Marshmallow Challenge

Recently I stumbled across something called the Marshmallow Challenge and today I thought I'd give it a go with some of my Grade 2 students. Basically, the idea of the Challenge is to create a freestanding structure made from 20 pieces of uncooked spaghetti, 1 metre of string, 1 metre of tape and a single uncooked marshmallow. The team that creates the tallest structure (measured from its base to the top of the marshmallow) is declared the winner. I'd read online that young students typically perform better at the Marshmallow Challenge than business graduates, so I was keen to observe my Grade 2s in action to see how they fared.

Unfortunately, the results today were less than impressive. Only 2 of the 4 teams managed to create a freestanding structure by the end of the 18-minute time limit, and of those, only one was able to remain standing once the marshmallow was added. Most disappointingly, one of the teams gave up after five minutes and spent the rest of their time pretending to smoke spaghetti cigars. Such a waste of creative potential!

In other news, it started snowing again tonight. I'm so pleased because I wasn't really ready to say goodbye to Winter just yet. Everything looks so pretty and sparkly outside right now. 

I attempted to take some photos of the snowfall but unfortunately they all turned out looking rather dingy. Even so, I thought I'd attach this one because it gives a good representation of just how far we have to walk to get to work each day. At the bottom of the photo is part of our front fence, and the lit doorway that you can see is the main entrance to the school. I'd say it's about a 50-60 metre walk.

- Amanda

Farsang: Ninja style

Today was the annual school Farsang costume party. We're still not entirely sure what Farsang is, but I now think it has something to with the period between Epiphany (Vízkereszt) and Ash Wednesday. Since Ash Wednesday signals the beginning of the traditional Christian fasting period, Farsang is the celebration of good food and good fun before the drudgery of Lent sets in. 

Anyway, whatever the reason behind its existence, Farsang is a pretty big deal in Hungary and the kids absolutely love having an excuse to dress up. After misjudging last year's costumes, Daniel and I opted for something a little more kid-orientated this year. If we've learnt anything from being teachers, it's that kids love guns and knives. Oh wait, that sounded bad. But it's the truth. The kids know the names of all the superheroes as well as any kind of occupation that weilds a weapon (such as pirates, sheriffs, knights, etc). So with this in mind, Daniel and I decided to dress up as ninjas for the Farsang party.

While we were at home getting changed into our costumes, a gang of excited parents descended on the school and helped to transform our students into a colourful assortment of cowboys, indians, dragons, princesses, pirates and more. The creativity and skill level behind some of the costumes was pretty amazing. I thought our colleague Laima did an awesome job with her bunch of grapes costume, and I just loved Dorka and Eszter's kangaroo suits. Lilla from Grade 2 was also impressive as a Túró Rudi (a distinctive and popular Hungarian snack made from chocolate-covered curd). And guess what? Detti from Grade 3 was dressed as a Rubik's cube...and a princess...I think.

During the costume party, each student was presented to the crowd, assessed by a panel of judges and then scored. Most of the kids also performed a little dance, sang a song, or recited a short poem as part of their presentation.While it took a while (about 2 hours) to get through each of the 75 'acts', it was worth it just to see each student have their moment in the spotlight. My favourite moments both came from Grade 1 students. First, Boti absolutely stole the show with his frenzied lasso twirling, then Bandika surprised everyone when he took a few swipes at the principal with his wooden pirate sword. So, so cute.

 

By contrast, one of the more confusing/disturbing moments was provided by the Grade 4 students. Even though Daniel told me that the kids were dressed as pencils, I couldn't help but think they looked more like Klu Klux Klan members...only perhaps an anti-white version. It was strange. Here's a short video of part of their performance.

After all the acts had been presented, and while the scores were being tallied, the students returned to their classrooms, took off their costumes, and then everybody got to indulge in assorted drinks and treats provided by the parents. This included yummy farsangi fánk which are special doughnuts only available at this time of year. Needless to say, Daniel and I ate and drank a lot. Soon enough, it was back to the gym for the prize ceremony, and then before we knew it, our brief sojourn as ninjas was over. At least it was pretty darn awesome while it lasted.

- Amanda

Charity Ball 2012

So last night we went to the 2012 Charity Ball at our school.  It was quite different to last year when our Grade 1, 2 and 3 kids sang songs, acted out a performance and generally entertained the audience. This year Sanyi, our principal, didn't want the lower classes to do this because a lot of parents turned up simply to see the kids perform and then went home without actually donating anything to the night. Really, we were lucky to have a Ball at all this year as there have been extensive cutbacks to the school's budget. I think it got so bad they were thinking that they wouldn't be able to afford the upfront costs, even if they made a profit on the night.  I'm not sure of the details.

Anyway instead of the children performing, my citera group played a few songs and Amanda and I joined a choir with some of the other teachers and parents. We sang a few Hungarian songs then we led a rousing rendition of Waltzing Matilda. I'd mentioned this song to my citera teacher a few months ago after he asked me about Australian folk songs. He has since looked it up on YouTube and fallen in love with it, so when we had the opportunity to sing with the choir he quickly organised to add it to the list of songs.

After our little performances, we had dinner, a couple of drinks and then a raffle at the end of the night. Amanda and I snuck out at 2am much to the disapproval of the other teachers who were settling in for more crazy karaoke, dancing and alcohol. Overall it was a good night!

- Daniel

A day in Nyírbátor

Today Daniel and I spent the day in Nyírbátor with two of our favourite colleagues, Ili and Laima. As we've previously mentioned, Ili hasn't been at work recently because of a nasty finger injury, and Laima only arrived in Hungary from Lithuania about a month ago. So it was great to be able to spend some more time with both of them today.

