hortobágy - the hungarian plain

i was lucky enough to be invited to the hortobágy (whore-toe-bodge) by another CETP teacher last week. we were met by her contact teacher, kata, and kata's boyfriend, bill (a british guy who has somehow managed to live in hungary for 20 years) and we all went on an 'excursion' to the great plains national park.

the horse drawn wagon

the famous hungarian longhorn cattle

(pay no attention to the german woman talking throughout the video. she said some interesting stuff, i'm sure, but with her thick accent and my inability to focus through the wind and rain, i didn't catch much of it.)

kata and carla

mangalica pigs - they have curly hair, they're raised for their meat, usually for sausages, which is very low in cholesterol and apparently pretty tasty. (german-hungarian lady pictured)

me and carla

we stopped in the hortobagy restaurant and had a traditional hungarian meal. of course i started it off with some gulyas, which was delish!

in some places we were allowed to get out of the wagons to look around and take pictures.

little did we know that it would be the coldest and rainiest day of the summer... there were some italian people in our wagon with us. they had some little kids who were miserable in the wind and rain but took it like champs and had a good time anyway.

after the hour-long ride we looked through the shops and stands of the semi-annual market they hold there. it was slim pickins since the weather was so bad. we also stopped in some little old lady kiosks along the way. here are some traditional handmade things...

hand carved longhorns (for over $500!)

doilies, table cloths, whathaveyou

pottery shop

a good day: a bit damp and a bit freezing, but good company and good attitudes made up for it tenfold. i was glad to spend time with an american, happy to meet a nice hungarian lady, and amused at the britsh guy's antics, opinions, words, and accent.

out with the old, in with the new - schools

today i went to my two new schools (szent imre and kossuth - you might as well learn the names because i'll have to differentiate between them all year).

magdi (who has been like a contact teacher for me so far, as she has taken me to the immigration office, helped me with paper work, come to my old school and translated for me at kossuth), an english teacher at kossuth, took me to szent imre today to meet with the principal/headmistress. when we arrived all the teachers were in a beginning-of-the-year meeting so we hung out in the hall for half an hour talking. when the meeting was over we went into the teachers' room for a party, as one of the english teachers is retiring and so threw a party - kind of a goodbye party for herself :) - for the teachers. gifts and kisses, food, cakes, drinks, the whole bit. i was also introduced to the staff at this party and given a plate (that had a deviled egg with sour cream sauce on it already). they seemed nice enough. several teachers came up and introduced themselves to me and some invited me to go get coffee/smoke with them. as i'm not a huge coffee drinker and i don't smoke... i went anyway. i had time to kill before meeting the boss lady. after "coffee" (and by that i mean ginger ale) a nice rita showed me around the school. we arranged for me to get reimbursed for a bus pass, to get lunch tickets, i saw the copy room, library, cafeteria, computer room, and language room. szent imre is a catholic school, recently partially renovated/updated, and clean. i noticed crucifixes in each room (not just class rooms, but every room) and there is a chapel on campus. it has three floors, one main building for classes and a really big dorm for students to live in (i was offered a room in the student hostel, but declined as it wouldn't have been good for xander... or me...). the headmistress was busy with meetings and couldn't meet with me, as it turned out, but that's ok. i'm used to this hungarian-ness by now. i was told i'll get my schedule on the first day of school, as will the other teachers. ON the first day. oy. i'll mostly be teaching 10th graders, with 3 classes of 9th, 2 or 3 11th grade classes, and one class of school leavers (seniors/12th graders). some of my classes will be "zero level" students who are learning english intensively (15 hours a week). this may the first time to study english for some of them! anyway, i'll be there on tuesdays and thursdays.

i took a bus back to kossuth (the school where i live) to find out what i could find out. the teachers in the staff room ignored me when i went in purposely looking confused and lost. i went to the assistant principals' office instead hoping one of them would speak english. one did! idk his name, but when he started speaking in english i seriously thought he was "doing" an accent because it was so thick and different from a typical hungarian accent. anyway, i said something like, "i have questions" and he jumped up to help. i asked and found out when the first day of school is (importnant, no!? and it's different than szent imre's first day... weird.), the opening ceremony, when we're leaving for prague on wednesday (4am, btw), and where my desk is in the teachers' room. that's about it, but that was the stuff i wanted to know, so, it's all good. kossuth is an evangelical school, also three stories, there's no chapel but we'll attend chapel services in the big yellow church.

