I judge you...awesome

Happy Halloween everyone!

On Friday afternoon, Daniel and I attended another Halloween party - this time it was in the nearby town of Mátészalka at the school where I teach an extra hour of English each week. The school has just implemented the same program that we are running in Máriapócs for their Grade One class and I am providing the students with the requisite contact with a native English speaker.

Everyone in Mátészalka has been super nice to me right from the beginning and so I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to attend the Halloween Party. But by the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I was feeling a little less enthused about going. I was tired. It was such a long way to drive. And besides, they wouldn't miss me anyway, right?

Wrong! 

It's lucky that we decided to go to the party - even if we did arrive 7 minutes late - because I had a special seat reserved just for me at the Judges Table. I even got to wear an awesome witch's hat. After I got over my initial embarrassment at being so late (and my relief at going at all), the party was actually a lot of fun. My Grade One class performed to a number of English songs, including the funkiest version of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes that I've ever heard. They also did a cool streamer routine that I am totally stealing for the next school ball in Máriapócs.

After the singing, each class at the school paraded in front of the judges (myself, the school principal and the two vice-principals) and were awarded scores for their Halloween costumes. This took quite a while as about 600 students attend the school. Then two students took to the stage and provided a bunch of information in English and Hungarian about the history of Halloween. Each class was then quizzed to see how much they remembered and the scores were added to their total. Finally, each class was awarded points for either their Halloween artwork (Grades 1-4) or their Halloween videos (Grades 5-8). 

I must admit that the videos were my favourite part of the party. While some of the classes had just slapped together a bunch of Halloween clipart pictures and overlayed them with spooky music, other classes had gone to the effort of acting out short stories and dances. There was one in particular that everyone, including Daniel and I, thought was awesome. In fact, it was so awesome that I wanted to post it to this blog.

Unfortunately, the only way I could access the video is via the school's Facebook page. So I finally bit the bullet and signed up....only to discover that I can't embed the video on this blog anyway. Still, I have managed to save it to my Facebook "wall" thing, so if anyone's interested you can check it out there.

Daniel and I both have this week off from teaching, though I doubt we'll be relaxing much. Daniel has uni exams to sit and I have a bunch of assignments to plough through. So looking forward to the semester being over!

- Amanda

Halloween Party 2011

This week we had the Halloween party at school.  Amanda, our colleague Ili, and I had organised it for Wednesday afternoon and all the kids were excited to try out their costumes.  We have been teaching the kids Halloween vocabulary and songs for the last two weeks so even the little grade ones knew how to say ghost, witch, vampire, skeleton etc.  Unfortunately, Amanda and I have been a little busy with everything lately so we made some last minute costumes the night before.  Amanda was a black cat and I was a ghost (taken from Amanda's costume last year).  We also had to carve new pumpkins as the ones that we carved with Danni were getting a little mouldy.

The party went pretty well, we had the hall decorated with the kids' artwork and a white sheet then brought the 150-odd kids into the room.  It was a little crazy.  There were ghosts and knights and witches and vampires and spiders and pumpkins and black cats.  Most of the kids got dressed up which we were pretty happy about.  It was a little funny, we teach the kids a song that goes "knock, knock, trick or treat who are you?  I'm a ghost, I'm a little ghost."  We then brought all the witches up then sang it again while replacing the word ghost with witch.  This continued as we went through all the various costumes that the kids had put together until we got to one little girl who was dressed as the wife of Frankenstein.  So here were 150 kids and various adults happily singing "knock, knock, trick or treat, who are you? I'm the wife, I'm the little wife!" Actually, now that I think of it I think I was the only one laughing.  Oh well, I found it funny.

So after the songs and speeches we played the toilet paper mummy game.  We had each class line up, each with their own mummy candidate, then one by one had a turn wrapping them in the paper.  Ili manned the microphone and yelled "CHANGE!" every 20 or 30 seconds, while the kids screamed and threw toilet paper around the room.  It was messy, crazy, but it was a lot of fun.

The last game that we played was the corner game.  Each corner had a picture of either a witch, ghost, pumpkin and black cat.  The kids ran to a corner then Amanda stood in the middle of the hall and spun a spinning wheel which determined which of the corners was out.  The kids from that corner then had to sit down.  It was simple, but fun (mainly because the kids got to run from corner to corner between spins).

Anyway, another Halloween finished.  Awesome fun.

- Daniel.

More guests!

This weekend has been rather awesome. My dad and my sister Danni arrived in Máriapócs to visit us on Thursday afternoon, so we have had the pleasure of their company for the last few days. Things got off to a great start when they opened their suitcases and began loading us up with lots of presents from home. There were lots of goodies for next year's Australia Day party, new stickers for the kids, as well as several items of clothing for both of us. Score!

