My Two Forint: Teaching Abroad in Hungary

On a snowy evening in January, about a year and a half ago, I was part of an engaging conversation at a table in Bagolyvar (Owl castle) restaurant near Heroes' Square in Budapest.

I had been on Hungarian soil since that July and I was eager to help welcome a fresh batch of American teachers-to-be that night at dinner. They were to be dispersed throughout Hungary the next day into towns famous for wines, villages with no more than a few churches, and cities with zoos, clubs, thermal baths, and Tescos just like my group was half a year ago.

As they ordered their first csirke paprikás, took their first sip of bubbly water, tried out their first “köszönöm” sometimes with a “szépen,” and as they asked questions: “how many students do you have in your classes?” “how do I get medicine?” “do we get a discount train card?” , I found myself consistently responding to their questions with, “It really depends on your situation. All schools are different.”

A girl to my left asked me, “do the students call you by your first name or your last?” And the otherwise quiet guy across the table, either out of nerves, humor or impatience suddenly chimed in with, “you don’t have a definite answer cause it all depends on the situation, right?” All we veterans could do was raise our eyebrows, shrug our shoulders and nod.

Before I started teaching in Hungary, I was nervously tossing the idea around in my head just wanting to “get there already” to see for my own eyes what it was like. I was sick of reading other people’s accounts of Budapest and Hungary on the Internet.

Now, after two years, my time here is over. I wouldn’t be doing my part if I didn’t share my thoughts and experiences from these indescribable years. And even though “all situations are different,” I carry with me the thoughts and experiences of a dozen or so of my American teaching colleagues walking in the same shoes on different territory in the same country.

During my first month here, I signed up for a Cambridge CELTA course at International House in Budapest and from there I learned of The Central European Teaching Program (CETP). As a part of this program, I taught in three different primary (elementary) schools and one secondary (high) school. Now, I will attempt to share with you in a somewhat annotated, organized, and comparative way, what it was like to teach conversational English in a fairly small Hungarian town and in the capital city of Budapest.

Currently, I'm back to square one, searching for a teaching job in a different country and I appreciate all the articles and blogs people have written in order to record the real side of living abroad. Here is my attempt at a thank you...


Why Hungary?

TRAVEL
First, I was attracted to Hungary because of its centralized location. So many countries and big cities are easily accessible from Budapest by train and bus, making traveling on holidays and weekends so mouthwateringly possible. I was able to visit Slovakia, Romania, the Czech Republic, Austria, Serbia, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, Italy, and even Ireland, not to mention several Hungarian cities and towns, while being here.

FOOD, DRINK, AND PEOPLE
Second, Hungarians are very welcoming as friends and are adamant on feeding you until you can no longer stand another bite. The food is rich and pork centered. Sour cream and obviously, paprika are very prevalent. Three interesting comments I’ve heard from Hungarians concerning food were:

“We don’t want other people to think that there isn’t enough food here,” from a Hungarian woman in Transylvania who brought an endless supply of dinner to the table.

“We have a saying here that means, ‘Have some more food, because skinny people are mean,’” from an old teaching colleague’s mother in northeastern Hungary.

“You don’t want to be too thin, because it’s a sign that you do not have enough food to eat and you’re very poor,” from a student’s mother in northeastern Hungary.

There are many wine regions here and among the famous are Eger (red wine) and Tokaj (white wine). As a foreigner at a Hungarian dinner you can’t escape being offered (possibly forced) to taste some plum or peach pálinka (fruit brandy) or Unicum (dark red liquor that is supposed to aid in digestion, but will more likely make you throw up if you don’t have an iron stomach).


LANDSCAPE AND THE CITY
Hungary is beautiful. Although it lacks any seaside coasts and snow capped mountains, those are just train rides away in bordering countries (once Pre-Trianon Big Hungary). There are several forests, rolling hills, places to hike, rivers, and Central Europe’s biggest lake, Balaton. Budapest is still my all time favorite city even though a lot of Hungarians I know complain about it for being too dirty, polluted, and traffic congested. Just like most cities, I think. The transportation is very efficient and easy to follow. I never needed a car to get anywhere and I barely missed my car back in the U.S. There is so much to do and to see in Budapest (museums, pools, concerts, bike trails, squares, islands in the Danube, restaurants, bars, bookshops, malls, movie theatres) that I was still uncovering new places and new events weeks before I left.

HISTORY
Finally part of the European Union in May of 2004, Hungary has endured a lot in terms of conquer and socialism. Ottoman, German, and Soviet occupation has left its mark on Hungary. The minaret in Eger is a mark from once ruling Turks while the Shoes on the Danube Bank and the Silver Weeping Willow stand to remind the present of a very dark Holocaust past.

Statue Park, just outside of the city preserves many of Hungary’s old Soviet statues. Being from the U.S., I became fascinated with Hungary’s lengthy tales of history, from the time when the first Magyar tribes settled in present day Hungary to the fall of the Iron curtain.



Living and Teaching in the Country (Szerencs)

This is my experience. One of my program directors placed me in the charming, picturesque town of Szerencs, population 10,000. Not quite a village, and definitely not a city. As far as I knew, I was the only native speaker living there at the time.

To be honest, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be put in a small town as a young woman in her 20’s. I wanted a bit more of a safety blanket and a bit more to do, but upon arrival I soon regretted any feelings of doubt I'd carried with me. After my initial nerves subsided and after I got used to the roosters crowing at 5:30am, the neighbor woman herding her geese into the road, and old women riding their bicycles to the Spar grocery store, I began to soak in the magic of what came to be my own Hungarian town. No other American was there to share it with me. Like most of my teaching compatriots in small towns, I became a celebrity. This turned out to be good and bad.

