Budapest with Gabi - part 1

one of my colleagues (i call her "spanish teacher gabi") invited me to go home with her for the ski break. *note: there were two days off - thursday and friday - for students to go skiing. schools have the option to give these days off or not, my school did. how freakin' sweet!* gabi was born in raised in budapest, so that's where we went. i was even allowed to bring xander!

the first night we got home, ate lunch (goulash!), and took a nap. then we got drinks with one of her friends and returned home for a relaxing evening - since this was vacation after all.

the next day we went to parliament. i didn't even attempt to take pictures of the outside because i'm not that great of a photographer and there are a million pics online. here are a few good ones:
then inside i took a few of my own. it really was very impressive in there. the building has been badly damaged twice in the past hundred years, but has been rebuilt by who i am convinced are the most resilient people on earth: the hungarians.
anyway, here are some shots of the inside:


right when you walk in there is a replica of the parliament which is 125x smaller than the real thing, to scale. even that is impressive... but also... it's made of matches. 100,000 or something.

here i am in the main entrance. red carpets, marble, real gold on the ceilings, frescos, scupltures, arches, chandeliers... these people ain't messin' around.
there are statues along the halls depicting regular hungarian jobs (baker, painter, teacher, doctor, etc) to remind the representatives, the prime minister, and all of the 2000 employees of parliament that they work for the people.
i really liked those statues. there are 88 of them, if i recall correctly. detailed, realistic, yet funny.

here i am in the room where all the history happens. (US equiv: congress)


the CROWN JEWELS! ooh, ahh! there isn't a king any more, but if there were, this would be his stuff. these pictures are zoomed because this area is roped off and in a big glass case.

we somehow missed the english tour (though we arrived early) so we had to take the hungarian one. i didn't mind, since i'm used to blocking out/snatching random words of hungarian from conversations all day, but poor gabi had to translate. AND this was like her 6th time on this tour.
THANK YOU, GABI!!! sorry i'm a pain and don't know hungarian - yet.

in other news:
last week one of my colleagues invited me to the theater/theatre. the show playing was a hungarian favorite called "Pál Utcai Fiúk" ("pal oots-eye fee-yook) which is something like "the paul street boys." i went to the theater and lo! about 1/4 of my school was there! there were a ton of students and teachers i recognized right away. actually, i saw one kid i thought was one of my students. i thought he was balazs. i stared at him a while, keeping with the hungarian norm, until i decided he wasn't my student. then i chuckled to myself as i thought about how funny it would have been if i had gone up to him and said, "oh balazs! good to see you!" i chuckled because i thought to myself that his name probably was balazs and he would be freaking out because i knew him and he didn't know me. anyway, my facination with him dissolved as i was busy looking around at other potential students. as my colleague greeted me and whisked me away, i heard that balazs-looking kid's friend come to him and say in hungarian, "hi balazs!" of course that was his name.

anyway, i loved the play, though i think i only understood about 10% of the actual hungarian. since it was acted out, i could grasp the concept pretty clearly. it was about two groups of boys who are fighting for an empty lot (for a playground, sort of) in 19th century budapest. it's based on fact, the streets and boys are/were real. in the play, however, allll of the boys were played by girls. and rather well, i'd say. there were a few scenes i didn't totally understand, so i asked aniko' at intermission. she gladly filled me in and equally as gladly laughed at what i thought i had understood. :::rolls eyes:::

in budapest, i told gabi that i had seen the play and liked it. we stopped in a bookstore and she bought me a copy of the story in ENGLISH!! woohoo!! when we got back to her parents' place (the place where she grew up) she even showed me her very own copy from when she was a kid. yay! i'm turning hungarian... sort of.

mine and hers

thank you for a great time in your city, gabi!

food

if you've never been to hungary, let me please tell you about hungarian food. it is rich and tasty, filling and satisfying. people eat here because they like food and they don't like to be hungry. they enjoy flavors and sustenace equally.