But I think the happiest Máriapócian of all was Iago. Not only did Danni bring over an entire bag of new toys for him, but he also scored a fantastic handmade blanket from Anthea, Daniel's sister. As you can see from the picture, Iago wasted absolutely no time at all in making use of his new possession. He loves it :)

Anyway, the rest of the weekend has flown by pretty quickly. We've spent a lot of time just hanging out together at home - playing cards, cooking up a storm, and carving up our very first Halloween jack-o-lanterns. I think they turned out really well! The initial plan was to bring them to school next Wednesday for the annual Halloween costume party, but unfortunately they are looking a little droopy already so I don't think they're going to last.

Yesterday we ventured out to Hungary's famous Tokaj wine district and stumbled across a neat little outdoor food festival. We also checked out a bunch of the local cellars and bought lots of white wine, much of it wonderfully packaged in recycled coke bottles. But while it may not have looked particularly classy, it certainly tasted great.

Today was a public holiday in Hungary so basically the entire country shut down. Absolutely nothing was open, so we all enjoyed another cruisey day in Máriapócs. It looks like Dad and Danni will be setting off on the next leg of their trip tomorrow which is a little sad as it seems like they just got here. Still, it's been fun having them around and I've really enjoyed seeing them both. It's been quite educational too, as I've been able to quiz Dad about his childhood in Hungary and learn a bit more about our family's Hungarian roots.

- Amanda

AMANDA HAS NOT WATCHED ALIENS!

I just found out something shocking about my wife.

She has never seen the James Cameron classic movie: Aliens.

That is all.

- Daniel.

A week in review

Gosh, is it Sunday night already? Where did our weekend go? In fact, where did the last week go? It seems like time is just flying by at the moment. Anyway, here are some highlights from the last week....

On Monday, the principal sent a handyman over to our house to turn on the heating system after a pretty chilly weekend. Daniel and I had tried to do it ourselves but hadn't had much success. It turns out that we just needed to turn the thermostat above zero. Oops! I'm sure that the principal thinks that we are complete morons as this is just the latest in a series of embarrassing incidents. Only a few weeks ago the same handyman came over to our house as we had been having some issues locking our front door. He took one look at the situation, moved our front doormat and locked the door on the first try. Yes, the mat had gotten itself wedged between the frame and the door and neither Daniel or I had noticed it during our many, many, many attempts at getting the door to lock. Pretty embarrassing. Worse still is that we left our car headlights on overnight this weekend, so tomorrow morning we are going to have to ask the principal to help us solve yet another silly problem.

Halloween is rapidly approaching, so last week I used most of my freetime and art lessons with the Grade 1s to introduce some Halloween words. I'm absolutely amazed at how spongelike these little kids are. They picked up the new words really fast and were soon drawing some absolutely amazing Halloween themed pictures. I like to think it's my skill as an art teacher, but really I think that this year's Grade 1s are just incredibly talented.

On Thursday morning I drove to Mátészalka (a town about 30 kms away) where I teach an extra English class each week to some Grade 1 students. The first couple of times I taught the class, the school arranged for one other teacher to sit in on the lesson in case something happened. They'd never employed a native speaker to teach English before, so I think they were a little nervous about how it was going to work, especially with such young students. But everything went really well and the kids very quickly adapted to my teaching methods. In fact things are working out so well with the class that more and more teachers - and now the parents - want to sit in on the lessons and see how the class operates. Last week there were eight adults sitting up the back watching the class. The week before the principal and three teachers attended the lesson. The week before that the vice principal, two upper class English teachers and a photographer were present. It's actually getting a little weird and I'm starting to get really nervous before the class because I don't want to stuff up in front of so many important people. Hopefully my novelty value will wear off soon and I can go back to just enjoying being silly with a bunch of great kids.

Speaking of silliness, on Friday I was back teaching in Máriapócs and had just taken one of the Grade 1 classes to lunch. After lunch I took the kids outside to play and some of the kids to decided to hang around me and practice their English. Mostly this involved them repeating the few English sentences they know over and over again. For example, they just love telling me their names and asking what my name is. They then extended this to pointing at objects that they know, like an apple, and saying "My name is apple". Sure, it's not perfect English but the meaning of their sentences is pretty clear. Anyway, on Friday one of the students decided to insert an adjective into the sentence as well. She pointed at my jumper which was decorated with a rhinestone butterfly and said "My name is Amanda beautiful pullover". I just think that's an amazing linguistic accomplishment for a 6 year old who has been learning English for only a few weeks. They are so brave. I love it.

Of course, after that things got a little weird as all the kids started touching the butterfly on my jumper. As you can see from the photo, the butterfly is right on my chest, so it was a pretty awkward experience having all these tiny hands groping me. Luckily I'm a lot taller than the kids, so standing up soon put an end to the impromptu patdown :)

As for this weekend, it was pretty uneventful. Our Saturday morning class in Nyírbátor is winding down, so Daniel and I were able to devote most of our time to working on uni assignments. I also found some time to put the finishing touches on my toilet paper roll mummy. I love this little guy and am hoping to get some of the kids to make their own this week.

