This week we began writing the reports. Amanda and Laima have been tackling the Grade 1 reports that involve going through Word document after Word document and marking criteria after criteria. It takes around 10 minutes to grade each child and considering there are almost 50 children you can imagine that it was a long hard slog. I have been putting together the reports for the Grade 2s, 3s and 4s which have been much smoother. We worked fairly hard last year to understand the school's requirements regarding the reports and although there were a few hurdles to jump through, we finally got it settled. This year we came equipped with last year's reports and after confirming that they were to be the same, I worked hard at completing them for each child. Although there aren't as many children (8 in Grade 4, 18 in Grade 3 and 19 in Grade 4) I completed the reports in both English and Hungarian.
Anyway, after a hard day of work on Monday, we took a day off on Tuesday to go with the other teachers on a bus trip to Romania. We have been excited about this as we'd heard that we were going to a Merry Cemetery. We'd heard about this cemetery when we first arrived in Hungary, and although we tried to get there a few times, we always got lost on the way, or something else came up. We were surprised therefore when after only a couple of hours the bus pulled up in front of the cemetery. Well, there you go, I guess the bus had no trouble finding it.
The Merry Cemetery is in Săpânţa, a small town in Northern Romania, it isn't too far from the Ukraine border. According to Ili, the town used to be famous for people getting killed in knife fights, but in 1935 Stan Ioan Pătraş carved the first tombstones out of wood. They are bright, colourful and generally portray a feature of the deceased's life. i.e. if they were a shepherd, there is a picture of a man with his sheep, or if they were a soldier they might have a gun. There were some very strange pictures that we were unable to interpret however, such as a picture of a man being decapitated. We weren't sure what this man did in his life but perhaps it's best not knowing. It might have helped if we could have read the epitaphs. Apparently, the message of the cemetery is that death should be celebrated because the dead are going to a better place. This might seem optimistic but if we read the translation of the epitaph on Stan Ioan Pătra's grave we'll see that death is only a better place because life is so crap.
Since I was a little boy
I was known as Stan Ioan Pătra
Listen to me, fellows
There are no lies in what I am going to say
All along my life
I meant no harm to anyone
But did good as much as I could
To anyone who asked
Oh, my poor World
Because It was hard living in it
After the cemetery we got back in the bus and spent some time in Baia Mare, the largest town in the region, then off to Manastirea Bârsana in Maramureş, which is a nunnery which sits on the top of the hill. I must admit that my favourite feature of the Nunnery was their spring water-fed well. It was well over thirty degrees by this stage and we were absolutely melting inside the bus. By the time that we climbed up the hill to see the famous wooden churches we were more than happy to pour some cold natural spring water over our heads. Ah, the glory of cold water. As much as we are looking forward to seeing our friends and family when we get back to Melbourne, we are also looking forward to getting back into Winter.
After the nunnery, we went and had dinner at a particularly pastoral restaurant, which bred its own fish (a man was catching them from the man-made lake with a large net, that in itself was interesting to see). The other interesting feature of the restaurant was that the field over the road was complete with sheep, goats, a pony, a couple of dogs and chickens. We couldn't have found a more idyllic scene.
After the restaurant we turned the bus around and made our way home. I think everyone had an awesome time.
- Daniel.
No comments:
Post a Comment