Category: Europe

I was fortunate enough to be able to hang out with some old friends from my Educational Services International (ESI) days this past weekend in Seattle. I took the train down from Vancouver on Friday night and stayed with Abi, who is now a 3rd grade teacher in Bellevue. The next morning, we had blueberry pancakes and talked about old and new times, and in the afternoon met up with Vangie (who now attends Mars Hill Graduate School in downtown Seattle), Tracy (who was visiting from Minnesota), Annika (who works as a clerk for the Washington Supreme Court) and her husband Jerry (who is also a lawyer in Olympia).

We spent the afternoon hanging around downtown, visiting Pike Place, the Olde Curiosity Shop and Pioneer Square – what tourists like to do in Seattle. Then we got coffee at Tully’s and reminisced. It had been a while since I had talked about living and teaching in Budapest. It seems so long ago, even though it was what I was doing right before coming to Regent. But it is kind of like a different world.

Tracy and Abi, the teachers among us, compared teaching in the States to teaching in Hungary, and there really is no comparison. In the states, you don’t have:

– Parent-teacher conferences where the students translate for you (“Your son needs to turn in his homework.” “I am an excellent student!”);

– Random half-days and holidays without warning (I was teaching during first period one day, and the bell rang at 8:25 instead of 8:50. Who knew?);

– Liquor stores right outside the front door of the school (as they did at Trefort);

– Times where you can’t find the key to the classroom because the previous teacher didn’t turn it in at the front desk, and then you are required to have class out in the hall with the assistant principal walking by and giving you dirty looks (as happened to me once);

– Teacher meetings which are all in Hungarian, where your Hungarian colleagues are supposed to translate for you but instead periodically say, “What we’re talking about is not that important.” (On the positive side, those meetings were a great time to get caught up on grading);

– Teacher trips where you all got onto a bus, drank, sang songs and headed to Slovakia (not that I’m complaining; it was really quite fun and a good way for teachers to bond with one another. This is actually one thing that schools could learn from in the United States);

– Parties in the large teacher’s office upstairs that sometimes you (in the small teachers’ office downstairs, with all the English teachers) were told about, and sometimes you weren’t;

– Times where you are feeling a bit sick, and so the principal has you drink palinka (traditional brandy) in his office at school so you will feel better (this happened to Abi);

– An interview with the local newspaper merely because you are a foreigner living in the town (as happened to Amy and Laura, two teachers in Dunaujvaros);

– Meetings with your Hungarian colleagues to determine the grades for your students in which, even though a particular student rarely shows up for class and fails everything when he/she does, he/she gets a passing mark because he/she is “very nice and tries sometimes.” (It is actually quite hard to fail a student in Hungary, and involves a lot of paperwork, so it is something to be avoided at all costs, apparently.”

Well, I’ve got to get this post wrapped up. I’ll just say that it’s good to reminisce with old friends. Here are a couple of pictures from Hungary:

This is Abi, me, Laura, Amy and Annika at Buda Castle in August 2003.

This is a group of American and Hungarian English teachers outside my old school. Front Row: Kriszta, Tracy, Andi, Annika. Back row: me, Balazs, Neal

Building one of Trefort Agoston bilingual secondary school, where I taught for a year.

Back on the continent

I’ve now returned to the good ol’ U.S. of A., after my trip to Budapest, Bratislava and Prague. Last Wednesday I took a train north from Budapest and stopped in Bratislava to visit Laura. The next day, I continued on to Prague to spend time with Aaron and Phoebe and their son Nehemiah, the last of whom I had not met since he was inside Phoebe. He’s a great kid, and very energetic. He reminds me a great deal of my nephew, who is also two, blond, and loves Thomas the Tank Engine.

We played ball a lot. He would bounce a rubber ball to me, and then I would bounce a ball back at him, but he would not catch it. He didn’t even attempt to catch it. Often, he watched it bounce off of him. I suppose two-year-olds haven’t developed their reflexes enough to catch things.

He’s also a very fortunate kid, to have such great people as Aaron and Phoebe as his parents. He doesn’t know it yet, but I hope he does someday.

Saturday, we all went to a concert performed by a choir from Philadelphia Biblical University. It was very good, and one song even had hand motions to it, which Nehemiah thoroughly enjoyed. It was just like the Happy Hands Club, which I’m told is his favorite part of Napoleon Dynamite. After the concert, we talked to the choir and the Czechs who attended the concert while Nehemiah flirted with the girls. I even talked a little bit with a guy about dispensationalism, which is a particular kind of theology taught at PBU. It was an interesting and coincidental conversation, because Aaron and I had talked about it just the night before. I could write a blog about 10 pages long about the great conversations I had with Aaron on this trip, but I won’t. I’ll just say that I miss him a lot already.

When I got back to Budapest, I stopped by school on Monday to say goodbye to some students and colleagues. Then Brady wanted to go see the movie “Silent Hill,” and Sam and I went with him. I hadn’t seen a horror movie for a long time. And I was reminded why I don’t generally like them. I’m not against a little psychological thrilling, a little suspense, but gore is not my thing. If I wanted to see people’s fluids, I’d work at a blood bank. And if I wanted to see people’s skin burned off, I would be a sick, sick person.

Big Boody, Part Two

For the past week or so, I have been hanging around Budapest, having a grand old time. Since I have been having such a grand old time, I don’t have much time to write a deep, reflective update about what I think about what I’ve been doing. I only have the time right now to make a record of some highlights.