- Amanda

Playway to English - The tale continues

Earlier this year, I posted an entry about Max, the main character from the Playway to English textbook that we use.  This year we have seen the next chapter in the Playway series.  Max is now apparently homeless, having long since been abandoned by his former friends, Linda and Benny.  The most recent "adventure" that Max had was when he was stuck in the rain.  He hates rain apparently so he went into a local shop and asked "One umbrella please", the shopkeeper said "Here you are." He replied "How much is it?" "Four pounds" "Oh? Ooh... umm... okay, here you are."

The voice actor is really starting to sound aged, and this in combination with the brokenness of Max's reply made it seem like it was Max's last four pounds.  This only makes the following events even more heart breaking.  It turns out that Max was unable to figure out how to open the umbrella and threw it away in frustration - only of course to have a complete stranger appear, comment on how nice the umbrella was and open it easily.  The story concludes with Max miserably tramping off through the rain, perhaps looking for a dry place to sleep.

- Daniel

Day of National Mourning

So today as I was leaving the house to walk across the road to work, I noticed that all of the students - including those from the class I was about to teach - were assembled in front of the school apparently waiting for some kind of ceremony to commence. I wish it wasn't so but these kinds of surprises are a regular part of life over here and it can get a little frustrating at times. This is especially true on occasions like today when I'd spent a lot of time prepping for a lesson only to have three quarters of the students whisked away to some other activity or find that the class has been cancelled altogether. AAAAARGH!!

Anyway, I'm trying to become more flexible about these things, so today I pretty quickly accepted that my lesson probably wasn't going to happen and joined the crowd of students and teachers waiting in front of the school. Soon the national anthem started to play (yay, another opportunity to show off my awesome Hungarian national anthem singing skills) followed by a bunch of speeches, then a parade of upper level students carrying thirteen black and white portraits. At this point I started to recall some Hungarian history and correctly concluded that the officious-looking gentlemen depicted in the portraits were the 13 Martyrs of Arad.

On 6 October 1849, thirteen Hungarian generals were executed in the town of Arad. This unlawful event came about after Hungary surrendered to Austrian (Habsburg) rule after a brief but ultimately unsuccessful period of independence. In Hungary, the 13 generals are exalted as martyrs in the fight for freedom and 6 October is commemorated as the country's Day of National Mourning.

Overall it seems like a pretty depressing thing to dwell on, but I'm kind of getting used to Hungary's insistence on focusing on the sad and tragic events of its past, rather than celebrating its successes and achievements. I'm also getting used to accepting that sometimes Hungarians do things and they don't know why. Like today, for example. After the sombre ceremony remembering the thirteen generals, the kids all went back inside, put on their running shoes, then set off on a run around the town. When we asked our fellow teachers why this was happening, we were told that it had something to do with the events of 6 October 1849 but nobody was able to explain exactly how the execution of a bunch of dudes 160 years ago translated into a tradition of running. It was weird.

But, you know, I'm flexible so I just rolled with it and enjoyed another student-free class.

- Amanda

Hungarian-style Potato Fritters

Over the time that we've been here, we've learnt a few new recipes.  The potato fritters are a recipe that Amanda recognizes from when her grandparents used to make them so we were excited to give them a go.  We were at a BBQ with my music teacher a week or so ago and they were making the fritters so we asked for the instructions.  They were very vague with instructions like: add a bit of this and a smudge more of that etc, but upon trying it we realized that you can't go too wrong.

Firstly you have to peel the potatoes.  We were told that we'd need half a dozen or so, but it seems that must be catering for the Hungarian appetite as I think we could have gotten away with two.

Next you grate them.  They were not specific as to whether you grate them finely or not, but they seemed to do a little of both.  It seems like this step would take ages, but it's actually really fast - even if you're doing half a dozen.  I think it only took us maybe 5 or 10 minutes to do the lot.

The third step is to add flour and garlic.  Garlic is to taste so, of course, Amanda and I added a lot.  It still wasn't particularly overpowering however, so it could have almost done with more.  The flour is really in order to soak up all the juice from the potatoes and turn the whole batch into a paste.  Again, our friends were not very specific as to quantities so I won't be either.

Lastly it's as simple as putting into a pan of hot oil.  You need a decent amount of oil but we don't need to go overboard.  The technique that we learned was patience bordering on neglect.  If you think they are done then leave them another 5 minutes or so then turn them.  They don't really need to be turned very often.  We probably made ours a little large, the thinner they are the more crunchy they are, but I like the soft innards so... I suppose it's to taste.

The result is a garlicy, crisp-but-chewy potato cake that, in my opinion tastes pretty bloody awesome.

- Daniel