Tanar Jeremy

You would have been proud to see me stroll into the kozepiskola this morning, armed with the word "Csörtöttörk" (Thursday), ready to tackle the challenge of learning to pass off some sort of understanding in the Hungarian school system. They whisked me immediately to the principal's office, where I shook hands with numerous old men. They were most likely distinguished old men, but it was hard to tell, as the proceeding were most often explained to me in Hungarian, sometimes in German, but only rarely in English.

We all walked out together, to the front courtyard, for the grand opening ceremony. After much clapping and applause by students and adults alike, an English-speaker nudged my leg and said, "Stand up. Right now!" So I did, and they applauded. I waved and then they applauded more. As if I were some sort of hero, the moment was mine. And that's when I was handed flowers and kissed. (Humor me, momentarily, so that I might linger on that kiss. I don't remember if it was the young German teacher, or if it was a student who looked like the young German teacher -- I'm not good at that kind of detail in the heat of the moment -- but I can most assuredly say that I received a smooch on the very first day of school.)

There were no classes after the hour-long ceremony, but I was handed my schedule for the year. We have A weeks and B weeks, and each week I see 20 different groups of kids once for 45 minutes.
(Note, though, that they make a generous accommodation for attention spans in the afternoon, when we meet for only 40 minutes.) This time frame does not include the time after the bell rings when the students are expected to put out their cigarettes, find their way to class, etc. Teachers, too, are not expected to hustle to class until perhaps five minutes after the bell rings. Of my 20 classes, 14 are in English and 6 are in German. I teach the youngest kids (12 and 13 years old) both languages, although each child chooses only one. I teach both English and German to the advanced students in the upper grades as well. On every-other Friday morning, I am done teaching at 9:40. Other days I have five classes back-to-back. It's rather helter-skelter.

After digesting the schedule, I was free to walk around before securing lunch in the cafeteria. Just for you, I counted the number of tractors and farm appliances mounted on cement platforms around my school. The exact number is 11. The prize of the collection seems to be the bulldozer, as it takes the prime location, closest to the school.

Walking home from school in the early afternoon was the first time I had ever seen students sitting in a pub drinking beer after school. They waved, so I waved back.

And ice cream with Zsophi (Sophia) was delightful. I met her at the pencil store. (The actually name, I just figured up, is the bastardized Hungarian phonetic spelling of the English phrase "Paper and Eraser Attic." It looks something like "pápir-éraysir-éytik.") We walked to a nearby cafe. She answered my questions about Heves. She was born in Eger, but has lived here for the past 21 years. She said wonderful things about nearby Eger, and repeatedly mentioned her boyfriend in Tiszafüred. She liked speaking English, and frankly I liked listening. We laughed, though, when I pulled the Hungarian word "var" out of my head before she could remember the English equivalent, "castle."

Finally, in other news, I have realized that my home does not have a frying pan, a spatula, freezer or many other essentials in the Jeremy-Cooking-Plan.