Liz, good friend and fellow CETPer, who's been teaching in Hungary since September 2005 has gone back to the U.S. to be with her dad, who is sick. Her premature departure was very sudden and made me realize how much I'm going to miss her.
For those CETPers who left last year, the goodbyes were prepared for and anticipated, unlike this past weekend, where, for several moments throughout the past few days, pieces, pictures, and moments with Liz quickly and desperately ran through my head like a filmstrip. Here's one of us and Jeremy (courtesy of Jer). We had made chocolate chip cookies the night before in Liz's town, then bused it over to Nyiregyhaza for Thanksgiving in Nov. 2005.
I knew Liz was going to be a good friend from the first orientation dinner we had in Budapest. She was down-to-earth, easy to talk to, and had traveled before. We were also going to be placed in towns very close together in northeastern Hungary. This comforted me, knowing that I could have a friend to go to if I needed it. The August morning in 2005 in Budapest when all of us were picked up and shuttled off to our respective towns by colleagues from our new schools, Liz and I got in cars parked close together, with (I think) a similar feeling of fear and excitement. "Call me," she called out quickly before we were shut inside our country-bound cars.
Inside, I met my new colleague, Etelka. I was nervous with her at first, because she had all the information about my new life and was about to tell me in this 2 and a half hour car ride. I just thought about Liz going through the same thing and knew that later, we'd have time to re-hash our experiences.
Over the next several months, I felt as if I could genuinely confide in Liz. I was always excited to hear what was going on in Tiszaujvaros and she was equally as interested in what was happening in Szerencs. Even though our towns were 15 mins. apart by car, it took about an hour and fifteen to get there by train or bus. She came to Szerencs for Tokaj wine trips and I headed there for the Tiszaujvaros thermal baths and the even warmer hospitality that thrived in her apartment. I loved her easygoing, laid-back nature, one that helped me to relax and not worry so much. It was inspiring to see Liz just walk into a store and ask for what she needed, even if she used English. Even when I start to tense up or get anxious about something, I often think about Liz and what she would do in the situation.
We are both people who want to enjoy life and get as much out of it as we can and that's why I had such a good time with Liz. We danced....horribly. We listened to what others would say is horrible music. But we embraced it!
Jeremy would frequently mix up our names, maybe because they were both three letters and compared us to two countries in which most people wouldn't see any major differences...Kat, Liz, Liz, Kat...Slovenia, Slovakia.
Below: Liz's last night in Hungary at the Fregatt Pub.
We'd talk about what we wanted to do after our first year in Hungary was over. I remember one weekend standing in Fisherman's Bastion in the Castle District. We both balanced options of staying in Hungary or going. And we both decided that we wanted to head to Budapest to be in the city where we could stand in Fisherman's Bastion during an afternoon after school instead of a fleeting weekend-in-Budapest afternoon.
I'm gonna miss hanging out with you Liz, but I'll be in touch and whenever a one-hit wonder 80's song comes on, I'll be wishing we could be dancing.
2 comments:
i don't feel like dancin', no sir, no dancin' today. i always get sad reading the obituary of a departing friend.
there were lots of characters in my first stay in Hungary. as a magyar. none were more soul-sustaining and smile-enriching than liz and kat.
i liked the liz, kat, jer triumvate muchly.
wonderfully spun tale, miss kat.
I guess I didn't mean so much for this post to sound like an obituary. After reading it again, it did truly sound like we lost Liz. My mistake using the past tense all the way through until the end.
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