The Men of 8A

And I would be remiss if I didn't showcase the boys of 8A as well.

As you can see, they are just a little less enthusiastic, bubbly and deeeeeelightful than the ladies. Just a little.

They did a great job hosting the Millionaire contest, even if they weren't quite as into the singing and dancing.

(Marci, Bari, Sandor, Akos, Dani, Viktor)

The Gals of 8A

Etelka and some of the enchanting girls of class 8A, both English and German halves, sing a Hungarian folk song for my parents. (Cintia, Anna - German, Dori, Marica, Szandi, Anna)

This is immediately after, of course, my parents won 640,000,000 forints in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire, American-Tourist-in-Hungary Version."

"Legyen Ön is Milliomos!"

Saturday Night Fever

Here it is folks: a cloudy picture, courtesy of the hard work and technological prowess of both panziodisco.hu and blogspot.com, teaming up to bring you a indisputable visual evidence of Jeremy discoing the night away and talking to two Hungarian girls... :-)

Szia Zita, hogy vagy?

The Great Parental Visit

Another sparkling snowfall in progress in Heves! Whether Olympic-timed, or not, I hope the snow holds out long enough for my parents visit!

They spent last weekend at the Olympics. I haven't heard much, as they've most certainly been having too much fun to become an ex-pat addicted to the connections of the internet. From what I hear, though, my dad is wandering around meeting random strangers. Harpswell and Kat wouldn't be surprised, as I spent the trip to Greece the same way.

Watching the Olympics here has been good, a nice respite from MTV, even if winter sports do get more play time in Europe anyways. Eurosport has spectacular coverage, but it's dubbed into Hungarian. I have to put my head real close to the speaker and try to catch the English in the background. They have none of the human-interest stories and aren't into the eye-catching fact-explaining graphics that I'm used to back home, I think they have a saying "Let the sport be the star."

Tomorrow my parents arrive in Budapest. Eva and I will meet them at the airport. After two days of exploring Budapest, we'll head upstream to Szentendre. I haven't been that direction yet, but the books say it's nice. And then later Monday, the hottest destination on everyone's list: Heves!

The all-purpose "Kinderhaus" across the iced-over road from me is apparently the town's hotel in addition to after-school program, ski-storage building, blood-donation-center and weekend-disco-palace. Agi's arranged for them to spend two nights there. They'll tour Eger for a day, Etelka and I will take them wine-tasting at the Kohari Vinyard, and then we'll cap off the whirlwind tour with a day at school on Wednesday. The highlight will no doubt be lunch in the canteen.

8A has been hard at work in anticipation of their arrival. This week and last they've created the American-tourist version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" I hope I'm not giving anything away, but the first clue, 5,000 forints, is:

Who is Jeremy?
a. policeman
b. writer
c. the best English teacher
d. actor

Oh, what adorable little people!

The chief concern, of course, is that the tourist programme works out as planned. Additional concerns, though, include the fact that I have become a social and emotional recluse in the past six months and might struggle with the normalization of a return to having a family.

TISZA-UJ-TOPIA!

Imagine a land, a glorious place, created from scratch in the 1960s to house, entertain and educate the thousands of proletariats needed to man three brand-new mega-industrial-plants.

Welcome to Tiszaújváros!

Way back in the day, not so long ago, when they first planned the foremost Hungarian planned city, they called it Leninvaros -- think Leninville or Lenin City. But these days, since 1989, the city's more casually know as Tiszaujvaros, literally the New City on the Tisza River.

I've been there four times now, it's become my utopia of sorts. Compared to Heves, it is deserving of some heavenly title. There's a Tesco, and when you live like we live, you're willing to deal with the negatives of Hungary's Wal-Mart. There's a restaurant, fabulously Italian with an owner who even dabbles in English. There's an amazing sports complex, home to pools, tracks, courts, lanes, gyms, you name it! There's a world-class thermal bath, more modern than any I've seen. And there's Camelot, our first taste of the Hungarian disco scene. This city's got it all, along tree-lined streets that follow nice grids, I suppose that's why we keep coming back.

