I judge you...awesome

Happy Halloween everyone!

On Friday afternoon, Daniel and I attended another Halloween party - this time it was in the nearby town of Mátészalka at the school where I teach an extra hour of English each week. The school has just implemented the same program that we are running in Máriapócs for their Grade One class and I am providing the students with the requisite contact with a native English speaker.

Everyone in Mátészalka has been super nice to me right from the beginning and so I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to attend the Halloween Party. But by the time Friday afternoon rolled around, I was feeling a little less enthused about going. I was tired. It was such a long way to drive. And besides, they wouldn't miss me anyway, right?

Wrong! 

It's lucky that we decided to go to the party - even if we did arrive 7 minutes late - because I had a special seat reserved just for me at the Judges Table. I even got to wear an awesome witch's hat. After I got over my initial embarrassment at being so late (and my relief at going at all), the party was actually a lot of fun. My Grade One class performed to a number of English songs, including the funkiest version of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes that I've ever heard. They also did a cool streamer routine that I am totally stealing for the next school ball in Máriapócs.

After the singing, each class at the school paraded in front of the judges (myself, the school principal and the two vice-principals) and were awarded scores for their Halloween costumes. This took quite a while as about 600 students attend the school. Then two students took to the stage and provided a bunch of information in English and Hungarian about the history of Halloween. Each class was then quizzed to see how much they remembered and the scores were added to their total. Finally, each class was awarded points for either their Halloween artwork (Grades 1-4) or their Halloween videos (Grades 5-8). 

I must admit that the videos were my favourite part of the party. While some of the classes had just slapped together a bunch of Halloween clipart pictures and overlayed them with spooky music, other classes had gone to the effort of acting out short stories and dances. There was one in particular that everyone, including Daniel and I, thought was awesome. In fact, it was so awesome that I wanted to post it to this blog.

Unfortunately, the only way I could access the video is via the school's Facebook page. So I finally bit the bullet and signed up....only to discover that I can't embed the video on this blog anyway. Still, I have managed to save it to my Facebook "wall" thing, so if anyone's interested you can check it out there.

Daniel and I both have this week off from teaching, though I doubt we'll be relaxing much. Daniel has uni exams to sit and I have a bunch of assignments to plough through. So looking forward to the semester being over!

- Amanda