TEACHING
In Szerencs, I taught at two primary schools and the secondary school. I know it seems like a lot of schools for what I’ve described as a small town, but the idea was to spread me out, even if it was thinly.

My work week consisted of 19 hours and I had Tuesdays off! I had about four to five lessons a day and I was usually finished at 1:00pm if all my lessons were scheduled in a row. A typical Monday consisted of teaching classes 6C, 5B, 1B, 8B, 3B. The letters represent the level (strong or weak) of the students in the class, but they mean different things in different schools. Every other day was relatively the same, except Tuesdays of course.

It's important to note that Hungarian schools place a group students together in one class (i.e. 7A) and they remain together not only for most of their lessons, but until they graduate from that particular school. They get to know each other well, but sometimes this can cause trouble as certain students just don't mix.

Along with my student lessons, I had one lesson every other Wednesday afternoon with Hungarian English teachers. This was mostly just two very friendly and chatty older English teachers who wanted very much to improve their English. We talked conversationally without much structure for the allotted hour.

As for material and curriculum, there wasn't much. It's interesting how a lack of options makes for easier planning. Colleagues gave me books, but they told me that I shouldn't teach from them, because it was their material. I should look at it and try to do a speaking activity to practice the grammar taught by them. Mostly, I used the Internet and ideas from my CELTA course for my lesson plans. I had plenty of time to plan and I was able to print off worksheets and make copies at the school. The most difficult part of planning was for the six and seven year old children. It wasn't possible to write anything on the board, because they couldn't yet understand, so I was forced to lose my inhibitions and draw, mime, sing, and act. Luckily they were young and innocent enought to enjoy it.

I was supposed to give the students grades or marks, but I must admit that with over 200 students, it's really hard to keep track of all that paper and the Hungarian system of grading. This was one of my biggest problems: knowing how to evaluate the students. I didn't know if enough of them understood that they'd be tested to give them a test. Because I only had them once a week, it was very hard for them to remember a quiz or test. They very rarely did homework for my lesson, well, because I was the American teacher. In order to be taken seriously as an ESL teacher abroad in a primary or secondary school, it is absolutely essential to crack the whip like it's never been cracked: be organized, consistent, discipline, and don't be afraid to shout!

This is nowhere near easy, seeing as you're teaching them in a language some of them barely understand. If you teach in a bilingual school, your job will be much easier. One of my primary schools had bilingual classes, meaning these children learn history, science, and computer technology in English. However, the other primary school did not have bilingual classes. At this school, the 13 year olds were at the same level as the 9-10 year olds at the biligual school. Planning lessons for classes at the same age level cannot necessarily be the same until their level is determined and sometimes this takes several weeks. The first month is the hardest...and probably the last seeing as no one wants to be in school.

There were a few times when I was filmed by the news and had teachers from neighboring towns observe a lesson. This was incredibly nervewracking at first, especially because the students seemed to be frozen in fear, but they went well overall.


STUDENTS
The students in Szerencs were a dream come true after having taught in a U.S. public high school for a year in Belleville, Illinois. Most, but not all students here had a general respect for their elders. Seeing as family is important and the foundation of life here, the students were raised to be a significant part of family and the community. They greeted me with the Hungarian, "csókolom," a respectful greeting that children say to adults and men to women, (correct me if I'm wrong) roughly translating to, "I kiss your hand."

Small town life meant that I ran into my students frequently. When I did, they were excited to see me and pointed out to their mother, father, sibling, aunt, whoever that I was the "amerikai tanarnö." One of 5th grade girls liked to accompany me on my walk to the grocery store on her bike and although we had very simple conversations (i.e. You like bikes?) it was nice to have company. Another older 12th grade girl invited to me to her house for dinner with the family, to play tennis, and to go to the bigger town over to go shopping. A group of my 10th grade girls took me to "Wedding Crashers" in English at a cinema in Miskolc over the weekend. A 12th grade boy would give me a ride home from school in his car when the snow was nearly impossible to tread through during the winter. However, because everyone knew who I was, I couldn't walk down the street without someone pointing at me or staring. This became irritating on bad days and sometimes I just wanted to be anonymous.

There were several occasions for celebration in the schools throughout the year. For example, International Women's Day, Teacher Appreciation Day, October 23rd (Hungary's uprising against Soviet occupation), March 15th...and several school holidays. On these days, the teacher rooms turned into a botanical delight. On Women's Day, one boy student in every class came up to me to give me a flower and two kisses on the cheek. This, I must admit, was a little awkward at first, but as I watched other students kissing my colleagues' cheeks, it just seemed natural, so I went with it.

One class I will never forget is 10H from Bocskai Istvan Gimnazium. They were my favorite class and they threw me a party when I told them I wasn't coming back next year. They had baked me goodies, brought me a personalized bottle of Tokaj wine, tested the Hungarian I learned with a game, and made me sing karoake in Hungarian with them. They made a speech telling me that I'd taught them so much and that I'd be very missed. In turn, I told them the same. I'd learned so much from them, that school, Szerencs, Hungary.

I took several class trips with the schools in Szerencs. This was a great, cheap way for me to see other places in Hungary while being with all Hungarians. Coming home at night in the silence of my bedroom in Szerencs, Magyar phrases that I'd heard that day would sing throughout my head. However, I did learn to hang out by myself on these trips, because the English teachers who had invited me were so busy controlling the kids to chat with me. Some brave, chatty students would come up to me and ask a question like, "you see moviestars in America?" "What is your favorite band?" "You like Hungary?" But most students were too shy to start a conversation one on one.

When it was time for me to leave Szerencs, it was the students I was going to miss the most. I felt as if I were really living and learning when I stood in those classrooms to teach.

FREE TIME
One of the most popular questions that my students asked me was "what do you do in Szerencs after school?"