Now some, like Emily, might find a bit of fault in the city. There's a tinge of Stalinistic sameness in each block. And the cement apartment complexes leave something to be desired by our funny Western standards. And you might even be able to call it a fiction, a bit of something carved out of where there used to be nothing. I guess that's why I like it.

But this time around, there was a new highlight. Liz has long claimed that, along with a bowling alley, Tiszaujvaros has a skating rink. The incredulous part? It's open-air, but open year-round, or so Liz asserted.

After a long walk (she didn't know exactly where it was), we saw it smack-dab in the middle of one of the giant industrial plants: a perfect little skating rink. We merrily paid our entrance fee and rental fee, laced up our blatantly-communist, metrically-sized ice skates, and hit the ice.

Here we were, simply skating around a rink in an endless circle, with smiles on our face. I was celebrating winter for the first time in Hungary. The previous two months had been a struggle of survival, the beating back cold in whatever manner possible, not the all-out embrace of winter-time fun. I missed that. No broomball. No snowball fights. No snowshoeing. Not even any ice-fishing. Winter hadn't been fun, the fun it can be, just a challenge, up until we hit the ice.

And then a new song came on the radio. The Chariots of Fire. I don't remember much from 1984 and 1985. Those years don't even exist in the worlds of most of the kids I talk to in the Hevesi discos. But one of the earliest, brightest memories of my childhood is The Chariots of Fire. And loving it. Everytime I heard it, I ran around the coffee table. That's a big lap for a 4-year-old running prodigy.

Alight with memories and happiness and youthfulness, I did the only thing that made sense: I started to interpretative ice dance. If the Hungarian were caught off guard, the Americans weren't. As soon as I spun my scarf off and began twirling it around my body and trailing it behind my fluttering skating, they got out their cameras.

Ba-bum-bum-bum-bah-bum! I held my hands above my head in grand triumph.

Do-do-doo-doo-doooooo-do-do! I stretched them out as i lifted a leg behind my body.

Ba-bum-bum-bum-bah-bum! I glided across the ice, body arched.

Do-do-doo-doo-doooooo-do-do! I slid on one knee to a final, triumphant stop.

As the music faded, I crumpled to the ice in feigned death, just like they do in the Olympics.

Luckily, Magyarorszag was the next song on the radio and brought me back to life.

You, Too?

Before I even left the house this morning, Beautiful Day was pulsing through my mind. It's a song that'll curse through my veins and bubble out my lips in spontaneous song any time I'm confronted with a day too wonderful to resist. Even a little ray of sunshine, in these gloomy parts, can start the tune.

This morning it was snow. Beautiful, fresh snow. It was snowing when I went to bed, and by morning, Heves was the proud recipient of 4-6 inches of snowfall, and the town was wearing it as proudly as a fine new suit. I walked to school early, at 7, before most people had shovelled, or swept, their sidewalks. It was delightfully wintery, just the way I like it back home.

And on my morning Internet check -- a favorite activity now that the school decided on two computers in the teachers' office -- I saw that U2 had won big at the previous night's Grammy Awards. I smiled. I like U2. I kind of wish I was Bono.

One of the favorite questions in these parts, asked right after "Have you got a girlfriend," "What do you think of the Hungarian girls," and "When should the territorial integrity of the pre-Trianon Big Hungary be restored?" is "What's your favorite kind of music?" It's a preferred prompt presumably for the introductory level of vocabulary, rather than its ability to start a real conversation abroad.

Before coming to Hungary, I'd never really known what to say. When I realized, sometime back in high school, that it probably wasn't cool that I dug oldies, I learned to hide my tastes behind the shrouds available to one when they work around a question. In college, as all my friends turned to Tupac and other rappers, I wasn't so sure that pop music, the contemporary boy bands notwithstanding, wasn't so bad. The answer to the music question became longer, and less meaningful.

But here in Europe, far from WIXX, I've learned that I do have musical preferences: it must be in English (although Die Toten Hosen and Juli are working their way into my heart) and it must be some sort of rock and roll. Within that range, I'll take just about anything!

To make it easier for the audience, palpable to the introductory language user, I usually boil down my response to something along the lines, "I like English rock and roll like U2 and Green Day." End of sentence, end of story. I'm content in the answer. It conveys that I don't like the darn technoey-housey-Euroey-discoey-dance music they insist on playing around here and it is a good end point in a conversation I don't want to continue.

