, anyway, the first casualty was the truth.

The second casualty was unfortunately, a child.  I had just given the current Grade 3s an English test, so I decided to take them outside to play while I marked them.  I was kind of distracted by marking the tests, but I did notice that the kids were off in the other side of the yard throwing something into the air.  I thought it was a ball that they'd found somewhere.  No.  It turns out that they were throwing rocks into the air just so that they could look at them as they came down.  Unfortunately, one of the girls curiosity got the better of her and it came down on the back of her head.  There wasn't a lot of blood but there was enough.

All the kids were brought back inside to have the principal interrogate them as to what they were doing.  Each of the kids were given a chance to explain their case then there was some kind of punishment doled out.  I'm not sure what it was, but it was certainly a lot stronger than the traditional "black point" that we generally give as he had nearly all six of the kids who were involved crying.

I was pretty glad when the class ended.

- Daniel.

P.S. The photos are from Amanda's class where she got them to make pictures out of leaves.  Her day was a little more cruisey than mine.

Slow news day?

A few days ago I was leaving the house when I noticed a camera crew standing around on the footpath next door. At first I thought they were just taking a smoko, or waiting for some bigshot celebrity to turn up (yeah right!) but then I realised that the camera was already rolling...and that it seemed to be taking some wonderful footage of a powerpole being painted.

Hmmm. It seems that it was a very, very slow news day in Máriapócs.

Anyway, I didn't give it any further thought, but the very next day the camera crew was back taking yet more footage of the pole! So now I was pretty curious...I mean filming a pole being painted is one thing, but filming the application of a second coat on the same pole is just crazy. So after work, when the film crew had cleared off, I dragged Daniel and Iago out to look at the pole.

As you can see from the photo, it wasn't another coat of paint that had gotten everyone so excited on the second day, it was the appearance of three little M symbols. Apparently these markers are currently being painted on powerpoles all over northern Hungary and even into Romania. Their purpose is to assist pilgrims to make their way to Máriapócs for special religious events. It's a pretty massive project and it seems that the pole next to our house had the unique honour of being the first of many thousands to get the special markers.

I guess perhaps it wasn't such a slow news day afterall...

- Amanda

The Big One-O!

This week was almost as hard as the last.  The timetable seems to be shifting under our feet even as we're teaching according to it.  On Friday for example, the principal asked Amanda where I was as I was supposed to be teaching a class in 2A.  This was news to me and any timetable that we'd been given.  As far as we were aware this class had appeared out of nowhere.  The same thing happened to Amanda later that day, she had prepared for a three hour slog in homework club with the grade 3's and 4's only to have a teacher turn up and ask her why she was there.  Now this may seem like a good thing, but these lessons take aaages to prepare, Amanda had everything ready, she had the computer all hooked up to the new smart boards and was raring to go so she felt a bit frustrated and foolish when everyone was looking at her like she wasn't even supposed to be there.  Reeeally bloody frustrating.  Especially since we have yet another change to the timetable starting Monday and we are expecting yet another one in the works.  It just doesn't make any sense to keep changing it, or at least from our own, admittedly narrow, point of view.

The kids are slowly coming around to our way of thinking.  The Grade 1s are still terrors but the older ones are settling back in to English after 3 months of not having said a word.  I was in Grade 3 the other day and was trying to settle the kids down after snack break.  So I was using my calm but authoritative voice to tell everyone to put their multitude of sandwiches, biscuits, drinks and lollies away and to get out their English books.  Detti, one of our better students up the front, was a bit more reluctant to let go of her snack so I waggled my finger and told her more forcefully at which point the biscuits disappeared into her lap but not into her bag.  I was about to repeat my instruction when she said "Daniel, Look!" and pointed at the board.  I turned around to see what she was pointing to only to see her quickly pop another biscuit into her mouth and put the rest in her bag.  I was duped by an 8 year old using the oldest trick in the book.  Crap-knuckle.

Amanda had a good story this week too.  While I was going the strict route, she was trying positive reinforcement and offering stickers to those who finished their work quietly and well.  It has worked relatively well, and at least while the sticker supply flows, the kids productivity stays constant.  Anyway, it was due to this regime that she was having a good day on Tuesday with the grade 1s but it was a little depressing because all afternoon they were yelling "Matrica, matrica!" which basically means "Mathematics! Mathematics!".  Here she is playing games, singing songs, letting them play outside and all that they wanted to do was go inside and do maths!  It was only later that we found out that mathematics is actually matematika and that matrica actually just means stickers.  Oh well, that was a relief anyway.

