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Tomorrow
Tomorrow it starts! 7:10 am tomorrow morning my first class begins.
This has been a week of exploration and meetings. I spent the first couple days wandering around the city with other ESIers. Wednesday was the opening ceremony for Trefort. All schools around here do it I guess. All the students dress up in their finest duds and sing the national anthem (called the "Hymnus") and the Principal gives an inspirational message. It's kinda neat. Then we met a lot of the other teachers. Today we evaluated the 9-Ds. These are the freshmen that are going into the bilingual program. The Hungarian teachers gave them a written test and we helped with the oral evaluation. We needed to split the kids into beginner, intermediate, and advanced groups. There are 34 kids. We will all spend time teaching all the kids, but we are trying to let the kids have one primary American English teacher and one Hungarian English teacher. I've got the 10 beginners with Gyongyi (one of the Hungarian English teachers). Dave has 12 intermediates, and Parker has 12 advanced kids. So, I have the beginners 8 hours, Gyongyi has them for 8 hours. Then we swap, so Dave has them for 2 hours and Parker has them for 2 hours. I have the beginners and the advanced for 2 hours a week too. If that doesn't make sense, you can just look at the schedule instead.
OK, I need to go finalize some lesson plans and get to bed. Pray for me please.
Posted by neal on Aug 30, 2001 at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)
It's better...
In the daylight my impression of Budapest got a whole lot better. Paul got up early and took a train to Szeged to visit another ESIer who was temporarily out there alone. So I got my Budapest Pass (which allows unlimited use of all trams, busses, and metros in the city), and John (a former ESIer) and I wandered around the city for a couple hours. We ran across the Budapest Parade. The city shut down several main streets and thousands of young folks were out having a great time. I was good to get an informal introduction to what the kids I'll be teaching will be like. Budapest is really a beautiful city. We met a bunch of other folks for dinner and went to Margit-sziget (Margret Island) for the evening.
Posted by neal on Aug 26, 2001 at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)
We made it!
We made it! We left our rooms in LA at 3:30 Thursday morning, and got to our flat around 9:00 Friday night. Long trip. But everyone got here and all the luggage too! The only loss was our minds. We made a funny scene as we waited in Helsinki for our last plane to Budapest. We were 14 groggy, frumpy people stumbling around as we tried to wrap our frazzled heads around the enormity of what was about to happen to our lives.
The flat that we're not going to live in very long is great. It's fairly large, in great shape, and except for a newly discovered leak in the shower, everything works.
I still feel like I haven't really realized what I'm doing yet. I think it began to hit me as I rode the loud, smelly bus from the airport through the dirty streets and graffiti covered buildings to our flat. My surroundings felt very foreign. Being somewhere foreign feels very different if you know you're only visiting as opposed to knowing it's become your home. I could feel the tingling of fear, homesickness, and loneliness but luckily, my groggy travel-filled head couldn't really process anything. I'm sure it'll hit me soon. I'll let you know about it when it does.
Posted by neal on Aug 25, 2001 at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
I like camping
For those of you that know me, you know that I like camping. Well, I don't just like camping, I love camping. I need camping. I find that I get irritable and depressed if I don't go camping at least every couple months. I know this. But I've been trying to figure out exactly why I like it and need it so much. I think I'm beginning to understand. I'm back at the same place I was sitting last night when I wrote the last entry in here. As I sit here I can see the world as it was made. Here from my little rock/seat I can see creation unmarred by man. I like living in the city. I like having people around. I like the hustle and bustle of every-day life. I like science and invention. I like progress (I am, after all using a nifty little laptop to write this). But none of those things can affect me like this. None of those things can fill me with the peace, contentment, and joy that I get simply by sitting on a rock looking at nature. Here's why (I think). This is as close as I can get to seeing God. Here I can see his creation just as he made it; un-straightened, un-paved, and un-corrupted by man. If ever I question the power, reality, or closeness of God, I only need to go into the woods and I can find him. I don't always go into the woods searching for God, but I always find him there.