So I took great pleasure when my music (rather than anything else, even if Eurodance hits weren't up for the awards), won at the Grammys. And apparently, the school was excited too.

About twice a week, during the 30-minute lunch break between the fourth and fifth lessons, loud music pulsates through the entire school. I have no idea who starts it, who controls it, or who approves this madness, but the music ricochetes (rikoshays, ricosheyes, ricoshetes, ricocheyes...?) off of every hard surface. The school moves to its pulsation. Often times its in English. I smile. I know that the sorry half of the students who do not pay attention in my class will never know what the songs mean.

And today, as if to celebrate and commemorate the triumph of my music over anything else that these kids might love, it was "With or Without You." U2 wins the best album Grammy and Heves High marks the occasion with a song from 1987's Joshua Tree. Right on, kids.

This song is from the same time period as Seconds! It from the same compilation disc as New Years Day! Seconds sings of nuclear war. Seconds sings of east and west, I am in that east! Unlike dismantling atomic bombs, Bono and friends were singing of the dangers of those relics. And New Year's Day was inspired in part by the Polish communist regime's crackdown in December 1981 on the freedom-fighting Solidarity trade union. My school, my apartment, my life would have been controlled by a communist regime in this same place back then!

The irrelevant tribute, though, is a song that has haunted -- a vaguely bittersweet brand of haunting -- me for almost as long.

m.t.c.

...in the palm of his hand...

I have four grandmothers.

Simply math would indicate that it's difficult, or some other form of abnormal, to have four grandmothers. I'm comfortable blaming most of the tangle on Okauchee. I handled the abnormality as a child by embracing only some of the options available to me.

I love two of my grandmothers and both are in the process of dying.

As much as I wish I was privy to my unleashed imagination, I don't usually remember my dreams. But last night, or the other night, or any night that isn't this moment of sunshine, I remembered more dreams than most nights.

A face-less grandmother, one of the two, had died.

In the first dream, I was back home. It was summer, my family and I were outside, surrounded my a fence. Mom and Megan were largely emotionless. But my dad and I were wailing. Gertie, who helped to raise him back in the years when the now-94-year-old still loved to fish, had been so important to who he became, that he was reduced to sobs. I could understand why he was crying, so I was consumed by convulsions of tears as well.

The second dream was different, I was here in Hungary, left alone thousands of miles away to deal with the loss of a grandmother. This time it could have been Elaine, an 86-year-old who could deal sheepshead or talk Robin Yount with the best of them, all while pouring her Milwaukee's Best into a tall, thin glass.

In the dream, I did the only thing that made sense, apparently. I went to visit the oldest person I know in Heves, a speckled old lady named Barbara who happens to speak English. (I saw her again walking in to the library today, she handed me a piece of paper with her address on it because I still haven't made good on my December promise to visit her.) I asked Barbara for permission to touch the oldest piece of cloth that her family owned. I don't remember what it was, but the moment helped me. I thought, smiled, and walked away.

My goodbyes have already been said to both grandmothers, I won't get a second chance.

They're special grandmothers. For more than just teaching me Kings-in-the-Corner and cribbage. For more than just Christmas presents and happy memories. For more than just Bob Uecker's April-Sunday-1987 Home-Rome-Call. For more than just how they raised my parents and lived their lives.

They lived through amazing times: wars and depressions and peace and prosperity. They have amazing stories I will never hear again. And in my family's history -- I'm probably a 5th or 6th generation American at best -- they were the last to know, to learn from, the brave souls who carried the names Jewett or Robinson or Lewis or Klauck or Olson across the Atlantic as they ventured to America.

The German families and the Irish families and who-knows-what-other-kinds of families, intent on carving out a new life for themselves and their children, who migrated to a new land of promise. I get to live that life of promise, such is the good fortune of my inheritance. It means I even have the chance to live back in those "old countries," if only for a few seasons.

But I feel a sad loss, such a bittersweet loss, as I think back on my grandmothers. My family is losing so many stories, left untold or unremembered, especially those of how we came to be so lucky.

