Good news - we are finally back online! Our internet service resumed yesterday after we negotiated with our school to pay for the service ourselves (since the town's budget is too tight to pay it for us anymore).
Last weekend was fairly uneventful. Without the internet to confuse us, we managed to teach some English grammar to our Saturday morning class in a much simpler way than usual, and for the first time in a while we came away from the lesson feeling like we had achieved something positive. As a native English speaker, I don't often give much thought to grammar, but now that I've actually had to teach it to other people, I realise how tricky it all is. I've also come to realise how much of the way I speak, read and write is a product of habit and simply being able to hear when things are right or wrong, rather than any real understanding of why that is. This makes teaching grammar quite difficult. How can you explain to someone that what they have just said is wrong when you don't even really know why? It's especially hard with our weekend students as most of them know more English grammar than we do...so if we correct them, they tend to ask things like, "Oh, is that because I should use the third form?" I don't even know what the third form is, let alone if it's relevant to what they just said so I usually end up saying "yes" and quickly changing the topic.
Anyway, the rest of our weekend also went well. Last Sunday we ventured into Nyíregyháza for lunch and stumbled across some sort of festival. There were lots of rides, a few stalls and of course, as you would expect in eastern Europe, a large stage filled with American-style cheerleaders. I still don't really understand what was going on, but it seems likely that it was somehow related to the fact that it was May 1st (May Day).
It seems that May Day is still a pretty big deal over here, and while we didn't see anyone dancing around a traditional maypole, we did notice something that is loosely related - lots of trees decorated with colourful streamers. From what I've been told, it's traditional in Hungarian villages for young men to visit the houses of their sweethearts or potential love interests on the eve of May 1st and to decorate a tree in front of the house as a sign of their affection. These are known as májusfa (May-tree). As Daniel and I were driving to Nyíregyháza on Sunday, we passed quite a few houses with trees adorned with streamers, balloons and other bits and pieces. It was quite cheery.
In sadder news, our working week started off on a sombre note as we attended the funeral of one of our colleagues on Monday afternoon. About six months ago, the Grade 1 teacher Judit fell sick and was unable to continue working. We later found out that she had stomach cancer. Unfortunately the treatment was unsuccessful and she passed away last Thursday. Naturally, the entire school community has been deeply affected by the news as Judit was a long-term and much beloved staff member. Her death has been particularly traumatic for her Grade 1 class. I assume that many of them had never had someone in their lives die before and it seemed to really shake them up.
The funeral was held in the famous Greek-Catholic church in Máriapócs. Even though it's quite a large church, there were so many mourners that about half of the attendees (including Daniel and I) had to stand outside. In a touching display, many of school's current and past students provided a guard of honor for Judit and after the ceremony everybody formed a long, long, black line and walked slowly to the nearby cemetery for her burial.
As you can probably imagine, the mood at school is still rather sombre at the moment. In a way it's a good thing as it's helping to keep the kids quiet. This is especially important right now as the older grades are currently undertaking their end-of-year exams. There are currently only about five more weeks of school left.
- Amanda
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