november 1

i tried to convince other native english speaking teachers to go to the cemeteries in their towns on november first because it's such a cool thing to see. i don't know if they went or not, but in this post i'll show what kind of sights you can take in on that special day.

november first (all saints day/day of the dead) is celebrated in hungary to honor and remember the dead. people go to the cemetery and decorate their loved ones' graves (which are above ground) with candles, flowers, and wreaths. they tend to the graves all year round, unlike we do at home, but on this particular day or weekend, the place is packed with more life than an ordinary cemetery.

last year's blog about this day

this year i went to the huge cemetery in my town with the lady who has been teaching me hungarian, edit and her son geri. we walked around looking at the multitude of tombs and gravestones. the feeling you get while there on this day isn't the normal creepy feeling that usually accompanies a trip to the local graveyard. there is a somber feeling, of course, but the many families walking around with you give you a sense of peace about death. well, at least for me.

there are different sections of the cemetery, some newer, some older, so the graves differ.
there are even places for burying atheists or non-religious people. there is a relatively new structure in my city's cemetery made for that reason. they mix water with the ashes of the deceased and bury them in a common grave, just writing the names of the dead on a large plaque.

at the common graves

with the year they died

i can't really show in pictures just how many graves and candles and flowers there are

florists must make half of the year's profit this time of year

it really is quite pretty

tent bottom new place

i went to a place called "tent bottom new place" (Sátoraljaújhely in hungarian) with tara yesterday. we heard that there was a chairlift or something that we had to go on. we walked around, found the tour inform place, got a map and some info and were on our way.

we took a bus to a roundabout that was said to be near the chairlift. we saw this sign and knew we were close.
we walked some more, tara said it was like a kilometer (she's canadian so that means something to her) and happened upon this sign. so we were headed in the right direction!

we arrived!

and we got on

and ascended into the fog (oh, it was the first foggy day in hungary this year. we were told we would see a great panorama...)

fall was happening all around us. unique as that is to me, i had to snap some shots of it.

pretty pretty

at the top we wanted to get out and look around but there was construction so the guy told us no. we turned around and headed down for the second half of our 38 minute journey.

on the way up and down we were taunted by the bobsled station and the track

we could see people having fun and going faster than we were

since "if you can't beat 'em you should join 'em" we marched our little selves right over there when we got off the (otherwise cool) chairlift. we jumped in a bobsled and were ticking up the track like that!

some guy told us how to use the hand breaks - in hungarian. we smiled and just passed him.

i may have screamed and laughed the whole way down.it was so fun! we could control how fast or slow we went, so it wasn't like anything we had done before in a theme park. there was a photo op at one point and tara reminded me to smile. here's the result:

ummmm, great picture! we really did have that much fun. don't believe me? click below and watch the video!

name day celebration

in hungary we celebrate name days, as you may recall. under communism there was a government approved list of names hungarians could name their children, so i think to make it seem like that wasn't as sucky as it actually was, hungarians (and other countries) celebrated the names by assigning one (or sometimes up to 5) name a day of the year. it's a bigger deal than birthdays since name days are public - even printed on calendars - while birthdays are usually just a family affair.

anyway, at school we celebrated all the name days from september and october with one common party. the staff members who had their name days during those months brought in goodies and drinks for the other teachers.

before we ate the food, we (and by 'we' i mean 'they') sang a little song which was new to me. apparently it's a catholic thing... well, that's my guess.

the guy who started the song is a priest. he began by listing the names of the honorees, then led us into the song.


then cheek kissing ensued, which i expected...


and then we dug in! there were pastries and fruit and homemade dishes and candy and cakes galore, not to mention tea, soda, sparkling water, fruit juices, and coffee.

gotta love teacher parties in the staff room :)

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: