: )

expressing arrival in budapest on the sunniest of summer afternoons requires an eloquence I don’t at the moment possess, my brain being otherwise occupied by remembering the name of my train stop and the fifteen coteachers I really ought to know by now. none the less, impressive doesn’t come close, this place felt like home from the moment I stepped off the plane (and went through the fastest border crossing in recorded history - three minutes in line for the stamp, only stopped in customs due to my utter confusion when completely unconfronted - nary a question let alone a body cavity search)

the city turned into a whirlwind of meetings, language lessons, trains, and tipsy hill climbing - it was almost a relief to be picked up tuesday morning by two lovely ladies soon to be co-teachers at the cutest little elementary school in quite possibly the cutest little village in hungary

yes, it’s a bit kitchy. yes, there are too many tourists. but it’s summer, they’ll soon go away and leave me and a few cantankerously fun residents to freely wander the cobbled streets and slip from the timestream in art-lined cafes.

I’m typing this from the bank of the danube, which is quite a bit more smelly than it appeared in pictures. still, looking along a sandy path lined by wrought iron gas lamps it’s truly quite difficult to muster a complaint. aah, the church bells are ringing, distracting me from the odd looks I’m getting by the romantic couples strolling by. does a laptop ruin a mood? I think not; this is perhaps why I’m single.

it’s more difficult to articulate stories this time around. perhaps it’s simply not exotic enough. perhaps I’m just too busy looking at other things (like the cellar I spent the day cleaning to get ready for the opening of the school on monday ; ) this will be helped along greatly by the arrival of internet in my flat, finally corrolating memory time with laptop usage. this, of course, assumes I’ll eventually manage to get internet in my flat - the hungarians share the possibly-communist-leftover charachteristic of being rather unwilling to actually get anything done - as further evidenced by fourteen females standing around for half an hour debating whether the wooden helicopter still deserved its prior ceiling placement.

the smoking amusement.
in a country in which the non-smoking section required by law is usually tucked away in back next to the lav, I managed to find myself in a non-smoking house. ! Zhuzhi (or however you spell her name), the headmistress of the school, apparently signed a contract for this. And didn’t find it worth mentioning, even though one of the first things we did together was pop out for a cig. Hmm. The daughter of the landlord, who’s got rather good english, was over today to meet me and trade questions, and came back after a bit to ask if I smoked in the house. Is this a problem? Well…

She decided that as long as it wasn’t excessive and I kept the window open it was ok (though whether this is really ok or not I’ve yet to suss out). She came back after lunch to make sure I knew that it wasn’t a problem with me, it was a contract thing with zhuzhi, and I shouldn’t worry at all. She walked away, only to show up rather puckishly a moment later to say only “I just want to say, I like you!” and run away again. : )

Wednesday.

right, a bit of venting, a bit of cultural interplay (aka chaos).

I’ve been trying to get the internet in my flat since arrival. I’m still taking classes at new school, and the net at work is spotty at best, and involves a lot of people looking over my shoulder. my landlady, through her english speaking daughter, promised that her son would go to the internet people monday. By Wednesday night I’d heard nothing, so I sent a text to the daughter to see if there was any news. She didn’t text back, but did come over later. Not, mind you, to say a word about the net, but to get mad because today when I’d gone out for an hour I’d forgotten to close my window.

Of course, the reason given for closing the window was chance of theft when no one was in the main house. Since she knew it was open she was obviously home, thus negating the necessity of window closure. Which of course makes entirely too much sense to be of any use to me in this situation.

I wonder if my problem isn’t in part that so many things are so visually similar that the bits that end up different grate more strongly. . .

Apparently the daughter either didn’t tell her mother she’d okayed the smoking in the house, or they changed their minds and didn’t bother to tell me, because they’ve been calling the director of my school every day to complain; I found this out not from the school but from Hajni, the CETP contact in Budapest.

As cetp claimed to already be displeased that I’m parked rather in the middle of suburbia without easy access to anything in a piece of farce which requires taking a 1km train trip to get anywhere because roads simply don’t go that way, they’ve decided to push for new housing. whether this actually happens remains dubious, but I’m thinkin that when the landlady throws me out for leaving the window open again… of course, it’s entirely probable that I’ll end up a train stop or two farther away from school, and still not allowed to smoke inside. ; )

I’m rather amused by my newfound ability to monumentally piss people off by simply being myself in their universe.

granted, I’m likely just a bit worn. I’ve been given ten separate courses to teach to start with (more to come), not one of them with a book or any semblance of syllabus. I’m still working out where to buy things and how to communicate in this new language, which does tend to kick my butt the first month a bit. The school outfitted my flat with some wonky necessities - I pulled out a frying pan the other night to make dinner only to find an 1.5“ divot jarring up at me, as though someone had whacked the thing on an anvil. I fall off the broken toilet seat roughly every other day. and I have to take a 1km train trip to get into town proper (aka away from the residential/car repair neighborhood I currently inhabit) because there’s not so much as a path in shorter than 7km. Mind you, my co-teachers are fantastic, warm and welcoming. Though they’ve got some issues with direction-giving. Twice since arrival I’ve walked upwards of an hour for a trip that should have taken ten minutes because ”it’s on your right“ actually means ”it’s half a mile back from the road on your right and you can’t possibly see it from where you’ll be.“ And it’s been raining and cold for three days straight, which I get to content with any time I want food, or now apparently a smoke.

