Starting with 7A

First hour is free on my schedule for Fridays, but second hour says 7A. Hungarian gimnasiums "call up" only the best and brightest students to form the youngest class in the school. The "A" class gets to study two more years (7 and 8) at the gimnasium than the other students, who stay at the primary school for 7th and 8th grade. I walked in with little fear, after all, these would be the best students Heves has to offer, probably scared to death on their first day in the big school. And I was advised that they had studied English before.

Well, the good news is that they can count to ten.

I had grand plans to expand on Hajni's ideas. Rather than have the kids ask questions of me and have a volunteer make up answers, pretending to be me, I would have them write a quiz asking me questions! They would write the quiz, guess answers, and get points if they were right! This idea sounded quite exciting to me.

I walked in beaming. "Good morning, 7A!" I said. "I am here to teach you English!" They smiled.

I wrote on the board in nice, big block letters. "My name is Jeremy Jewett." They smiled.

There was a knock at the door. One of the students was supposed to be in German class instead of in English with me. She left. They smiled.

"Who is ready to have some fun?" I said, obviously ready to have some fun myself. I've got this great bell I was going to ring every time someone was right. They smiled.

It was about then that I realized that smiling is the default facial expression on the 12-year-old Hungarian face when it has no idea what is going on.

"Can you understand me?" I asked, suddenly skeptical. They smiled.

We backed the train up to "MY N-AME IS JER-E-MY." They smiled.

But one girl -- I still have no idea how to pronounce her name other than swallow as many G's, Y's and umlauted-O's as possible and then gargle them out until you get a positive reaction -- really smiled. She said, "Hello."

That one word opened the floodgate. By the time we were done, those kids were halfway to fluency, regurgitating such key English phases as "What is your name?" "What is his name?" and "Her name is..." I debated, momentarily, to stress the difference between HIS name and HER name, but I figured that concept best wait until next week.

The good news is, of course, that it gets better, as at this point I had not yet even had my first German language class. About to try teaching a non-native tongue to third-language native speakers without having a fluency in aforementioned language. Unbelievable.

My level of German ability is about the same as the students in the advanced half of 11A. We got along just fine and dandy, although the girls in particular didn't understand everything that I said. Vice Principal Agi says (in German, mind you, so I might not have this exactly correct), that I should take the year-end Abitur examination and see how good I can become. I guess you've gotta have goals.

Regardless of language, I think that if you put me in a room with eight kids and a bell, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a good time. I think 11A will be a good class this year.

The 12D students are seniors, six of the best English-speakers pulled out of one of the least academically ambitious classes, and we got along just fine. We huddled around the map of Wisconsin and practiced such necessary tasks as finding the answer to questions like "Where is Lac du Flambeau?" and "How many people live in Middleton?"

For 11B, I switched back to German. They wanted to know the same questions as the other classes. I am 25, which some guessed correctly. I like blue. I do not like soccer (although will soon start playing with the teachers) and I have seen handball only in the Olympics. My family has a dog, but here in Hungary I only have two plants. I do not have a girlfriend, which usually elicits gasps. Most Hungarians I have met seem to have friends of significant interest, although often in other cities. In case you are interested, and just have never gotten around to asking, I am not married, I do drive a car in America, I have lots of hobbies and my favorite food is pizza. And my hair? Why is it curly? I guess credit is due to my parents and the summer sun.

With 11D, it was back to English again. The students convinced me to write on the dry-erase board with a Sharpie. I am a moron, of course I should have known better. I tried a test-mark and was able to erase it, so I marched on, scrawling my name, a map of the United States and my sister's name "MEGAN" in big letters across the middle portion of America. When the bell rang and the board didn't erase, I become a little worried. I tried asking in English, German and Hungarian, but could not find a spray bottle with the potent stuff inside of it. I had a cleaning lady and the technical school principal searching for twenty minutes, to no avail, although I think that they thought I needed a dry-erase marker instead of cleaner. After a stoic battle, I rightly gave up feigning ignorance, said "viszlat" and left. This class could be trouble all year.

I slogged to the pencil store. Three dry-erase markers at the Papir-Éraysir-Éytik cost me 900 forints. And I'm sad to report that Zsofi said she can't hang out this weekend because she has to paint a fence all weekend. True story.