The other major event this week was that it was Iago's tenth birthday!  That's right, on Thursday 15th of September our old doggus broke into the double figures.  He spent his birthday gracefully accepting his senior years as any old man would: by enjoying his birthday present.

- Daniel.

Hungarian name quiz

We've encountered some more unusual Hungarian names at school this year, so we thought it might be fun to create a quiz. Basically, you just need to guess whether particular names belong to our male or female students. Enjoy!

- Amanda

Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

Off to a crying start!

Last week was tough. Really tough. After being on holidays for almost three months, going back to work was always going to be difficult. But I don't think that either Daniel nor I were prepared for just how hard the first week of school was going to be. By Friday afternoon lots of tears had been shed and I think we were both wondering whether we'd made a big mistake signing on for a second year. 

Things began to unravel on Monday afternoon when the teaching timetable was released. Far from what had previously been discussed, the new timetable contained a lot of surprises. Daniel's schedule didn't actually look too bad. This semester he is teaching some English in all five classes, he's retained the Nature Studies classes that he loves and his PE lessons have reduced in number from 10 to 4. Awesome.

By contrast, my timetable is a complete disaster. I am not scheduled to teach any English at all. Zero. Zip. Instead, I am taking a lot of Freetime lessons, but only in the lower classes (Grades 1 and 2). Freetime is essentially a free class where you can teach whatever you like, but often you're expected to take the kids outside and let them play. So it's a bit like babysitting. I can't help but feel like all these Freetime lessons are some kind of punishment and it's really made me question my teaching ability. I thought that I did a fairly decent job last year, but now it seems like the school doesn't want me to be anywhere near the serious classes. I feel pretty embarrassed that I've been demoted so harshly.

The other problem with my timetable is that I'm spending approximately half of my lessons with the Grade 1s. These kids are very small and cute, but they are brand new to school and most of them are also brand new to learning English. Teaching them is incredibly difficult as they have such short attention spans and they don't understand much at all. And they talk allllllll the time. I just can't seem to find a way to get them to be quiet. Almost all of my lessons with them last week were a disaster. By Friday I was seriously annoyed with the whole thing and basically screamed at the kids to be quiet. It was not my finest teaching moment and I went home afterwards and cried because I just felt so overwhelmed and ashamed of my behaviour.

Fortunately, Daniel was also taking a break at home and he was able to trade some of his own Friday horror stories with me which made me feel a lot better. At least in my case I was the only one crying whereas Daniel had managed to move seven of the Grade 2s to tears by cancelling their PE lesson. He also had one of the Grade 1s burst into tears as soon as the student realised that Daniel was about to teach English. Apparently a day earlier this little kid had decided to hide under his desk during Daniel's lesson, so Daniel had playfully drummed his hands on the top of his desk to encourage him to come out. Unfortunately the little kid was terrified by this, and so when Daniel reappeared in his classroom on Friday, he became hysterical and had to leave the room.

All in all, it wasn't the greatest start to the new school year, but I'm confident that this week will be better. Yeah...

- Amanda

Two guests and only one whip

Sorry about the lack of recent entries, but the last week has been a little hectic. In addition to the new school year starting, and all the fun and games that entails, Daniel and I also had some guests come to stay with us last weekend. Our good friends Lin and Will stopped by for a couple of nights during their epic European holiday.

It was really great to see them both. Although the weather was pretty hot, Lin and Will were very good natured and allowed us to drag them around to see some of Hungary's unique tourist sights. Our trip to Hortobágy was particularly fruitful as Will was seduced into buying a bullwhip by a deceptively sleepy salesman at one of the local markets.

Of course, having bought the whip, it was impossible for Will to put it away in his suitcase as we all wanted to give it a crack (pun intended). So as soon as we arrived home from our trip to Hortobágy, we shuffled into the backyard and did our very best Indiana Jones impressions. It was a lot of fun, but none of us were very successful in producing anything even close to a sonic boom. Fortunately, we eventually found a few videos online that explained the proper technique, and soon enough we were all able to get the whip to crack. Hooray! Even our 9 year old neighbour and her father joined in the fun.

I've attached a short video of our whip-cracking exploits. Enjoy!

- Amanda