Honestly, I was exhausted during most of the first semester when I came home from teaching. Having to process a foreign language that was spoken ubiquitously at work, handle students, and walk to and from work left me on the couch in my Szerencs apartment. I lived in the downstairs of a Hungarian woman's house. It was more than I could have asked for and a perfect retreat from school. I had a TV and several channels, with a few being in English. Most of the time, I liked to let my mind unwind by just watching music videos on VH1. Being the kind of person who likes to be well planned, I would plan my lessons in the evenings, make dinner, watch a DVD on my computer, talk to my friends on the phone, write on my blog, write e-mails, and listen to music. Sometimes I took naps and other times, I gave private lessons to random people I met and some students.

When it was cold outside, I barely left my apartment, except to escape to my fellow American friends teaching in other towns on the weekends. One snowy Friday night, I became so fed up with my cabin fever that I walked 30 mins through icy slush and rain to the train station where I got a train to Miskolc, a bigger city 20 mins away, to walk around the mall there and see a movie.

When it became warmer outside, I liked to go for walks to smaller villages nearby and to admire the beautiful rolling hills in which Szerencs was situated. Sometimes I met my friends in Tokaj, a town 20 minutes away famous for its white wine and sip away the afternoon in cellars. Other times, my colleagues would invite me over to their homes for garden BBQs full with palinka, wine, meat, and desserts.

However, this heavenly little town didn't come without its challenges. After a while it was hard to ignore the constant night-time soundtrack of the kutyak (dogs). Their barks were nothing short of police dog ferocious. I began to refer to my street as "The Gauntlet," after I had to weave in and out of people's yards to avoid a killer (I swear) German Sheperd patroling the middle of the street. This dog was Marine tough as I played witness to its charging of a moving car coming directly at it in the snow one afternoon. Communist trained?? Other nights, while tucked comfortably into bed, drifting off into sleep, I'd awaken to a sharp "RUFF RUFF RUFF RUFF!!!" (or however Hungarian dogs sound) and have to restrain myself from yelling a suppressed "Kus már!" for fear of waking my easily irritated landlady living above.

Most every weekend, I traveled to a different town in Hungary to visit the Americans who became my close friends and family abroad. We were in the same situations, so there was no shortage of chatting over wine when we finally met up. I remember how excited we would all get to speak really fast in American slang. Sometimes you just needed it, like a nap after an exhausting day.

Even though my students seemed to think I had to be bored out of my mind living in the small town of Szerencs, I loved it and reveled in the alone time it gave me. Living there, I had plenty of time to read, write, think, and rest, while working and learning at the same time. Spending a year in Szerencs was one of the best years of my life and all of my students and colleagues will never know how much they taught me...much more than I could have taught them.

For more information on my time in Szerencs, click on the links: 2005 and 2006 under Blog Archives.


Teaching and Living in the City (Budapest)

By January of 2006, I knew that my time in Hungary was not finished. I couldn't leave after my school year was over in Szerencs. Just looking at my pictures and thinking about my memories left me longing for more of this country. The only thing I wanted to change was my location in Hungary. I wanted to experience life in the city. And so after finishing my time in Szerencs and a month in the U.S., I came back to Hungary in early August 2006, with Budapest as my home base.


TEACHING
Teaching in Budapest seems to be a bit more organized in the city than in the country. I taught at just one primary school here and I was given materials and books to follow. Several of my American friends teaching in the city seemed to have the same. Life in the school also seemed more fast-paced. Teachers were actually in their rooms about to teach when the bell rang starting class. In Szerencs, it was an unspoken ritual that teachers loitered about in the "tanari szoba" for five minutes after the bell to start class rang, and then decided to make their way to the lesson. This little luxury was suddenly broken when I came to teach in Budapest.

Colleagues were busier, had less time to chat with me, and seemed generally less interested in how I was doing, however this could have just been my particular school. Several of my lessons were observed by another Hungarian teacher.

Even though I said that teaching in the city is a little more organized, it's not SO much. The English teaching colleagues and I did not necessarily collaborate. For example, the English teacher who taught 8A told me which pages out of the book I should teach. Sometimes this was two days, two hours, or two minutes before I taught them. And sometimes, the teacher accidentally taught the lesson they had told me to teach and I was left with nothing while the students stared at me waiting to see what I would do instead. This was incredibly frustrating, but led me to have Plan B's, C's, D's, and E's for most every lesson (just in case). I hate being unprepared!

All the Hungarian English teachers had different grading scales, but I "could do whatever I liked." I was to give the 7th and 8th classes regular tests from the book and homework. Did most of the students do the homework? No. Did the Hungarian teachers really care about the marks I had for the students? No. Even though some of them asked my opinion of the final marks given to the students, I really had no say. This was also incredibly frustrating.

BUT, the one thing about teaching abroad is to just go with the flow. You can do your best to express your opinions and sometimes they're acknowledged, and when they're not, it's best to just accept that you're in a different country that has a different way of doing things and be glad to have a unique experience that can give you a clearer perspective on the most effective and efficient scenario.


STUDENTS
I'm tempted to skip this section. Really. I decided that I'm not cut out for middle schoolers from the city who can barely understand English. These Budapest kids were bold, more materialistic, snottier, ruder, and too cool for school. At least my middle schoolers in Szerencs had a little personality.

There are many advantages to teaching in Budapest and too often, I had to revert my attention to these benefits when my countless aggravating days caused by the little hoodlums made me want to tear my hair out.

With the exception of maybe 2 or 3 classes, the rest of them were dreaded. I prayed they wouldn't show up. And sometimes this happened. For actual horror stories, you can click on the links 2006 (scroll to September and beyond) and 2007.

