christmas program!

i teach in two elementary schools this year and one of them had a christmas program and invited me to be part of it. so, for the second time in hungary (and in my life) i donned a santa claus suit.

the kids all knew it was me and were overflowing with excitement about their performance in the program.
eniko (enn-ick-ew), the first grade english teacher, arranged their part in the program. as "frosty the snowman" played the children built a snowman on stage. they put on its hat and eyes and nose and mouth and scarf and buttons while having snowball fights and dancing around.

but before we were on stage there was a lot of waiting...

which meant a lot of restless 6 and 7 year olds...

it's traditional in hungary to put up your christmas tree on christmas eve. they don't overdo it with lights and it's rare to see houses decorated with lights. they could use a little help with the method of adding the lights, but it doesn't matter, really... 'cause it still turns out nice. see?here is eniko as she normally looks:

before and after the kids decorated her

some restless kids got curious about the audience and i caught them peeking out before we started

our kiddies were so great! they sang their guts out and danced around with glee. and they were surprisingly patient while waiting for their turn. eniko and i hung out backstage until the end of the program. aren't we adorable??

so, big hit! there were lots of familiar tunes translated into hungarian, lots of christmassy songs and costumes, lots of variety on the stage, including singing, lipsynching, drama, choreographed uh... movements, poetry, and running. the kids had a ball and the parents and friends clapped in rhythm, in true hungarian style. :)

halloween

i did a halloween lesson this week with most of my kids. some good classes got to have races to make mummies.

some were pretty proud of their work...

some were not so happy to be the mummy...

some had way too much fun...

and some kind of sucked at it...

after talking about halloween (15 minutes), and mummy wrapping (5 minutes) i gave the class the remainder of the time (25 minutes) to do a halloween word search. [hungarian kids equate cheating with helping so when they take a test there is ALWAYS cheating and no one feels bad unless they get caught. teachers have even congratulated students on cheating without getting caught, sort of encouraging them to beat the system however they can. i'm not making this up.}

when i told the students that the winner would get a candy bar, all conversations stopped. i told them they could help each other and they all refused. i had never heard such silence. even the most rambunctious kids (like the boy pictured below) concentrated and tried their best for the prize. i was really quite impressed, if not stunned.

so far, after two days of halloween, i'm willing to call it a success. the kids learned some new vocab, made mummies, and had a howling good time.... and so did i.

szent imre - the good school

szent imre is the catholic school i teach in on tuesdays and thursdays. the teachers are great and always talk to and help me. we eat lunch together, talk about lessons, and shoot the breeze in our planning periods. they make me like my job even more than the kids do.

that's not to say that the kids aren't good, because they are. most of the time the students there are interested in english and learning and so interested in my lessons. they are cooperative even when they don't fully understand what i'm saying.

since it's a catholic school, it's a bit more strict than other schools. the students don't greet teachers with the normal "csokalom" (i kiss you[r hand]) but with a latin greeting of 'may you be blessed by jesus christ'... or something like that. (no need to correct my latin, people. i'm working on hungarian right now.) i am supposed to respond with the latin for "may it be so forever."


if i see kids in the hall, they are supposed to say this phrase and i am supposed to respond accordingly. it's so long and strange to me, though, that i usually just say hi to them. oh, well.

here is one of my favorite classes at that school. i wanted to take a picture of them but forgot my camera. i ran downstairs to get it and told them to get in position. when i came back, they were ready and had surprised me with a different word than "cheese."
maybe a video will make you feel like you were there. :)



another favorite class of mine is the beginners. this is their first year learning english and they haven't lost their motivation for school yet. we do very elementary things in there (and i use as much hungarian as english!) but we all like it. this week we sang some songs: Old McDonald Had a Farm, Father Abraham, the Hokey Pokey, B-I-N-G-O, and the jazz chant that goes 'hi, my name is Joe and I work in a button factory.' when i took their picture they wanted to sing partof one of the songs. so here they are:

tokaj

in hungary there is a famous wine region that produces famous wine. the city is tokaj, the wine is tokaji bor. i had heard about this wine and this place, but never visited.

until this weekend...

annamari, zoli, eszter, and dani were taking a day trip to the town because the weather was so lovely. i was invited to tag along and jumped at the chance. so we headed to the town about 20 minutes' drive from our city.

one of my fist glimpses of the mountain which would be our destination (see the tower on top?)through the town on the way to the mountain

vineyards

mountain

mountain and vineyards

the town, mountain, and vineyards

on the way up the mountainview from the top!

the tower up close... and zoli, of course

view from the top (on the other side)

we walked down the mountain a bit, just because

after the mountain we headed back into tokaj to see a wine cellar. there was a tiny hitch as it was a sunday and a lot of stuff was closed. luckily we found a cellar that was open. it looked like a regular little house on the outside, but inside there was a whole world under there! the one we went in has a restaurant in there.

here is a private room for a wine party. ooooh.

here is the most delicious wine i've ever tasted

the walls of the cellar are lined with centuries-old mold. it makes for a unique (not in a good way) smell, but it's also the reason the wine is so great. so, mold on! they keep the wine in huge barrels and when you want some, a guy, much like the one in this picture, syphons some out with that glass thing he's holding, and pours it into your glass.

see all the barrels and the mold??

zoli and annamari even bought me a bottle of the good stuff. :D


there are two rivers that meet in tokaj, so we walked along them and enjoyed the spring. i'm not gonna lie, we should have eaten before we tasted the wines because we ladies were feeling a bit dizzy/happy on the walk.

here's the bridge we hung out on after we got some ice cream

hungary family 2

in december i went to a teacher party to celebrate christmas and the end of the first semester. there i met an english teacher from my school who is on maternity leave (which can last a few years) and has two small children. her name is annamari and i found her fun, charming, and un-hungarianly friendly. we talked for a while and she invited me to come to her house and play with her 3 year old daughter, whom she is teaching english. i agreed to do it sometime, why not.

a while later she called to set up a meeting with her daughter. since then i have gone to their house almost every weekend to play with her kids, eszter (esther) and dani (donny). eszter has just turned 4 and dani is a cute little 1 year old. when i visit eszter and i read books, play outside, dance, watch movies, play silly games, make up stories, and just have a ton of fun.

one thing i like about going to their house is that it's like being part of the family. in the house there is annamari, her husband zoli, her mom (whom i just call grandma, i think), eszter, and dani. we all gather for a homecooked hungarian lunch each weekend. i like that i get to eat delicious traditional food without cooking or paying for it. :D i also like listening to the hungarian being spoken but having annamari there to translate if i need it.

silly

getting ready to go to the playground

readin'

the little cuties (this was my desktop for a while)

dani likes to read upside-down, i guess

eszter just likes to BE upside-down (i was wearing her hat)

slidin'

we went to "salt lake" together and saw some fish

and walked around

brother and sister - in a box

there's dad! zoli is so good with them

aw, eszter was helping grandma make some food

grandma joins in the fun some times too
box dani

eszter dressed up for farsang at school, little butterfly

there they are! isn't this a fun hungarian family?