most common ingredients:
BREAD (every meal, every day, all the time - without butter, dipping oil, spreads, jellies)
onions (in, on, around, infusing everything)
cabbage (in soup, stuffed with stuff, in stews, sauces, with noodles)
potatoes (boiled)
tomatoes (stewed, cooked, stuffed - not often raw)
sour cream (in and on everything - pizza, hamburger, hot dogs)
liver (chicken, goose, and turkey)
paprika (sweet and spicy)
kohlrabi (in soups... almost every soup)
nokedli (a noodle-y dumpling thing, often covered with a thin stew)
poppy seeds (in bread, with noodles, in cake rolls)
corn (on pizza, in salads, in rice, in soup, in veggie mixes)
pork (way more common than in the US)
salami (more like pepperoni - put on sandwiches)
turkey (way more common than in the US)
chicken (less common thatn in the US)
cottage cheese (not the same as american cottage cheese, but thicker, cream-colored, not runny at all, kind of like cheesecake cheese - baked into pastries, covered in chocolate, a national fave)

there is soup served before every meal. i've never seen so many kinds of soups. fruit soups, including cherry soup and apple soup, are always surprising and delicious. i've had bread soup, bean soup, green bean soup, pea soup, chicken wing soup (like chicken noodle soup but with one chicken wing in it and instead of noodles, little tiny noodle squares), cabbage soup (like 5 varieties), frankfurter soup, and a bunch i can't really remember. there is a famous soup called fish soup (actually fish juice, but that just sounds nasty) that is a traditional spicy hungarian soup. here are some pictures of that. .... oh, and of course goulash of which there are a bazillion good recipes, everyone swearing theirs is the best. some with beef, chicken, beans, veggies.. anything, really.

if you meet someone for a meal, you'd better not have eaten for a few hours. the hungarians i've met and dined with really don't take no for an answer. you're there so you must be famished. even after you've eaten more than you should have, someone always whips out a new plate of desserts, fruits, or drinks. you're not going home hungry. in fact, you're not going home. stay till your stuffed ... and then some. they ask, you say no thanks. 10 minutes later, they ask, you say no thank you. 10 minutes later... etc. eventually the food WILL be gone because you WILL eat it. i've even told someone "no thanks, i'm full" and i'm not kidding, she said "so?"

drama

so i was asked to direct some students in the english language drama competition. the school paid the entrance fee and i was locked in. i couldn't decide on a play for a while, especially because it had to be an english or american 20th century play, adapted to be 25-45 minutes. i was procrastinating doing anything for the play because... well because it was stressing me out. then a life-saving friend - JOSH!!! -swooped in and saved the day. he not only suggested several good play, the places where i could purchase them and their production rights online, but he has also *more than helped* me edit, adapt, and abridge the play i chose.

at first i asked my students who was interested in participating. i was told to expect about 10. there were 12 or 13, so that was about right. then i was told to expect a few of the originally interested students to drop out because of boredom, business, or other. that happened too and then i was down to about 8. it's hard to do a play for 8 unless its a play written for 8. then there was the problem of gender... there was 1 boy in the lot of them! only one boy. luckily he's the drama type and he won't bail on us, he speaks english well, has good presence, and is really smart. so we had to choose a play with mostly female characters. josh took that in mind and we eventually decided on "After the Fall" by Arthur Miller. its a play about a guy and his relatioships with the women in his life (among other things). the theme and title both have to do with the fact that 'after the fall' (in genesis 3 when adam and eve behave utterly humanly and cause creation to become fallen) the main character is not able to consider himself innocent, but is endlessly aware of his human nature. anway, the play originally contains stuff about communism, the holocaust, and several characters who just didn't make the cut ... literally.

this week is our first week of rehearsals. the first one went well, though i didn't anticipate 3 girls wanting the female lead, so we kind of had to have auditions. i am really impressed with the students since they are doing a play in their second language, which is quite a feat. they read with good intonation, decent fluency, and a grasp of emotional acting. so, i think it will go well. the performance is on march 5 and we will have rehearsals twice a week until then.

i'll keep ya posted. :)

differences

liz came here and we had a lovely vacation together. we only took pictures with her camera, though, so a blog about that will have to wait. to hold you over i am posting about something i deal with daily. just thought you should know. :)

things are different here. more than just the language, you know. like...