Our first stop this morning was an art studio in the centre of town. Several of the kids from school attend art lessons at the studio every second weekend and Ili thought it would be fun for us to check it out. The lessons are run by a local artist named Zsuzsa Makrai and there were examples of her beautiful artwork hanging on the studio walls. During our visit Zsuzsa was kind enough to answer all of our questions about her art and the process of creating it. I'm still not sure that I entirely understand it, but basically it seems to involve painting multiple layers of special ceramic (?) paint on copper and steel surfaces. Once the paint has dried, it is possible to scratch out designs on the surface of the work. After this step is complete, the artwork is fired in a super hot kiln and comes out looking nice and shiny. Then another coat of paint can be applied and on and on until the work is complete. Laima and I were so impressed that we've both decided to join in the next lesson in two weeks' time. Yippee. I've also decided that I like the idea of buying a kiln.

After the art studio, at Laima's suggestion, we wandered across town to check out a display of outdoor ice sculptures. The sculptures were unveiled yesterday and since the weather has been consistently cold lately (usually between -5 and -14 degrees each day and probably colder at night), it should be quite a while before they start to melt. Most of the sculptures depicted Disney cartoon characters, but there were also some busts of famous Hungarians as well as an impressive dragon - the symbol of Nyírbátor.

Once we'd finished admiring the sculptures we went back to Ili's house for lunch. We enjoyed two delicious Hungarian dishes - gulash soup (gulyásleves) and homemade lángos with garlic, sour cream and cheese topping. Nagyon finom! Then, once we'd finished stuffing ourselves, we set off to find some nearby horse stables that Ili had heard about. After a few wrong turns, we eventually arrived at the right place and were just in time to join the owner on a tour of the farm. I'm not a big fan of horses, but even I had to admit that some of the animals we saw were just beautiful. I was especially fond of a spunky little pony named Zorro.

Big thanks to Ili and Laima for making today so much fun :)

- Amanda

Deep stuff

It continued snowing all through the night and we woke up this morning to find a beautiful extra thick blanket of the stuff covering our yard. Unbelievably, it is almost up to our knees in most places, while in others it seems even higher - in fact, walking around town last night was a bit of an adventure because we kept accidentally stepping off the footpath and creating deep curbside holes. This afternoon we attempted to dig a pathway out of the garage for our car, but we got bored after five minutes and decided that it was the perfect time to put our snow tyres to the test. Luckily they performed perfectly and we managed to make it into Nyírbátor without sliding around too much. We paid a quick visit to Ili and she confirmed that this is the most snow that she's seen in Hungary for many years. Unfortunately, it's still much too fluffy and light to be any good for snowsculpting, but hopefully it will harden up over the next few days. 

- Amanda

White weekend

Apparently Eastern Europe has been experiencing a big freeze in recent weeks and hundreds of deaths have been attributed to the extreme cold weather. Here in Hungary, however, things haven't seemed especially chilly. Temperatures have typically been around -10 degrees Celcius each day, but there hasn't been any fresh snow for almost two weeks :(

So, when our school's principal warned us to stay indoors and keep ourselves warm this weekend as the town was expecting 20cm of snowfall, Daniel and I were pretty cynical. But then yesterday afternoon it started snowing, just a few flakes at first, but it grew steadily as the evening wore on. This morning we woke up to find a decent blanket of snow covering our yard. Judging by the layer of snow on our verandah railing, I'd say about 10cm of snow has fallen over the last 24 hours. 

We're hoping for at least that much again tonight so that we can make our first snowman of the season tomorrow.

- Amanda

Australia Day 2012

So we've finally got some pictures back from Australia day.

We had to rely on other people's photos this year because Monday was soooo much bigger than last year. With the addition of around fifty new Grade 1s, we were expecting an attendance of approximately 100 kids, compared to the 50 or so that we had last year.

In order to deal with the increased numbers we had six simultaneous activities running. We did the flip-flop basketball and kangaroo races from last year, and we added an Australian Football handballing competition, emu races (carrying a beanbag on top of a long pole), koala toss and an over/under relay with a blown up plastic kangaroo. We had extra help with Dave, the sports teacher, the sports teacher's sister, one of the Grade 1 classroom teachers, Laima the Lithuanian volunteer  and Amanda and myself. We were ready.

(Un)fortunately, we've had a huge bout of sickness at school that has corresponded with the recent fall in temperatures over here in Eastern Europe.  Many of our classes have been decimated, so our 100 kid estimate was probably more likely around 80 kids.  This was okay though as it meant that each team was around 13 kids, which let each kid have at least one or two goes at every activity.

At the end of each round, we added up the scores for each activity and sent the kids on to the next station. Little did we know, however, was that Amanda was multiplying her scores by three so that where everyone else was giving scores of 5 points or so, Amanda was giving them out in lots of 20. So the koala toss was the real game changer.

After everything was done and dusted, the top two winning teams came up to receive their prize packs (wonderfully supplied by our Australian friends and family). The kids absolutely loved them. Each pack had a kangaroo or koala toy, either a bouncing ball or medal or some other secondary toy and a handful of stickers or temporary tattoos.  In fact, the prize packs were so sought after we had a number of the kids in tears when they didn't get anything. Thankfully, there were plenty of Minties to go around so nobody left empty handed.

Overall it was a really fun, if exhausting day, and I hope that everyone enjoyed it as much as we did.

Check out the video to see each of the activities in action!

- Daniel.