Dave the Heartthrob

Well, it seems as if Dave has really made quite a positive impression on the Grade 3 girls. As Daniel mentioned in his previous entry, Dave already had at least one admirer after his first visit to the class on Monday, so I was not at all surprised to learn that his second visit to the classroom yesterday further consolidated his status as somewhat of a heartthrob. In fact, Dave has proven to be so popular that one of the girls even asked him to create an entry in her memory book. 

I'm not sure if we've mentioned memory books before on this blog, but basically they're fancy little notebooks or journals that many of the students tote around. The idea is to pass your memory book onto your friends, or family members, or teachers, and for them to each decorate a page in the book in your honour. Usually the entries consist of cute handdrawn pictures, poems or motivational quotes. When we first arrived in Hungary, Daniel and I were really excited about drawing in the kids' memory books, but now it's just kind of painful. This is because one of the other teachers at the school always seems to be invited to draw in the books before us and her entries are so well-crafted and so beautiful that we feel like a pair of hacks by comparison. 

Anyway, Dave was asked to draw in a memory book yesterday, and since I also had a couple of entries to complete in other books, we both sat down together this afternoon for a full on colouring in session. I won't go so far as to say that Dave enjoyed it, but he did do a pretty decent job. As you can see from the photo, he drew a cute little cat. I'm not so keen on its evil red eyes though....

In other news, we took Dave to the Sárkány Fürdő (Dragon Spa) in Nyírbátor this afternoon. After swimming laps in the indoor pool, we all ventured outside where the air temperature was a rather chilly negative two degrees celcius. Fortunately the water in the outdoor thermal pool was considerably warmer (about 38 degrees). It was awesome.

- Amanda

David goes back to primary school

David's first couple of days here have been pretty quiet.  The first night out, we walked to the pizza place in the zero something degree weather.  David quickly realised that the single sweater and the thin coat that he brought with him would not be sufficient.  This gave Amanda the excuse to go shopping!  The next day, we headed off to Nyiregyháza to go to the nearest mega-store where David found a snow-jacket to his liking.

The weather has actually improved over the last couple of days and now we're unlikely to get snow, so Amanda and I are kind of sad.  Dave is still pretty cold however, and is constantly turning the heater up and putting on an extra layer (he just turned to thermostat up to 27degC).  We can't blame him however as he did just come from the Australian summer.

What I can blame him for however, is his insistence on going for "runs".  On Sunday afternoon, he and I ran to the nearby town of Pócspetri, which is around 1.8kms away.  I still believe it almost killed me.  We used to go running together a couple of years ago, and I was significantly fitter than he was, but now this is just not true.  David was definitely slowing down for me and had to sprint off towards home to avoid getting cold.  Even at those low temperatures, there was no chance of me getting cold as I gasped and wheezed for breath.  We're going again tomorrow apparently.

David came with me to school today and met the Grade 4s and Grade 3s.  It was all fairly good and the kids behaved well.  Ili turned it into an educational experience with the kids having to interrogate Dave and then write a paragraph in English.  I think the kids really like him.  Actually, Kitti, one on the Grade 3s ran up to me in the playground and informed me that "Eszti likes David".  She then ran off giggling.  I thought she was just teasing but when I went back to class later Eszti was asking where David was.  So despite only being in the town for 72 hours or so he's already got admirers.

The school is in full Christmas mode at the moment because Santa is coming next week.  In Hungary, Santa brings presents on Saint Nicholas's name day (December 6) then Jesus brings presents on Christmas Eve.  With that in mind, and as a way of fulfilling the cultural requirements of some freetime lessons, Amanda had the Grade 1B kids make Santa masks today.  The Grade 2s also posed for a photo with some paper flowers that they made.

- Daniel.

He's here

Daniel and I drove to Budapest today to collect Dave from the airport. We were a little anxious about the trip as we'd received multiple warnings from our Hungarian colleagues about the slippery and dangerous road conditions that we were likely to face, but the journey was entirely uneventful. Hooray! 

We arrived at the airport arrivals gate at 11:57am, and Dave's plane landed at 11:58am. Not bad, eh? After waiting around for about half an hour, Dave emerged from the gate looking pretty good for having spent such a long time in transit. Many hugs and insults were traded, and then we set off for the long drive home. 

Dave hasn't seemed at all phased by the cold weather so far. That's probably a good thing as we think that it's likely to snow over here at some point during the next week. Excellent.

- Amanda

Crafty chameleons

We're having a pretty lazy weekend so far. Yesterday we enjoyed our first exam, assignment and work-free Saturday in months. We spent it avoiding doing anything even remotely productive - mainly webjunking, cooking and relaxing at the thermal baths in Nyírbátor. We arrived home just after 5pm and it was pitch black outside. Here is a picture I took of the church from our backyard.

Last night was also pretty relaxing. We cracked open some wine from the Hungarian town of Villány and set about trying out a craft project I'd seen online - paper chameleons. Can you believe that each of these little guys was made with only a single sheet of A4 paper? I think they look awesome.

Only a week until Dave arrives. Hopefully there'll be some snow to greet him when he gets here.