If colleagues from my old high school job in Illinois observed these students in their natural habitat, I think there would need to be a paramedic on hand. These girls dressed ten years too old and kept the boys distracted the whole lesson. Kids would have phone conversations under the desks, swear, listen to their MP3 players in class, eat snacks and even make out during lessons. This disgusted me beyond belief. If I yelled, they would laugh. And my colleagues barely helped me, because they could barely help themselves.

Sometimes, the only way I could get their attention was to use their language. Then it would get eerily quiet. Unfortunately, the large crop of misbehaving kids stained my memory enough to write off the student body as just horrible. But of course this is not true. There were several kids who were wonderful, respectful, and friendly. These are the ones who made the job tolerable. And when times got really tough, I taught for them. Only them. They were the ones who got my homemade cookies at the end of the year.

FREE TIME

My pay was higher in the city and what I could do with my free time was unlimited as compared to afternoons in Szerencs. Several of my friends from the year before had moved to teach English in Budapest for the next. We spent a lot of weekends exploring the city, eating out, going to different bars. It was far less adventurous in that we didn't travel around the country as much. But, I had a great time in the city.

I ran around Margaret Island just about everyday, a fifteen minute walk from my apartment. I met my friends for drinks frequently to discuss or vent about our days. I took long walks around the city. I navigated the Metro system. I went to the thermal baths, the movies. I went shopping. I hung out at friends' places. I could see the beautiful buildings and architecture of Budapest whenever I wanted. If I left the city to go on weekend trips, I was always excited to pull into the train station and see a sign reading 'Budapest.'

It was a different year than living in Szerencs. It was tempting to stay a second year in a town where I was so well taken care of, but I had to try out life in the city, and I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did both.

For more stories, click on the links under 'Blog Archives.'

Here are links to trips I've taken outside of Hungary:

Croatia (Istria) - Italy - Slovenia, 2007

Ljubljana, Slovenia and countryside, 2007

Ireland, 2006

Spain, 2006

Croatia (Dalmatia), 2006

Austria (Vienna), 2006

Slovakia, 2006

Serbia - Greece, 2005

Czech Republic (Prague), 2005

Romania (Transylvania) 2005

Home, yet lost

I'm on my bed in my parent's house surrounded by the familiarity of my teenage years and beyond. I'm home, but I'm at a loss for what to do next.

I've been dealing with immense changes over the past three days, grasping for phantom limbs, things I've suddenly lost in the dark.

I didn't know leaving Hungary this year would knock me off my feet. It has and I'm on the floor struggling like a fish out of water.

So, in the meantime, while I'm waiting for someone or something to splash a little water onto me, and reveling in the sweet writing juices that come with hard times, I've come up with a new blog in which I will try to post every day, a new routine, where hopefully I can find some solace.

Viszlát!

I leave Hungary tomorrow morning at 8:25 am, Friday the 13th, for Chicago where I'll get to see my brother whom I haven't seen for two years and my parents. I'm excited to go home. For other reasons, I'm sad. But overall, I'm prepared to go back.

I'll be able to successfully communicate with strangers in my native language. I'll be able to go to my neighborhood library and pore through shelves of books for hours and then subsequently read for hours on the deck at home. I'll be able to watch TV in more than three channels. I'll be able to ride my bike. I'll be able to watch the Tour de France. I'll be able to see my friends whom I haven't seen for a year, some more. I'll be able to go to the dentist and get my teeth cleaned!! (I never thought I'd be happy about that). And I'll be far enough away from Hungary to start processing a vast reflection of my time here.

Life here has become a little bit of a routine now. Things are natural and familiar, but now it's about to change. Loss and gain. I guess that order makes me an optimist. There are so many things that I'll miss, but I'm ready to miss most of those things.

This is not my last post. I'd like to end this blog on a more factual and helpful note instead of a sentimental one. So, my final writing for "Hungarian Lessons" is in the works and I promise it'll be long and hopefully informative. However, it'll be coming not from Hungary, but from the U.S. As this is my final word from Hungary, I'll leave you now with a Viszlát!

A Week on the Road

Aran and I decided to spend our second to last week in Hungary outside of Hungary. And after a lot of research that didn't really help in the end, (I'm convinced it's sometimes easier to travel by the seat of your pants) we crossed a handful of borders in our sporty Regina Rent-A-Car pale blue convertible!! This was a small gift from the rental company who had run out of small cheap cars and was able to give us a size-up with advertisement stickers splattered all over the hood.

Our first stop was Zagreb, Croatia, where we were to spend the night in a hostel that had just opened a few weeks ago. The problem was not getting to Zagreb, but getting around Zagreb. The one-way roads and pedestrian streets had us zooming around the city in circles at a complete loss for where our accomodation for the night was. After asking a Croatian cop and two parking men who barely spoke a word of English, we finally got somewhere with a guy who was coming home from football practice and led us to the street we needed to get to in his car.

The hostel didn't get my reservation, but luckily there was space in a room with seven beds. Exhausted and overheated, we dropped our bags and set out into the city, a city I'd visited a year ago, and a city that looked much busier in the summer than the middle spring months. We grabbed some food at an outdoor cafe on a sloping cobblestone alley and drank a much deserved beer. The city was much cooler at night and the big church that we'd passed in the stressful heat wave of rush hour looked so calm, lit up, when the moon came out.

The next day, we headed for Istria, Croatia's north west peninsula. We drove past several miles of vineyards and rolling hills until we reached the coastal town of Rovinj. We had a three night stay there at a place that was just a walk through a pine forest away from beautiful rocky beaches with amazingly clean water. For dinner we had some seafood and sampled a bottle of white wine from our proud, smiling Italian waitress. A dog barked from under the next table at other dogs walking by and appeared to enjoy people watching as much as I did. For dessert, we headed to one of the several ice cream stands displaying huge mounds of elaborately named cream. The presentation was unlike any Hungarian cone and tasted nothing less than heavenly even as it started to rain.