i almost cried several times during the day. even though i'm in the same city i can already tell that life will be really different this year. that's not to say that it will be bad, just different. i had a really good introduction to hungary being at zrinyi last year and it's possible it will be hard to beat. i forgot how sucky it feels not to know anyone and not to have anyone know me. actually, i've moved once a year for the past 6 or 7 years, so i know how to start a new life, but this is the one time i haven't wanted to move and change, but i had to. i still have high hopes for the year and know it will be a good and unique experience. even for me, someone who likes, even craves change, change is still hard. the weird thing is that it all hit me today. not all the goodbyes from students, not the last day of school, not when i cleaned out my desk this summer, not when i signed the contracts at the new schools or when i signed a completion of contract paper at zrinyi, not even at my farewell party (another post), but today. the ushering in of new faces, new buildings, new everything, that's what made it real.

debrecen

there's another CETP teacher, carla, living and working in debrecen (the second largest city in hungary) for a couple of weeks. it's pretty close to me - 30 minutes by train - so i hopped on over to see/meet her the other day. sadly, we didn't take any pictures of ourselves together. we did go up in the big yellow church:
there were a bunch of steep stairs to get to the tower, but the view should make it worth it.

here's the inside of the tower

and the view of the city centeranother view

and another
debrecen boasts one whole tram line. here it is in all its glory!

a warning sign at the train station:

sweets stand... good to know they're in every city

after we walked around, went in the church, sat down a while for drinks and chatting, and a tram ride through part of the city, we got some italian food at some place with a reputation.
it was good to have some real (good by american standards AND hungarian standards) food, but i think i was happier about the arizona green tea. *sigh* oh, the things i miss...

folk dance festival

i went to a folk dancing festival. it was entertaining but a bit long for my taste. (9pm-1am)

before the dancing started, all the participants lined up on stage:

there were more than they thought, i guess... look at the purple people in the photo above and then in the photo below. man, it must have been hot up there.
this bright purple lady below is the israeli ambassador to hungary (Aliza Bin-Noun), the middle lady is the mayor(ess) of Nyiregyhaza (Judit Csabai) and her husband. i chatted them up during intermission since they were sitting behind me. ambassador lady spoke on the stage for a few minutes in hungarian and i immediately loved her because i love all people who learn hungarian as a foreign language. we spoke in hunglish for a few minutes before taking this picture (i cut myself out of it so you know it must have been bad!)

loved the costumesaw, sweet hungarians dancing around wine bottles...

these people were fantastic!

cutesy

the whole time i was utterly distracted by the "decorations" on the stage. i commented on them to my coworkers (who invited me) and we laughed it up. in fact, whenever i almost started to fall asleep (you know, during the third and fourth hour) i just looked at the stage and started chuckling again. come on, seriously? who hung them!?

so sad.

folk dance festival

There was an international folk dance festival in my town in August 2009. There were 8 countries represented and there was a LOT of variety among the dances. Belgium, Portugal, Hungary, Japan, China, Taiwan, Israel, and Turkey.

I didn't label all the dances, sorry, but the last one is Japanese people doing traditional Hungarian folk dancing and it got the biggest applause of all of them, as it was in Hungary.

the new place

so i realized i didn't show you around my new place yet. i've done a lot of work in it (moving things around, cleaning, taking doors off hinges, and getting things situated) and though i'm not completely done, i'm proud enough of it to show it to you.

no need to comment on all the things it's not or all the things it lacks, believe me i'm aware. i've made my peace with it by comparing it not to the apartments i've been living in for the past several years, but to the dorm rooms i lived in for 2 years. in that comparison, this place wins. no roommate! first floor with a gated front yard! cable internet! some other things i like are the full-length mirror, the really tall windows, the extra office room, the brand new washing machine, the 12 foot (?) ceilings, and the handyman who (theoretically) will repair anything i need repaired.



i'll readily admit last year's place was better (as it was an actual apartment) but i'm not scared or bummed to be living here. it's inside the gated school campus. a handyman and a preist (lady) will be living here with me the whole time, but in different "flats." the location is about 5 minutes walk to everything in the city center. as i've been exploring a new part of town i've been in some new sweet shops, two paper stores, a new convenience store, an "american" themed restaurant, and two new grocery stores. in fact, next week i'm going to have to learn where the bus stops are around here because i haven't even taken a bus since i moved in (end of june).

ok, so, it is what it is. my new home sweet home :)

cukrászda video

i was given the honey cake, the 'cottage cheese' cake, and the ones called "bambi"
at the end of the video the lady who worked there asked what i was doing and anna told her i was taking pictures, that i'm an american teacher in Nyiregyhaza, that she spoke highly of this ice cream from this place, and that she brought me here to taste it. (it's hard to hear and understand her on the video, but that's what i can make out.)