- Amanda

From the Silence

The last week and a half have been busy only with things not worth putting on the blog.  Specifically, Amanda and I were finishing off the last of our studies for this semester.  I had a few exams last week which I think I went fairly well in (but you can never be sure), while Amanda had to complete assignments for basically all of her subjects.  In the space of a week she wrote around 10,000 words on a variety of topics from government policy to a retrospective essay on "what I have learned".  It was rather painful and nearly all contact with the outside world had to be shut down in order to get it done.  We won't find out our results until the 5th of December, so here's hoping that we passed.  Once I'm done with this semester, I've got another year next year of uni and I'll have completed my major in philosophy and my minors in English and Writing.  Then we'll see where I go from there.

I was talking to the Principal of our school today as he's introduced a new schedule of timetimes.  Basically, we're getting two extra weeks of holidays at Christmas, and as such we have to make up those classes over the next month.  We will be doing this by shortening all the class times and breaks and squeezing in an additional lesson before lunchtime.  That will make 9 lessons per day for each class instead of 8.  To make things even more complicated there will be a different timetable each week to decide what goes into this additional lesson.  More timetabling fun and games - it seems to be the year for it.  So, what is the reason for this latest change? Well, it seems that because the local council received 30 million forints (~$130k AUD)  less than requested for the month of December, there just isn't enough money to pay to heat the school over Christmas.  In fact, the town council was only given a little more than wages, so it's going to have to default on the 65 or so million forints that it is currently in debt.  Amanda and I think that the council should have a serious "downsize" of government employees rather than close the school for two extra weeks but I don't think that's the way things are done around here.

In other news, the temperature has been steadily dropping over the last few weeks. It's often negative 5 degrees or so in the morning, and for the last couple of days it hasn't hit much more than 6 degrees Celsius at the hottest during the day.  The principal told us that it might actually snow next week, but maybe he was trying to cheer us up.  Even if everyone else thinks that the snow is annoying, Amanda and I still love it.

Our classes have been going well.  We've been getting a handle on the kids and (for the most part) have them under control, although there are still a few spats every now and then.  In my Grade 4 class, they're still obsessed with going outside or going to the computer room.  It's annoying to have to work through the objections every lesson but it can be a funny conversation.

"Hi Balint, how are you?"

"ANGRY!"

"Why?"

"Daniel!"

"Why?"

"No outside! No számítógépes terem!" 

At this point they're usually desperately trying hard to act as angry as they're pretending to be. I find it interesting that although the kids know the words "computer" and "room", they haven't managed to connect them yet.  I might fix that on Monday actually. If they're going to be angry with me, they might as well do it in English.

Amanda has also been having fun with her classes. She was teaching the Grade 1s about winter clothes today, so she brought in some of our coats, scarves, gloves, hats, pullovers and boots.  The clothes were piled messily in the back of the classroom and a pair of kids were chosen to act as mannequins. Then two different students had to listen to Amanda say one of the new clothes words and race to collect the right item from the pile to dress their mannequin. She said that although it got a bit noisy at times, it was awesome fun and the photos of the kids dressed in our oversized clothes look pretty adorable.

- Daniel.

Dog in a nest

A few months ago  family moved into the house next to ours. For the most part it's been awesome having neighbours. Their kids love playing with Iago, they are always giving us gifts (mostly food, but sometimes I score fantastic homemade jewellery too!) and they help out with other random stuff - like assisting us to fill in the Hungarian census and telling us when we've left our car headlights on.

Unfortunately there has been one smallish downside to having neighbours. They make us feel guilty about not cleaning our house and the yard enough :( I don't know how they find the time with three kids and full-time jobs, but they always seem to be cleaning. If they're not washing their car, they're sweeping the driveway, and it feels like we hear their vaccuum cleaner through the walls every second day. Normally this wouldn't really bother us, but as we share a yard with our neighbours, we feel like grotty slobs every time we step outside and discover that they've been cleaning again while we've been inside doing nothing more productive than playing computer games and doing the occasional load of  laundry. Also, we feel guilty that our leaf strewn driveway is somehow dragging down their well-kept path.

So, in the spirit of neighbourlyness, we've tried to do more to keep things tidy. It's difficult as I don't really understand the Hungarian obsession with sweeping and raking everything ALL THE TIME. Honestly, even if all people have out the front of their homes is a small patch of dirt, you can bet money that it will be the most pristine dirt ever, full of rake lines and completely free of leaves and other clutter. I don't get it. What's the big problem with letting the leaves stay where they fall? 

Anyway, in spite of this objection, Daniel and I spent some time this weekend raking up the leaves in our yard (well, really only half the yard as our neighbours already took care of most of the work). It seems like every tree in Hungary has decided to shed its leaves over the past week so raking up was a pretty big job. But we managed it. The only issue was what to do with the big pile of leaves at the end. Seeing as we don't really understand why we gathered the leaves in the first place, we weren't entirely sure what the protocol was for getting rid of them...so we just made a big pile and shoved them under a tree.

Which brings me finally to the point of this post. I came home from work today to find Iago sound asleep in the middle of the pile of leaves. It was the cutest thing ever :) He reminded me of a little bird hanging out in its nest. Awwwww. It kinda made the whole raking thing worthwhile.

- Amanda