Not needing to drive anywhere the next day, we set up camp at the beach for the afternoon and made sandwiches from supplies we bought at a market near our guesthouse. Although the beach was rocky, it was still possible to swim, although a little rough on non-toughened feet. I could see the rocks at the bottom of the sea floor even as I swam out to the buoy line and it felt a bit like flying, but also made me nervous as to what I might see floating beneath, whether it be a giant whiskery catfish or something else I’d seen on someone’s plate at a restaurant.

Later on that night, I’d become a little more brave and ordered filled squid at dinner. I liked it so much that I ordered it again later in the trip. Just as a reminder, I usually stay away from seafood, because I’ve never been overly exposed to it, however, I decided that it’s worth trying something new, especially from a fresh source. And Aran was good inspiration, ordering anything he knew he couldn’t get anywhere else or had never heard of without hesitation. Below is Rovinj at sunset.

Below is a picture of the beach at night and one of Aran’s attempts to get the perfect picture of the moon and its reflection on water. Away from the lights of the town, hundreds of stars pricked the sky and if you sat still for long enough, you could see dots of light moving high above.

On the fourth of July, we had a trip planned to Venice. It’s just across the sea and you can get there by boat in about 2 and a half hours. It sounded like a leisurely trip, yet after experiencing it, I wouldn’t necessarily call it that. First, because there was no boat leaving for Venice on the days that we were staying in Rovinj, we had to get to another coastal town some kilometers north before 8:00 am. We didn’t want to drive, because we didn’t know the way and no buses left early enough to get us there in time for the boat departure. A taxi finally did the trick and we successfully boarded our boat on time. The captain announced that the conditions weren’t brilliant, but I figured that just meant our trip would be a little rocky. It couldn’t be that bad.

Before we knew it, the lady a few seats down had made use of her barf bag and thrown up. On a trip to the bathroom, I noticed several people sitting in the corridor with bags attached to their mouths looking absolutely miserable. Even after all those years of practice on roller coasters at theme parks, my stomach started to become annoyed with our ride. I had to close my eyes until we got to Venice to avoid becoming more nauseated. The captain started to announce trips you could participate in when we got to Venice, like a gondola ride with champagne, etc. Aran and I decided to buy a map and just walk around for the few hours we had in the city of canals. The first thing we did was buy some gelato, again amazingly delicious, and aided in comforting my stomach a little after the rocky boat trip over. Away from the center, Venice was nice for a stroll. But once we headed for the Rialto bridge (pictured below), throngs of tourists choked all personal space. We passed many carnival costume stores with elaborate golden masks, masks with long noses, and dresses and suits.

Like every new city I walk around in for the first time, I was overwhelmed with fresh sounds, smells, and sights. An hour of walking had me slumped over in St. Mark’s Square. So, Aran and I took a water taxi around the Grand Canal for 6 Euro to relax. This price was good, considering that the captain of our boat was asking for 20 Euro with a tour guide and saying it would be impossible to get tickets on our own. Here are some shots from the water taxi.

With two hours to spare, we found a table outside in the university area to get some Italian lunch. Being Italy, it turned out to be a big lunch complete with two main courses and a salad plus wine. Just as we were finishing up, the sky darkened and the wind swept any loose debris across the square. The temperature dropped dramatically and eventually a mighty gust knocked down wine glasses, chairs, empty bottles and threatened to take umbrellas down as well. Debris flew into my eyes and we hurriedly moved everything inside. It was time to head back to the boat and just as we boarded, the sky opened and rain pelted against the boat windows.

If our morning ride was rocky, the return trip was to be nothing short of treacherous. It turned out to be just that. I didn’t actually see much out the windows on our trip home, but when I did open my eyes for split seconds, the horizon on the sea seemed to be constantly diagonal. And it wasn’t long before the sick bags came out from the backs of chairs. It was a rollercoaster ride. We went up, up, up, and our hearts went into our throats, and we went down, down down smashing into the water with successive thuds. Collective screams and giggles of excitement from the passengers eventually turned into collective screams of anxiety and finally collective retching into sick bags and when those ran out, garbage bags. I was victim to the sick bag myself, although I didn’t have it as bad as a guy in the far right of the boat who was retching and sounding like a moaning zombie from a horror movie. In between my bouts of sickness, I couldn’t help but laugh as I listened to the chorus of people getting sick and seeing a loose microphone near my feet. A man behind us had lost his shoes and the raspberries we had bought earlier were smashed into juice from the bottle of water in the same bag. From everywhere all over the boat, people raised their hands for boat attendants to collect their sick bags and get more.

When it was all over, the captain said that he hoped this journey wouldn’t stop us from coming again, because the conditions would surely be different next time. And for lack of anything more reassuring to say, the captain announced in English, German, and Italian, “at least it was an experience for you.”

We took to the roads again the next day leaving a lovely nest near the beach with its free breakfast for the unknown, Trieste. Without any idea of where to stay that night, we drove up the coast with the top down able to smell the sea air in a less rocky vessel. Around lunch time, we stopped in Piran, Slovenia, a small town on the tip of a peninsula. We walked around, sampled a glass of wine and had lunch. I enjoyed my second helping of squid here, this time with miniature fried tentacles. Dark clouds were collecting at the very tip of the peninsula where many people were lying on the concrete beaches or swimming in the shallow clear water, so we decided to get back to the car and drive to Italy where we’d stay that night.

