School Opening Ceremony

Today we had the official opening of the school.  We got to see all our kids from last year (who we really missed) and we got to meet all the new little ones.  There are two grade one classes this year, each with 23 students, so we're going to be busy.

The ceremony started with a rendition of the Hungarian anthem, which Amanda and I were really excited about as we'd practiced it over the course of the last 3 months.  We stood up with the rest of the school and as the music started Amanda and I belted out the first couple of lines.  It was much slower than we were used to but that didn't seem to be the problem.  It took until the second line of the song before I noticed what it was:  Nobody else was singing.  That's right, we'd practiced day in day out for 3 months and it seemed that no one else sang it.  Eventually our colleague, Ili, and our principal joined us so we weren't singing by ourselves but we got through to the end of it.  The rest of the ceremony went without a hitch.  There were a few long speeches, we had to stand up at one point and wave our hands at the parents but other than that it was all pretty cruisey.

We are actually a little confused as to what we are doing this year.  It seemed like things were settled, as per Amanda's last post, however things seem to have changed a number of times since then and there have been several discussions with the principal to sort things out.  In one version, Amanda and I are teaching almost no English and rather spending all of our time teaching PE, art, singing and science.  Ili wasn't too happy with this, so we rearranged the classes so that there was a more even load but it still hasn't really been settled.  We've been told that we are looking after the Grade 2's tomorrow afternoon for 3 hours, then the Grade 3's and 4's on Friday but other than that we've got no idea what subjects we are going to be teaching for the year.  Amanda keeps on asking Ili for a timetable only to have Ili laugh wryly.

- Daniel.