celcius and fahrenheit: i never know the temperature and if i ask someone they say stuff like 4 degrees. sounds really cold.. and i can tell from being outside that it IS really cold, but exactly how cold.. well, i have to look on my computer to find that out.ű
when i want to cook something (who cooks any more, right? well i do here!) i have to go to the computer to convert the instructions to or from celcius so that i dont burn the flat down. so far, so good.

time: not only do we use the 24 hour clock here (and i am not a military person) - which causes me enough trouble because i always add or subtract 12 from the time and sometimes i do it... well, wrong... BUT hungarians tell time differently. if it is 5:15 we would say it is a quarter after 5. they say it is a quarter on the way to 6. we say half past 6 they say half on the way to 7. then things that end in 45 are the same. yeah!

the keyboard: if i didnát alter the waz i tzped here, this is what zou would be seeing. instead of dollar sign ,there is !, instead of ! there is ', instead of @ there is ", and all the numbers are moved over to the right one because yero is next to the 1. oh, and itás virtuallz impossible for me to get the @ without looking because i have to push ALT V to get that little guz. and there are some key we donát have, like ö ü ó ő ú é á ű.

the metric system: that means kilometers instead of miles. "how far do you live from school?" "oh about 50 kilometers"... that means nothing to me. "how tall are you?" "174 centimeters."... that means nothing to me. "how much cheese do you want?" "a decagram will be fine." ... a WHATgram?? "my new years resolution is to lose 10 kilos." ... uh, are you talking about drugs?

floors: it's not that big of a deal, really, but in europe they call the first floor the ground floor. then the (american) second floor is called the "first floor" because it is the first raised level. (the hungarian word for floor - when it isn't the ground floor - implies elevation, so i can understand them calling it that.) so if i lived in the flat i live in now but in america, i would live on the third floor. but here i live on the second floor. that's all just fine until you go somewhere and they say oh you're on the second floor, just take your suitcases on up. you might be thinking you only have to lug your junk up one flight, but in reality, it's more like 6. here's how i figure. in america there is usually ONE flight of stairs between floors. i have noticed here that there are two flights and a platform between two floors. so, flight-platform-flight, FIRSTFLOOR, flight-platform-flight, SECONDFLOOR, flight-platform-flight, THIRDFLOOR is the way to the second floor... good luck with all your stuff. there is no such thing as elevators in buildings with fewer than 5 floors - as far as i've seen.

clothes sizes: i have no idea what they're measuring here. but the clothes i've seen while shopping have numbers in the 30s and 40s. i just try things on until they feel right. this may take up to 10 tries. luckily, i have a lot of time.
i wear size 40 in shoes. 40 centimeters maybe? that's 4 decimeters, you know. oh you DON'T know? you must be american like me. but, it might not be what we're measuring. just a guess.

bags: BYOB... bring your own bags... to the grocery store. if you don't, you gotta buy one there

toilets: they have a shelf in them. there is not a lovely pool of water, but a shelf to display to all the world your most recent work. to flush, do not look for a handle. instead scan the toilet room (which is separate from showers and sinks in most cases) for a chain to pull from the overhead tank, or perhaps a button on the top of the waist-high tank, or even a lever to press into the tank. really, your guess is as good as mine.


i don't think these differences are bad. just different. i think the US should push metric and celcius again. we are one of like 3 countries who aren't metric and who aren't celcius-thinkers. in america it doesn't matter, but we are at a disadvantage in the rest of the world. unless we memorize some silly 5/9 + 32 formula or remember some conversions. or carry around calculators and sliderules and notecards and abacuses and and and...

end of school

if you'll recall, i was given this poinsettia for my brithday from lovely aniko' (student turned friend). well i put it outside of my door to festive-ize the hall along with the wreaths on all the doors. then one day i stepped out to buy some potatoes. i saw the plant when i left. i walked to the store and back, was gone about 20 minutes, not longer. and what did i find upon my return? NOTHING, that's what. big, fat NOTHING.
so i was sad/mad/amused that someone would steal my plant (in hungarian it's called a santa claus plant, come on, how can you steal that?!?!). i wrote this little note which says "thanks!" like thanks a lot, jerky thieving hungarian who stole my plant. i left it outside my door in the plant's rightful place.
here is my sad little door with its lone wreath and no poinsettia. see the card?
i'd love to tell you that the thief saw my sad card and returned the plant. but no. no, no, no. :(