Once we reached Trieste, a coastal city in the far northeast tip of Italy, we had trouble finding a place to park and trouble finding any information on hostels or hotels. English was definitely not as prevalent here as it was in Croatia and Slovenia. Most people would speak back to us in Italian and finally we negotiated one night in a sketchy hotel. Tired from walking, we stumbled around the city looking for a late dinner and found it at a restaurant where the chef spoke to us in an amalgam of very choppy English and Italian. I pointed at something on the menu with spaghetti in it and saw that it was some type of seafood spaghetti dish when I got it. The chef came over to our table and said “no fromaggio!” and took it away. Apparently, he didn’t approve of sprinkled parmesan cheese on his creations. Nevertheless, understated Aran made a sweeping statement, saying that it was one of the best spaghetti dishes he’s ever had at a restaurant.

One night in Trieste was enough, so early the next morning, for fear that the car would get towed, we made way for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Almost immediately we found a nice two star hotel with a very modern bathroom, TV, and air conditioning. Just what we needed on our sixth night of the trip. For lunch, I finally tried truffles, something that region of Europe is known for. My culinary knowledge only went so far as the sweet truffle. I didn’t know that they were also type of underground mushroom found in the wild and hunted for by pigs and trained dogs.

We were weathered after lunch and collapsed onto a park bench to rest and watch the pigeons. I suddenly felt very old, sitting on a bench in the park, watching pigeons, tired and enjoying it. The quaint, forested, and pedestrian city of Ljubljana was a nice respite from bustling Trieste. We ate a leisurely dinner and tried to go to a Brazilian music concert in the city’s outdoor summer theatre, but retreated when we learned it was 40 Euro a pop. Ljubljana was a different city than it was a few months ago when I went by train on a long weekend. There were more people and more outdoor cafes and more music this time around. But Ljubljana was still just as relaxing. On our way home the next morning, we drove through a lot of mountainous valleys and past a lot of sloping vineyards and forests. Slovenia is a short, but beautiful country to take in by country road.

We logged in over 800 miles on our rent-a-car and crossed into three different countries. Aran was also a great person to travel with in that even in times of extremely heightened stress (i.e. driving on a pedestrian street the wrong way in Zagreb because we don't know how else to get through the city with people honking) he never lost his cool. It's something I'm trying to copy, although it'll probably take awhile.

It was nice to see things by car in Europe after not being able to for so long. The train and bus system here is very efficient, but when traveling by car, it’s nice to stop when you want, where you want, say in Slovenia for lunch and go to Italy for the night.

It was a good way to end my stay in this part of the world…at least for now.

It's Monday...

and I'm still in the school, because I live here, but I'm not teaching! It's finally summer holiday here in Hungary for most primary schools. I still have to go in to fill out some paperwork and sign the naplo books.

That wonderful feeling that it's over is still cascading over me like a massive falling tidal wave.

Looking back to my sentiments last year, I was different. I was deeply affected by leaving my schools and sad to say good-bye to my students. This year was last year's evil twin. Still in Hungary, still teaching, but all the little things came together in a way to make this year an absolute struggle.

Everyone has a different experience and I definitely don't regret teaching this year. It forced me to brutally observe myself as a teacher in those trickiest moments of the profession and taught me to see how I need to act in those situations. Not that I did the right things. I failed, I tried, I failed, I tried, something almost worked, I tried again, I failed.

If anything, I know how to feign confidence and be a better actress in the classroom. Because even if I didn't have my shit together, I sure had to act like I did, as to not get eaten alive.

On the last day of school, I was showered with more chocolate than I know what to do with, more flowers than I know what to do with (currently exploding out of my Nalgene bottle), and other assorted gifts including two engraved pens from classes I hoped to forget as soon as I left the graduation ceremony.

The graduation ceremony took place after three lessons that morning, in which I played a variation of "Circle of Death" with my deck of cards in the sweltering heat of too many 12 year old bodies plus myself.

The students carried flowers and walked as a chain line through the school while the other lower classes dutifully watched. Only one boy, half Hungarian, half Finnish Christian said hello to me. It was somewhat nice to see something other than utter indifference on these children's faces as they walked past me.

As the ceremony moved outside the school, I stood with Agi, a colleague who suddenly opened up to me after I gave each of my English teaching colleagues a thank you note on a Chicago postcard and some chocolate.

Looking absolutely surprised that I had given her something, Agi said that she didn't know how much any of my colleagues deserved any thanks for helping me. She told me, "maybe if you had come up to the teacher's room more often, we could have helped, but we had so many situations happening this year and we were so busy."

My contact teacher later said, "if you can teach here you can teach anywhere." I don't know about that exactly. She also asked me if I had seen the big tree on the wall downstairs. I said I hadn't. She told me that the students wrote a sentence about each teacher on the tree. Next to mine, the students wrote, "I hope you can forgive us."

So everyone knew how much of a struggle this year was for me, even my students.

As Agi and I were watching balloons be let off into the air symbolizing the onward journey of the eigth class, I asked her where a certain boy from class 8A was. He was the boy who asked to go to the bathroom during my lesson way back in February, only never to return. As a follow up to an entry from several months ago, I guess the boy got what was coming to him.

A gym teacher got so mad at him that he hit the boy. Neither the boy nor the teacher have come back to the school.

Sadly, I didn't find out that I wasn't alone in this challenge to manage middle school Hungarians from Budapest until the end.

When the ceremony was over and the 7th class was ordered to carry the chairs the 8th years were sitting on back inside, two girls from a bad class lingered near me. "Good-bye and good summer...bye." I wished them well and smiled politely.

Agi smiled and told me then that those girls had come up to her praising my teaching often.

It's very hard to get accurate feedback in teaching, but it's even harder getting it in a foreign school. That last word from Agi carried me a long way and made me feel like this year wasn't all that much of a waste to every student I taught.

With that, I hope to start weeding out the dreams I have at night where I'm teaching and not give another thought to students or school for a while now.