My prayers wouldn't do much good, I fear, but I trust that theirs will be well-received.

Coretta Scott King

I had a realization today.

The day that Coretta Scott King passed away.

It was saddening.

It was shocking.

It wasn't unexpected.

I teach at what is, in effect, a segregated school.

The Olympic Spirit

Well folks, I've got a real treat for you. Up next?

In the tradition of epic Olympic stories (there was a time, after all, when I was an Olympian) my dad is traveling across the seas for his sake and for yours. The instigator behind my blog, he became inspired to write his own, or perhaps given no choice.

So, for the next sixteen days and nights -- or really as long as his drive to write lasts -- everyone's favorite Earl will be treating you well with "olympic trekker, capturing the olympic spirit, torino 2006."

(Apparently he's not as addicted to attention and feeling haughtily self-important like I am, and hasn't put a counter online...)

February Footnotes

A Hevesi Groundhog (amerikai mormota) would not have seen his shadow on Thursday. That continues the sorry pattern of the sun refusing to shine except on rare occasions. At least an early spring will not go unappreciated.

Muddy footprints in my house today outed an intruder. The culprit? A maintenance man. Apparently my September/October conversation with Agi worked its way through the appropriate channels and someone had come to see about "the shower that makes a flood every morning, like in New Orleans." (This, of course, was a conversation attempted in German that I eventually gave up on.) I am the proud owner now of a couple new tiles. I will be able to walk on them on Saturday, according to a Hungarian note lying on top of them.

The former cute-student-teacher has become the new cute-young-English-teacher. It's funny to watch what differences a new young lady can make in the inner-workings of male teachers in the staff room.

Class 8A has begun each English lesson with the "Good Morning Song" since October. We've now added to their repritoire. reperitoire. repretiore? rep-rih-twar. The eleven 13/14-year-olds now end their 45-minute lesson with the Beatles "Hello Goodbye." The paradoxical lyrics are some of Gaines' favorite here in Hungary, as the local folk use the word "hello" to say goodbye.

And a funny thing has happened...beginning to find happiness in Heves. This weekend will mark my third in a row in the little burg of 10,000. We'll see if Farsang, their take on Mardi Gras, is a time well spent in this little village.

I've Been Pyramidedededed!

All week, my good friend Victor's been pestering me about a woman who wants to meet me. No sweat, I assured him, figuring that she either just wanted to meet a real live American, had some weird document she wanted me to proofread, or potentially even a beautiful daughter to pawn off on me.

And today we finally arranged to meet this gal, a friend of his mother's, and Victor was set to do the translating. She showed up and we shook hands, she looked like a normal 50-ish year-old Hungarian woman. Most of them, though, don't carry a little tote-bag with them.

The way that Victor translated the very first sentence, I sensed we were in trouble. "Have you got 15 or 20 minutes?" I didn't answer, but curled my eyebrows.

She whipped out a set of laminated posters, and suddenly it made sense. Aha, these must be visual aids I could use in the classroom! But she plowed through that assumption when she began to talk for three minutes straight in Hungarian. Quixtar this, Amway that. She paused with a smile, to give Victor space to translate. Victor looked at me. "I am not going to translate this all for you," he said, apologetically. We both feared what was coming. I nodded, "We don't even have to stay, dude, unless you want me to be polite." He did, unfortunately.

She blabbed on and on, detailing in wonderful pictorial form the intricacies of a pyramid scheme. Except this one pays the bottom rung first, she said with great pride, believing every word of what she was saying, no doubt. She went on and on and on with her description. During the translation, Victor and I discussed the Super Bowl.

My first instinct was to sit back, shake my head and wonder "Why me?"

The second was to shake her hand, smile, and run. Fast.

The third was to look up Amway and Quixtar on the Internet.

Turns out Amway isn't a pyramid scheme, at least according to a split Supreme Court decision. The higher-ups make money mostly by selling recommended "how-to" material to the lower-downs. They then proceed to spend that money to support ultra-evangelical and Republican schemes...sweet. This dumbo Hungarian woman who wants cheaper shampoo and a bit of side-income is propping up Bush and Cheney. Awesome...