ice cream with anna

anna (the director/owner/ruler of the language school and so my boss!) grew up in a small town (Szikszó) about an hour from Nyíregyháza. she told me about an ice cream place that made handmade/homemade ice cream that was to die for and invited me to come with her to taste the goodness. so after working up an appetite swimming in caves, we drove to her hometown.

the place had a old-timey family-run type feeling so i liked it immediately.

it was busy the whole time we were there, not surprisingly

there were lots of ice cream flavors (not 31 or anything...) and lottttts of sweets.

mignon = delicious

cake display

we both had caramel and cream. the expectations were pretty high, but they were MET!

anna took me for a short visit at her aunt's house (to discuss a tablecloth, bring her ice cream, and give her some joint cream). then when we got in the car she turned in the wrong direction (i thought) and down some side street. she excused herself and said she just can't leave the town without getting some spring water from the well. we got out some bottles and headed to the pump.
i was tempted to think anna was weird, but when another kid showed up with bottles i thought maybe this really is the thing to do in these parts. in fact, the water was pretty good - natural minerals in there, ya know.
we had a nice drive home through the mountains and the plains and fields of corn and sunflowers
we even stopped in the wine region (at my request) to get a bottle of sweet winey goodness. a cute little wine shop full of the national favorites:

these barrels are typical of wine cellars in the wine region so a fitting display.

look at the cutey little gift baskets

we got back to town, dropped off some ice cream at the language school freezer (anna had to bring some back for her employees since they all knew she was going to the place), and went to her flat for a few minutes. we had a drink (more to come on that later) and she loaded me up with a variety of her summer batches of jam.
anna bought me some cakes but i wasn't paying attention and she got wayyy more than i thought. 2 bambis (chocolate cake with a layer of chocolate cream), 2 turo cakes (the translation is "cottage cheese" but i promise it's not disgusting like that sounds, think cream cheese), and 2 chocolate honey cakes (which taste like an upgraded s'mores because it has honey cake, cream, and chocolate frosting). omg, wow.

i had so much loot after this long day! i can't wait to get into it all :)

water from the spring, wine from tokaj, and
jams: orange, apricot, strawberry, raspberry, and blackberrya very enjoyable and memorable hungarian day. thank you so much, anna!

cave baths

the director of the language school i'm teaching in, anna, invited me on a day trip today. there were a few elements of the trip, but the recreation destination was the cave baths of Miskolctapolca. it's a common thing in hungary to go swimming in the thermal baths, use the saunas, and take water aerobic classes. i've done it countless times since i've been here, but these were different. in front of the caves there are a few acres of outdoor pools and grass. people were swimming, tanning, playing, eating, sitting, and having a great time as anna and i walked in. we were only interested in the cave part, as it's cooler, there's no sun, and fewer children. so we headed in to a building which looked nothing like a cave:
there we found locker rooms and bathrooms, so we changed and headed to the pools. the cave baths were discovered in the 16th century and studied for their medicinal benefits, pools were added in the early 1830s and 1930s, remodeled and modernized as late as 2005. the thermal springs in, under, and around the bath complex still supply them with a lot of water as well as some of the drinking water for the town.

here is the entrance pool: there are pounding waterfalls used like massage, jacuzzis, and "wild water" which is water with a current throughout the rivers in the cave.

the water in the caves doesn't move very fast, but there is definitely a discernable current.

it was so cool how everything was lit in there! you can see high up into the cave while you swim.

one of the tunnels leads to a dark room with music playing. it's called the "star room" because of the stars .... i don't know if those were holes or lights or what. there were a lot of lounging teenagers in there when we went in, so we didn't stay long.cave baths

to get from river system to river system within the cave, there were sidewalks and railings everywhere. some walkways had those heavy waterfalls in case you need a quick massage.

after we waded, swam in different temperature pools (not pictured), jacuzzied, and had waterfall massages, we ate a quick lunch - nectarins, cookies, and sandwiches with meat, cheese, and peppers, yum! - we took showers, changed, and left the lovely bath complex. i'm really glad i got to experience it because i had never swum in a cave before. :)

hamburgers

i went to a student/friend's house on the weekend to make some real american hamburgers. there is a burger place in the city center here which boasts "american hamburgers" but they still put cabbage and cucumbers on them and don't have any tomatoes. i mentioned this to rudi, he said it to his parents, and soon i was invited over to have a cookout with them to show them the way. here is how it turned out:

gettin' ready

rudi's first bite

(his shirt says: i'm not lazy, i'm just conserving energy)
so they were a little thick
he thought it was just a way to get mayo in his mouth
here is his family (idk what's up with his dad)

all in all, it was a success. it was a taste of home. *sigh*