Dear Hungarian Schools,

If you are going to have a native speaking teacher (English, French, Spanish, Italian...etc) as a part of your staff next year, please make sure that he/she...

1) has a competent mentor/contact/guide what-have-you that speaks the language of the native teacher.

2) is told all relevant information before missing it or showing up late, frazzled and confused (i.e. holidays, school trips, grade deadlines, ceremonies, shortened lessons).

3) is introduced to the necessary people and procedures (i.e. other teachers sharing the native teacher's language, how to make copies, what to do with a student disturbing lessons. Clear answers preferred).

4) receives appropriate help when ill.

5) has the mobile phone number of at least 2-3 speakers of the same language, #1 being the contact teacher.

6) receives appropriate help when there is inevitable trouble managing a classroom and not just the promise to help. For a foreign teacher who is teaching students who do not comfortably speak or understand the language being taught, classroom management is clearly MUCH MORE DIFFICULT than for a teacher whose language is comfortably understood by his/her students.

7) isn't expected to have lengthy conversations or "discussion" with students who can say no more than "my name is," "I'm 10 years old," "I have got two sisters." It is not possible. Simple as that. Grammar exercises are their safety blanket and fluency is a knarled monster from which most students cower in shaking fear.

8) is told grading procedure. Most foreign teachers are NOT clear on how to evaluate students in a different country. Contacts, mentors should go over this policy very specifically and not just wave it off with "whatever you decide to do."

That's it so far.

Any more ideas?

Gasping...Panting...I Can See the Line!

This Friday is my last day of work at this school. I've already said goodbye (or "get out," rather) to a handful of my classes and with each ending bell, a little weight is lifted off my shoulders like a strong bird swooping down, grasping it in its claws, and flying quickly away.

Even though I gave some classes tests, as promised, their Hungarian English teachers told me that their grades have been officially decided already in a ritual where the teachers sit around and vote on what final mark to give individual students. This isn't such a bad idea, but then again, I've never had to sit through it.

Some talks I've had to sit through...

A. Benjamin doesn't deserve more than a 2, but because his mom works here and really pushes hard, he will probably get a 4. (5 = A and 1 = F) - a colleague

B. Jana always goes away from the school and doesn't come to class, but when she feels like helping, she's very good about it, so she should get a 3. - a colleague

C. This game is very shit. - a seventh grade student

D. Student: Can we go outsiiiiiidee todaaaay?
Me: No, we're not.
Student: Ooooohh aaksaosidhfa;elkaj dfjoae &^%(^&)*^ (slamming desks books around).

Yes, I've been somewhat negative about my teaching job over these past months, but I feel I have good reason to be. I think I'm going to come up with a list of how to make the school year more pleasant for a native speaking teacher in any country.

Survivor Notes from the CELTA

My whole experience abroad started when I started to feel restless in my first year teaching job in the US. I wanted to travel and be around people different from myself. I wasn't exactly getting any satisfaction from teaching high schoolers in southern Illinois. It wasn't for me at the time.

I applied for a CELTA course in Budapest at the International House. Why Budapest? A. It was the cheapest B. The pictures on the website were enticing C. I have Hungarian relatives D. I wanted to go somewhere different E. Budapest sounded like a wonderful and undiscovered city.

The application took some time to finish, because there were a lot of grammar questions involved and being a native speaker, I had never really had to explain English grammar before. I came home from my teaching job exhausted, but filling out that application gave me a secret kind of energy. I didn't know if I'd actually go through with it, but I needed some kind of sanctuary from my job at the time and this was it. I mailed it in and got a response from someone saying that they'd like to set up an interview on Skype. I had no idea what Skype was until I downloaded it for the interview.

I "Skyped" for the first time to Budapest at 5am Central Standard Time from my little apartment in Belleville, Illinois and got a spotty connection with a Scottish teacher trainer whose speech was peppered with British vocabulary like "going on holiday" and "rubbish." This gave me a little rush. We talked for about 50 mins. and I was offered a place in the 2005 July course. I got ready for my teaching job at the time and drove to work screaming at the top of my lungs. I just organized for myself to go to Hungary for the summer!! It was a little rash and out of character, but in a great way. Little did I know, I'd decide to quit my first real teaching job for good and attempt to find a teaching job abroad immediately after my CELTA.

I flew to Budapest on July 2nd, with very little packed. I didn't know I'd be staying so long. My first adventure in Budapest was getting from the airport to my apartment. There, I met my CELTA roommate, from Scotland and with the same name. Cat, instead of Kat. She offered me some tomato slices and bread for dinner and we went to bed.

The next morning was our first CELTA day. I walked into the morning light and rushour of Budapest still jet lagged and completely helpless on how to get from my apartment to International House. Luckily, I had Cat to help. We took two trams and got lost looking for the building. All I remember is not being able to keep up with Cat who was taller than me. We finally managed to find the entrance to what would be our second home for the next four weeks. We walked into a room that had several chairs sitting in a semi-circle. The exact way that chairs would be set up for our students when we had to teach...starting the next day.

I scanned over the faces of the people I'd be working closely with and tried desperately to place where they were all from. To my surprise, I couldn't locate any fellow Americans. At this time, I had to remind myself that one of the reasons I wanted to come here was to meet different people.