anyway, i know you've all been wondering, so here is what xander is doing these days...
the last week of school was stressful but good. on monday i gave a drama workshop for teachers in my city. there were several english teachers from my school and some from a few other schools. altogether there were like 16 english teachers. the workshop was called "using drama in the ESL classroom" so i presented ideas, activities, and reasons to use drama with english learners. overall it went pretty well. i wasn't as nervous as i thought i would be, probably because of all the familiar faces. the activities we did were so fun and funny. that's really why i liked doing it: free entertainment... also, it was all in english. muahahaha! afterwards, a british native english speaker, karen, invited me to come to a gathering she and some other english speakers have every tuesday. i am glad for the invite, since i love talking... in english... and meeting new people. i couldn't go this week, but i will definitely go sometime. it's just coffee, tea, and visiting. sounds perfect.

after the workshop i went to a christmas party for the teachers at my school. it was held in one of the huge classrooms. there were a million different kinds of sweets, foods, and drinks. seriously, millions. they were all set up on the perimeter of the room and there were two circles of chairs going around the room, too. not what i expected for a party. in the middle of the chairs there was a long table with weird things on it. as people got there, 6pm on the dot, some students came in and presented a little christmas performance or something. they were 9 or 10 standing in front of all the teachers. they were supposed to be people on a bus or metro. they just stood perfectly still for a really long time while some voices from a cd player expressed what each person was thinking. if i could have understood it i'm sure i would have been much more interested. as it was, though, i was mostly impressed with how perfectly still they all stood for about 10 minutes. they were my students, by the way, 12d.
after the students left, some teacher passed out lyric sheets and we all sang a few christmas carols (in hungarian, of course). aniko' was sitting next to me and translated some for me because that's my favorite. some teacher read a story and cried during the reading. i asked aniko' why and it turns out she's just sensitive and the story wasn't sad or anything. i can sing a christmas song in hungarian now. only one, though, 'cause some of them were pretty advanced for little ol' me. the lyrics seemed very holy.
thennnn the party started. i brought a cd of christmas songs (per some colleagues' requests) and it was played while people ate, mingled, and gathered at that long table in the middle of all the chairs. the weird stuff on there was actually craft stuff. we could make some cards, gift labels, and/or ornamental things. it was fun; i made some card thingies. i am bad at crafts.

in my classes i played christmas music, gave out some lyrics, and mostly gave people a free day. see? these are 9a girls. they really like me... and it's good, 'cause i really like them, too.

it was cold and rainy everyday. here are some umbrellas in the teachers' room.

friday after school got out (at 11am by the way!) there was an assembly in the gym which included some ninth graders performing "the happy prince" by oscar wilde. it was nice. there was dancing, acting, singing, and reciting of poems. i really wished i knew hungarian.
here are some assembled kids....
girls reciting poems...that gold guy is the prince and at his feet is a swallow....
friday night the language teachers met at a mexican restaurant to celebrate the end of the year. i wasn't too into taking pictures as i wasn't feeling too hot, but here are a few.
this is the guy who picked me up from budapest back in august. he's the first zrinyi representative i ever met. laci (lotzee) took way more pictures than i did. maybe i'll get to see them some time. (hint hint, laci!)
this was my delicious "tex mex salad" with cucumbers, corn, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, bacon, and chicken. i'm describing it in such detail because i will forever remember its goodness.
here is spanish teacher gabi (who also speaks english) and is very fun.
this is judit, my hungarian tutor. she's not usually so blurry. ;)
so i ordered a drink ('safe sex on the beach') and i specified that i wanted a cherry. the guy thought i meant i wanted a bottle of cherry drink so that's what that other drink is. ugh.
this is a teacher who is on maternity leave from zrinyi (my school). she's been gone for a few years and isn't sure when she's coming back. i hope it's soon 'cause i really liked her. she invited me to come to her house to play with her little kids in english. woohoo!

here are some kids singing at the assembly. i don't know those kids but if i'm here next year i'll have them then.


tomorrow i'm going to budapest and on wednesday i'm going to collect LIZ from the airport!