Thursday.

had three joyous classes today (I’m going to enjoy thursdays I think, even if I do have to arrive half an hour early to sit in the playground and make sure no-one maims anyone). The first graders, six and seven years old, are so sweet you just want to plop then in espresso. Sure, they misbehave, but they’ve that charming quality of trying harder when you praise them, or anyone else in the room. The seventh graders have perhaps the best english of any class I’ve had yet (odd, as they’re one of two classes not on a bilingual curriculum), and though they do like to swear I can’t really complain as they’re doing it in english, which in my immersion classroom universe is a hell of a lot better than pleasantries in hungarian. So reality-challenged landlady and tempermental cutlery aside, I’m having a rather fantastic day

many things in Hungary run on the honor system, of sorts. trains, busses, trams, you carry around your card, or validate it by slipping it into a punch machine if it’s a one-ride ticket. occasionally someone checks - granted, if you don’t have something you’re facing a rather hefty fine.

low rent grocery stores lock up their shopping carts. to procure one, slip a hundred forint coin into a slot, this pushes out the chain. reverse the process when done to get your money back.

today I ran into a man with a solution to the shopping cart monetary requirement.

often, people just trade coin for cart outside, rather than having to go through the whole locking unlocking routine. an older gentleman came towards me today, so I mimed ‘would you like my cart’ but he shook his head no, smirked, and proffered a washer. after watching as I relocked my cart and removed my hundred forints, he stuck this perfectly sized washer into the slot and was off.

The last time I found myself on the other side of the planet for an indefinite period of time I had a full three weeks to process my new surroundings, start to get comfortable with the country before acclimating myself to the work bit. This time my grace period was four days.

Tomorrow marks two weeks in Hungary, and though I’ve figured out what a - crap, what’s the word, the big important book into which one enters what happened in class, who was missing, who did well or poorly, and of course exams and grades, naplo? - is I still don’t know how to say ‘please’. Though admittedly I’ve got three kinds of thank you under my belt already, and I’ve just used ‘ashtray’ for the first time, to the great amusement of my english speaking barrista.

(every now and again I check for airport signal - I just discovered ‘nasty nate’ but unfortunately he requires a password ; )

It’s sunny for the first time in four days, so I’m taking a moment to sit at my current favorite cafe near the river (the one that opened at the beginning of the summer and all the teachers talk about wanting to stop into but, save me dragging Andi in, have never done) sipping coffee with ice cream in (aka iced coffee, now that’s the proper way to do it) watching the old ladies and tourists and occasionally the high school teacher who moonlights as the horse-drawn carriage driver clip-clop past. My table base is almost the twin to the vintage Singer sewing machine bottom I’ve been using as my desk whenever I’m stateside, and the peeling green paint on the brass handled front door helps draw me in as well.

There’s a question as to whether the teachers have been paid as yet. They had been promised Monday, but as of yesterday everyone was comparing dusty bank accounts. If this is the situation in a private school (a very well funded one at that) I’m hesitant to think about the state of public schools. Though it appears that the majority of teachers live in town; as the rents are definitely higher here than a train stop away they’re presumably doing alright for themselves. Hungarians, it seems, rather like to complain, sometimes with cause sometimes perhaps with none. I’m still learning to tell the difference.

My impressions of Budapest have already faded into a stone-encrusted blur; my impressions of Szentendre exist primarily either inside the school walls or related to expedition-weight shopping excursions. My only proper town wander happened on a sunday in the rain, for which I’d forgotten my camera and just about everything inside was shut tight. I’ve yet to take a single photograph in this country, though there is perhaps something to be said for experiencing it a bit first before putting on critical lenses. This is, at least, my this-is-how-it-came-to-be rationalization. Fortunately it’s Friday, classes are done until Monday, I don’t go to Bratislava for my visa until Wednesday, so I’ve a whole lot of time coming in which to make up for my exploratory lacking. Here’s to hoping it doesn’t rain, as it’s about to do again right now…

Living half an hour outside budapest, not entirely horrible.

Woke up obscenely early (for a saturday) in order to meet up with some couchsurfers who’d arranged a personal tour of the Zoltan Kodaly Museum. One couchsurfer’s mother had attended the school as a child; another went to primary school with the curator. The curator, in gorgeous English, showed us around the prior residence of this composer / conductor, a home so bursting with life that one rather expected the man to emerge from the leather-bound library at any moment and offer up a cup of tea.