Our first activity was to meet each other in a game that was called, "Find Someone Who..." The teacher trainers had taken a few bits of information from our applications and put them onto a worksheet. Our group's worksheet looked like this:

Find someone who...

could probably give you some advice about foreign trade

has an e-mail address connected to precipitation

had their own radio show

whose sister has insider knowledge concerning the CELTA at IH Budapest

has professional experience of recommending tasty Mexican food

has been a mayor

has been working as a teaching assistant in Luton, England.

can tell you something about stud farming, grape harvesting, and Harrods.

knows a lot about EAL.

worked as an interpreter.

taught in Bangladesh.

has a cat called Max.

works part time in the British Council Library.

has an MPhil in East European Studies.

can help you get a loan from a Budapest bank.

could give you tips on caving, canoeing, hiking, and horse riding.

was brought up within an international environment.

has taken part in improvisational comedy on stage.

has a degree in Italian and Arabic.

studied Physics in Edinburgh.

worked in the civil service for 10 years.

Guess which one is mine!!!

We a number of get-to-know-you activities that day, including speaking about interests, pet peeves, and a grammar auction or gambling game. At the end of the day, we were put into teaching groups of about 5-6 people and the three teacher trainers split up to lead our teaching groups. We were told that we'd teach the next day for twenty minutes and we were told which lesson to teach and in what order we'd go.

Essentially, we were to teach the same lessons that the teacher trainers used on us. So as daunting as it seemed to have to teach on the second day of the course, we had a good feeling on how to teach it. It seemed easy enough, but I was wrong...

Our days were organized into different parts:

In the morning, we taught our "guinea pig" students. These were Hungarians aged 16-65 who got a discount on summer English lessons because we were just learning. There were about 15 in a class. These students were angels. Hardworking, patient, and helpful. They were spending their summer paying for English lessons, after all. We watched each other teach and had to take notes about positives and negatives.

After we taught, we had a feedback session. First, we gave our thoughts and then next the teacher trainer gave his/her thoughts on the lessons. My first lesson was only twenty minutes long and was a simple act of rotating students to talk about different topics for a minute or two then discuss what everyone said to wrap it up. My first lesson teaching non-native speakers was a genuine wake-up call. My teacher trainer told me I had too much TTT. Part of the CELTA was learning all this new ESL/EFL jargon. Distinguishing between ESL, EFL, TESOL, TEFL, TEACH, FEET...okay the last two were made up, but you get the idea. TTT means Teacher Talk Time. In all my time teaching in the US, I babbled redundancies, directions, nonsense because my students, being American, could understand them. I realized that I had to choose my words more carefully. That took a lot of effort at first and still does. I learned how to check for understanding. And not just saying, "do you understand?"

After the feedback session, we were given the kind of lesson we should do for next time: reading, writing, grammar, or speaking. Then we had a lunch break in a courtyard holding tables with umbrellas where we got to know each other a little more. We could intermingle with our students and one even brought us her homemade chicken paprika one afternoon.

In the afternoon, we had a session with all three teacher trainers and re-united as a whole group. This is where we learned how to teach the present perfect on a timeline, practiced phonetic sounds, analyzed intonation, watched videos, and did small group activities. At about 5pm, we were all free to go home. By this time, we were mostly exhausted. It was an exhaustion that comes from the accumulation of a lot of knowledge.

Over the course of the CELTA, we were to write four papers about different topics. The weekends were our opportunity to play hard after working really hard during the week. A few of us took advantage of that, while others played it more safe. Most of the people I still talk to were those with whom I explored Budapest on the weekends.

The end of the course was overwhelmingly anti-climactic and a certificate of my course Pass was mailed home to my parents while I was still abroad.

I got my job with the Central European Teaching Program (CETP) from the suggestion of a CELTA compatriate who taught in a small Hungarian town the past year. He recommended it to me and as soon as I called the director, I had a job. It was lucky and perfect and smooth.

My experience with the CELTA was incredible in so many ways. It inspired me to build a career in ESL and I met so many great people from different countries.

It's one thing I'd recommend in a heartbeat.

Back to Square One

Well, we're down to two weeks of teaching at my elementary school in Budapest. My job for next week is to do "something" with all the leftover kids grades 1-8 possibly in the same classroom because they couldn't go to forest school. Apparently, this is a common trip for most primary school students at the end of their school year.

I wonder if my time here would have been different if it had not been my second year. In a sad way, I'm like my 7th or 8th year students in that I've become a little more lazy and don't put in as much effort as I did in my first year. Had it been my first year, maybe I would have had a better experience. But who's to say? That's like comparing apples to oranges. The country with the city. It's just that there are a lot more bad apples rotting in the city than in the country.

So, I've got one foot out the door in a huge straddle that leaves me teetering over the Atlantic Ocean. The trouble with the teaching abroad lifestyle is that you are usually never grounded anywhere for too long. It means that you have to start at the beginning with a new job every six months or year. But with that, you do carry your experience (see two posts ago)...and some great stories!!

In anticipation for a change of scenery, I've been researching and sending out applications for teaching jobs in South and Central America. I've had two interviews so far.

One went pretty well and was really relaxed. I was talking to Bill from Palatine, Illinois who seemed to be reclined in a tie-dyed beanbag chair while talking to me on Skype from a laptop. He told me to contact them again in the summer when they'd know for sure of job openings.

The other didn't go so well at all, but I did get a great knock upside the head from it. The woman spoke like she was on fast forward on a tape player and reminded me of a somewhat more sugary version of my old department head in my US teaching job. She barely let me get a word in, except for a huge gap of silence in which she asked me "for example, how would you teach the present perfect tense to some businessmen?" I stuttered and told her how I taught it to my 6th-8th years who can barely understand me. She replied with, "ummm yeah you're missing one really important thing...the timeline."

Of course, the timeline! To show where you are now and what you've done when. Which all goes back to my CELTA course. In my course, they taught us how to teach tenses using a timeline.

I'll never forget it now, seeing as I was somewhat humiliated on the phone for pushing it too far back in my memory. It's surprising, because my CELTA course provided the fuel to keep me abroad for two years and more in the future. I wish I could have a refresher course.

Maybe I'll make my own...