As mentioned in the previous update, on Friday I hung out with some students. In the afternoon, we all went to Sportliget to play some ultimate frisbee. I was awesome. Among the people that I play with every week when I am at Regent, I am not spectacular. I’m average, as ultimate frisbee players go, and a little bit taller than most. But compared to Hungarian students who never play, I am a superstar. So, I enjoyed being a superstar, but I think that everyone else enjoyed playing as well. Which is good, because it’s only fun being a superstar when other people enjoy playing with you.

Friday night, Neal and Danielle and hung out with Chris and Marton, two students who graduated two years ago. We went to a club called Zöldpardon, which is outdoors and on the banks of the Danube, on the Buda side of the Petöfi bridge (I give you directions in case you are ever in Budapest and would like to go there). There was a Hungarian band playing, and they were quite good, though I’d never heard of them before (and even now cannot remember their name). But we sat and talked for hours, and it was great to have a couple of beers with the guys and see how they are doing. I never taught them, but I got to know them a little at the end of my year here.

Saturday, Neal and Danielle had an engagement party for their Budapest friends in a park near Danielle’s flat. Great weather. Fun times. Threw the football. One of Danielle’s Hungarian colleagues brought a Diet Coke bottle filled with moonshine that could have stripped paint off a wall. Saturday night, Neal and Sam (who teaches at Trefort, our old school, until the end of this year) and I went to our friend Andi and her husband Balazs’s new flat. They are wonderful people. Andi teaches English at Trefort. Balazs is (I think) a computer programmer.

Sunday we went to church, and then helped Neal and Danielle make wedding invitations. Sunday night, I can’t remember what happened, but I’m pretty sure it involved sitting around Sam’s flat and watching episodes of Lost on DVD.

Monday, I went to the dentist for a cleaning, because it’s cheap here. About 40 dollars. Not too shabby. Then, a bunch of the boys went to Rudas Baths, a.k.a. the Manly Baths. They are for men only (but don’t fret, ladies. They are open for women on Tuesday morning and Thursday night), and you bathe clad only in a little white apron. There are pools of water at various temperatures, gathered from the hot springs under Budapest. Since I was here two years ago, they renovated them, and they are quite nice now. Not nearly as, um, ghetto as before. I did not get a massage, because the only time I got a massage before, it was not relaxing at all.

Monday night, I went down to Csepel, because Skye and Janelle had a barbecue. Skye and Janelle are an ESI institution. They have been here for 8 years, and they are returning to America after this year. They had a barbecue to celebrate, and I was there. After the barbecue, Matt Ackerman, who also teaches at their school (and who will be there next year as well), convinced me that I had to see a movie called Victory. And, after seeing it, I have to admit that I did have to see it. It stars Michael Caine, Pele, and Sylvester Stallone in his first post-Rocky role. Yes, I said Pele. The premise is, they are all prisoners of war in a Nazi camp during World War II, and they challenge the German national team to a soccer game. I am not making this up. You must see it. And it was filmed in Budapest.

Tuesday, a bunch of us went to Tortuga, a restaurant whose gimmick is that there are turtles swimming in water underneath the tables. There are also weapons on the walls, and the waiters are dressed like pirates. I don’t mean they have eyepatches and stuffed parrots on their shoulders. They’re tasteful pirates. Anyway, the turtles were pretty entertaining. One of them had gotten out of the water and was under Matt’s chair (we had one of the tables that did not have water under it). The turtle apparently wanted to get back into the water, but the steps back up to it were too high to climb. Matt, helpful soul that he is, decided to help the turtle by picking it up and putting it back into the water. It bit him, and he dropped it upside down. Then he pushed it into the water.

The food was great. I ate turkey with plums and a sort of pear-ginger sauce. It was excellent. Sam had spicy chocolate soup with mushrooms in it. Matt had a parfait that didn’t look like a parfait. But still, who doesn’t like parfaits?

Later, after we had gotten our food, the restaurant began to blare loud techno music at us, and the lights went down. A man came in, dressed in a hooded black robe and a gold mask, and carrying a cake with a lit firework on it. We watched him walk over to a table next to ours (some of us with our hands over our ears, the music was so loud) and place the cake on the table. Then he struck a pose, clapped in time with the music for a few moments, and left. The lights went back up. That had to be the most entertaining restaurant birthday celebration I’ve ever witnessed. Earlier in the evening Sam had said that he wanted to go there again in June for his birthday. He took it back.

hey folks, i’m in budapest – or as it is lovingly called, “the big boody.”  i got here on monday, now it is friday, and i’ve been having a grand ol’ time.  many of my friends who are still here are occupied during the day, as they are students or teachers, so i have spent a couple of days wandering around the city and taking pics with my new camera.  they’ll be uploaded when i get back to my computer.

ahh, budapest!  it’s like i never left you!  nearly everything is the same as when i left, including the slightly surreal nature of everyday life.  on my first day back, i nearly witnessed a purse-snatching (i was getting onto the metro at the same time as this lady, and a guy ran up behind her and tried to grab her bag.  he didn’t get it, though, and ran off).  on tuesday, i was going to get drinks at a restaurant with amy and matt, but when the waiter discovered we weren’t going to get food, he kicked us out.  on wednesday, i was eating outdoors at a restaurant on andrassy ut with amy and a friend of hers, and we witnessed a) a guy step in dog poop, b) another guy slip on the same dog poop and drop the eggs he was carrying, and c) a blind man run into a bush.

so nearly everything is the same, though there are some changes afoot.  for example, i hear that there are plans to renovate the sketchiest metro station known to man, kobanya-kispest, and turn it into a mall.  weird.  i hope they still allow people to sell things out of cardboard boxes when they do.

tonight i’ll be hanging out with my old roommate neal (who doesn’t live here anymore either, but who is also visiting) and a few students who graduated two years ago.  more updates to follow.