Down the street we popped into a modern art gallery (check out artists : Bodor Lilua, Garami Richard, Nemeth Marcell), then onto the metro for a trip past Pest tourist central to a lovely fresh pasta restaurant I likely wouldn’t have found without the insider guidance of cs locals. I really can’t stress enough, even if you’re not the sort to have random people on your couch, the value of showing off your city to those who can’t possibly know it alone in the week or day they might have (and of course the same when you’re the traveller!). Not only did I get a great culture tour this morning, but I came away with piles of Budapest tips and Hungarian insight, word of the Nostalgia Exhibit (communist propaganda and the like) and the day they close a circuit of roads for rollerskating, and likely a teacher of Hungarian cooking (amusingly enough, an Austrian).

As the group split up for the afternoon, Thom and I decided to take advantage of the gorgous sun that had broken through to stroll down the riverside then along the island in the middle of the danube, eating cotton candy and laughing just a bit at the piles of people on bicycles build for two, or four. We cooled off with a beer at a lovely blue plastic table facing Buda, then split at the bridge where I headed for the train. Forty minutes later, eleven hours since departure, I arrived home smiling and exhausted in that I-just-had-a-fantastic-travel sort of way.

A little something I probably shouldn’t publicize : I inadvertantly paid for a grand total of none of my public transportation today. My HEV station doesn’t have a ticket office, so I have to buy on the train. This morning on the way in no conductor appeared. Hmm. On the first metro trip I bought a couple tickets as the car rolled in - the conductor literally handed my change through the door just before it closed. What I’d forgotten was that the punch machines are in fact not on the train but in the station, and as he hadn’t punched one at purchase I ended up with two ready to use tickets (well, provided there wasn’t a checker at the other end, which there wasn’t). On the way home I bought a ticket at the office (a steal at 430, considering a single ride no transfer ticket for the city is an outrageous 230) and watched others to see if/where to punch it. No one did, so I hung onto it, figuring there’d be a conductor. Yeah, there wasn’t one.

Perhaps escaping flying spindles and blades, I saw an inordinate number of insects on my meander this afternoon :: a paper brown praying mantis, a lizard of some sort moving entirely too fast for accurate classification, and a veritable plethora of various bees.

I’ve no idea if every monday will be Szentendre Mowing Day, but this one certainly was. All over town, on sides of roads, in front of businesses, and even in some private homes came the whirrs of weed whackers and sit-downs throwing up the scent of freshly cut greens. I say greens because the lush lawns, so lovely at a distance, on closer inspection reveal themselves rather full of weeds.

My initial immersion into this country has perhaps a lot in common with the greens phenomenon. From a distance, I could be living in any suburb in America - tidy houses, manicured lawns, nice cars parked round. Upon closer inspection…..

When in Mexico or China, walking down any street provided constant reminder of my foreignness. There is something strange about having to remind ones self on a regular basis that one is in fact inhabiting another country. I’d no idea until now how greatly my internal mindset relies on external visual cues.

Then again, it could simply be that, as in Manhattan, I find myself engaged in a near constant battle to keep my decorations stuck to the walls.

hanging from the ceiling of an open garage down the street from my house this afternoon was a fish a full head taller and almost twice as wide as the average human.

I’m hanging out in Budapest with a Viennese, a couple of Hungarians, a Belgian lad, a Brit, and assorted few from other countries, speaking a variety of different languages, and….

there is simply nothing odd about this.

I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t part of the couchsurfing phenomenon. because in new york city, I was hanging out on a regular basis with a phillipino bloke, a variety of frenchmen, a brit here and there, some indians, and a rather lot of germans.

amusingly, couchsurfing has now made the new york times. oh la la. the article’s not bad; they even opened with neil. neil! brilliant. see for yourself

In other news, my art skills seem to have taken a rather terrible plunge for the worse. It took a full fifteen minutes to attempt a drawing of a dog for picture bingo for my 1st graders tonight, and in the end it looked a lot more like cujo than clifford.

On the up side, after three weeks of gentle prodding, I’ve managed to procure the english textbooks (used by the the hungarian english teachers) of almost every grade, so I’ve almost, almost got an idea of what these lovely children have already learned. miracle upon miracle, I truly feel I’ve just won an olympic gold that’s how heroic this task seemed.

when writing a curriculum for 8 grades with varying levels one must remember to disregard logic completely and fly entirely by the seat of one’s linguistic pants. I’m fairly sure the biggest hit in last week’s ‘find someone who’ game (in which students must wander around asking such stimulating questions as ‘do you like the colour blue’ and ‘can you swim’) was the query ‘do you eat monkeys’ which I threw in for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever.

a moment to tide y’all over until I can wrangle a photoshop afternoon