private students

it's normal for language teachers around here to have private students. so i, being a native english speaker, am often approached to be a private teacher. i've also been working in a language school for six months, so that's private lessons too. i have seven- no, SIX!- private students right now. allow me to introduce them.

lily: high school student in none of the schools i've taught in, i was recommended to her by a ZIG colleague. she wrote a book in hungarian and wanted to translate it into english. she speaks english very well - especially considering how long she's been learning (2 years max)- but she needed a native english speaker to make the book sound native and fluent and up to date. we've been meeting since september on monday afternoons and all day fridays. i mean like 4-5 hours monday afternoon and 6-10 hours on fridays every week. it's a long book (360 pages in hungarian, 263 in english) but it's finally complete.

we meet in her parents' workplace, a wholesaling warehouse that buys used clothes from england and sells them to other used english clothes stores in town. there are mountains of clothes, then mountains and rows and aisles of bagggggggs of clothes. i can't explain it or capture it in pictures, but it's like truckloads and truckloads and truckloads of clothes. once i sat on the mountain in the front... just because i had never sat on a mountain of clothes.

lily and an employee's son on the clothes mountain

gábor: a taxi driver. i called for a taxi once and he picked me up. i forgot the word for "ginger ale" and tried to explain what it was in hungarian. he looked confused. then i said it in english and his eyes lit up. "you speak english!?" i told him i was american and the lektor in ZIG. he asked to be my private student and we started meeting periodically throughout the year. now i've known him for about a year. he's very funny, very smart, and charming. husband, father of two, taxi driver and shop owner, he's very determined to learn and improve his english. no one is more proud of himself than gábor when he says a sentence or word correctly. he makes me love my job. (VIDEO AT THE END OF THIS POST)

he drives me anywhere in town for $2

this summer when i was here with no income, i went to a language school for a job. i basically said, "hi, i'm american. do you have any students who want to practice speaking with a native english speaker?" one of the people assigned to me was..

roland: an accountant for Michelin (there is a branch in town). he's very serious but witty. he pretty much just tolerates me, i think. he went to kossuth, the school where i currently live and work. he lives with his girlfriend, they don't have kids yet, but want some, though not too soon as he attends university and is earning a law degree. he has five years to go since he only goes on weekends. he collects paintings, loves reading, history, and politics. it's a wonder he puts up with me at all.

i forced him to smile :)

józsef/attila: michelin workers józsef and attila. there is a famous hungarian poet named "józsef attila" so we have a nice laugh when i call them that.
józsef (left) was an assistant principal of a high school for many years before retiring, then getting bored, starting work at michelin, and deciding to take on english. he's SO sweet, a romantic, a family guy. so, so sweet.
attila (right) is some kind of floor manager at michelin. he and his wife have two kids... or his wife has three. he's so silly and jokes a lot. his english isn't as good as his classmate's, but he tries very hard. the weirdest thing about these guys is that they have done a coursebook based on mechanics and production techniques so they know words like "fire extinguisher" and don't know words like "food."

my thursday afternoon entertainers

olga: she's my newest private student as she's just interested in preparing for job interviews. we talk about everything under the sun and she's great at going off on tangents. she's also fluent in german and sometimes substitutes german words for english words she doesn't know. maybe she thinks that will help me...? i'd prefer the hungarian word, to be sure. mother of two girls, madly in love with her husband, former professor, happy, well-educated, silly. tons of fun.

dictionary-aholic

i love working with these people. i can't believe i get paid. :D