8/23/02
Often I think my life is pretty surreal. Right now I'm sitting on a bench beside a crystal clear, mirror-flat lake in northern Minnesota. The far side of the lake is solid fortress of pine trees broken only by occasional outcroppings of rock. In the distance a loon is calling, and the moon is rising behind me. It's beautiful beyond description. The peace of it is broken only by ...a square dance! Really. 200 yards down the lake a big party is holding a square dance. It's a really funny soundtrack to the scene in front of me. But it's kind of par for the course this week. This morning, I was canoeing in the Boundary Waters, 2 days ago I was backpacking with my folks along the north shore of Lake Superior, 3 days before that, I was in Florida celebrating my Grandma's 84th birthday. 3 days before that I was with my brother and sister-in-law while they found out their their new baby will be a girl. 4 days before that I was in Grand Rapids at a friend's wedding. To add to it, I'm leaving for Hungary in 2 days. I can't decide if I'm blessed or insane. Maybe both.
I am looking forward to getting back to Hungary. I feel like I was just getting started last year. I spent a year learning how to teach, getting to know students, orienting myself in Hungarian culture, and I guess ...preparing for this year. So I really looking forward to getting there in a few days.
Posted by neal on Aug 24, 2001 at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)
Look Ma, I'm flying!
I'm actually on the plane as I write this entry. We just flew by Greenland and Iceland and we're about to cross Norway. Several other times I thought I was nervous, but compared to how I feel now I must not have been very nervous. Talking about leaving and thinking about leaving pale compared to actually leaving.
We said good bye to the other ESI teams Wednesday night at a commencement ceremony. It was difficult to leave them. We packed after the ceremony and gathered to leave at 3:30am Thursday morning(the 23rd). We got the airport and got off with very few hassles. I had to redistribute the weight in my bags since one of them was over 70lbs. I ended up bringing 2 bags of normal stuff and an extra box of camping supplies. I can't think of spending a year without camping, so I paid the additional fee to take my tent, sleeping bag, and everything else. We'll have an 8 hour layover in Helsinki before taking the final leg of our flight to Budapest tonight. So after 7 months of preparing, I'm actually going to be at my new home today. An added bit of excitement though; Wednesday at the commencement, We all received TEFL certificates and stuck to mine was a simple note saying "Neal and Paul, You won't have a flat in 1 month." Apparently, the landlord decided to cancel the lease. So I know we have a place to live for at least a week and after that I don't know what will happen. This makes things a bit more exciting.
School starts Monday morning at the school I'll be teaching at. I don't think I've told you about that school, so here's a bit more info. The school's name is Trefort Agoston Kéttannyelvü Szakközépiskola. It is a mid-level high school. It is a technical school specializing in electronics and physics. I will actually be teaching computer science 8hrs a week and English 12hrs a week. Schools in Hungary are set up different than American schools. At American schools, all the students have individual schedules, so it's possible for every student to have a different schedule of classes. Hungarian schools do it a bit differently. At Trefort for example, there are about 500 students. Each grade is divided into 4 groups; A, B, C, & D. These groups, then take all their classes together for their whole high school career. This can be good and bad. It's good because the kids have more incentive to pass so they can stay with their group. It's bad because the groups are created with little or no regard to student aptitude, so advanced students are often mixed with beginning students. Additionally, Trefort has a bilingual program. Every year the incoming freshman are given a test and the top students are all placed in the "D" section. This section then learns only English for their freshman year. They may not know any English at the beginning of that year, but when they finish they're all fluent. Then they take all their classes in English. It takes 5 years to finish the bilingual program.
I will be teaching exclusively in the bilingual program. I will be teaching 12hrs of English to a whole range of students, and also 8 hours of computer science a week.
Posted by neal on Aug 24, 2001 at 06:02 AM | Comments (0)
Hey, I'm busy.
My good intentions for updating this site every few days seem to have fallen apart quickly, but the lack of updates does not indicate a lack of things to write about. Training has been crazy. Though we have only been here 4 weeks, it feels like much longer. Spending all day - every day with the same people creates bonds quickly. It's hard to believe that I didn't know any of these people last month. We have all become friends and having everyone around makes it much easier to step off into the unknown.
Posted by neal on Aug 20, 2001 at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)