Son of a bitch, man. Over the past four months I've had my ups and downs, some weekends where I was super lonely, and some days where I hated teaching. But in the past few weeks, I have officially fallen head-over-heels in love with my school and everyone in it.
It started a couple weeks after October break: I started getting into a "groove" of sorts, feeling better about my lessons, feeling like I was really, genuinely starting to click with my students, and feeling just more....relaxed at school. Thanksgiving threw me off a bit, as all weekend trips do (and it was amazing, by the way)...but I got right back into the swing of things pretty quickly. Then I spent the first weekend of December in Szeged visiting Jon with Hanna and Franny (it was ALL THREE of their birthdays that week!), which was a great time. I think spending time with them contributed to my overall sentimentality, because I like all three of them so danged much.
Anyhoo, so after that weekend, I've just been, I dunno, "in the zone!" I've really been enjoying all my time with my students, and in the past couple weeks there have been a whole bunch of ADORABLE school Christmas presentations. The first was called the "Renavato," which is reindeer-related...basically, the 11D's force the 9th-graders to do various embarassing stunts, all while they wear reindeer antlers. It was the funniest/most heartwarming thing I've ever seen. The funniest part was watching my 11th grade girls do a skanky hip-hop dance to "Soulja Boy," and I had to try my best to stifle my laughter....holy shit, a bunch of innocent Hungarian girls dancing to a song advising us to "Superman that HOOOO!" Hahahahahha!!! Brilliant! (One of my 13th grade girls saw me laughing and eventually convinced me to tell her the meaning of the song....and she said it was going to give her nightmares. No joke.) Oh, and at the beginning of the show, my 13th grade boy Aron came up to me and said, "So, Eliza...are you excited for the show?" I said, "yeah, it looks like it's gonna be good." And he responded, "Yeah, it's gonna be LEGEN.......wait for it.......keep waiting........DARY." That kid is gonna be president of something someday, mark my words.
Other highlights included watching my 9D's do a choreographed dance routine, have an eating contest, do a slow-motion fight scene, and do a skit where Zoli dressed like a woman, Martin was a gypsy, and Tam wore blackface. Amazing.
That's a photo of me at the top, with my little winners, the 9D's!
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This is a short anecdote, but a good one: a couple weeks ago, I walked into my 9D beginner class, and Zoli (not my teacher's son, but the other one) was running back to his seat from the chalkboard. He and the class had collaborated to write, "Eliza, we [need, love, miss] you!" on the board. They defended this charming piece of work by explaining, "We're practicing our adjectives!" (For all you dummies out there, please note that this is extra-cute, because those are verbs, not adjectives.) Anyway, this was just one of many times in the month of December where I've said "Awwwwwwww!" and told my students they're amazing.
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Move ahead a week: I was at my Hungarian lesson that Thursday morning, and Nori invited me to a holiday concert Saturday night, where Zoli, Tam, and some of my other students would dance and sing. (They're all in the local youth folk dance group, which I think is so great, because...they actually HAVE folk dance.) Anyway, of COURSE I accepted. I met Nori outside the Castle (because, again, they fucking HAVE a castle). Her husband is the head of the A/V department in the castle's auditorium, so we got to sit in the front row....next to the MAYOR! Oooooooh! (Check the Koszeg website...he's on the main page! I HUNG OUT WITH THAT GUY!) The performance was the cutest thing I've ever seen....I almost died from "overcuteness." The youngest group were
only about 5 or 6 years old, and couldn't handle any form of dance beyond holding hands and spinning in circles. Sometimes their teacher had to come onstage to herd them back to their places. Then my older kids (some girls, but mostly the boys) danced, and oh my god, watching them jump around in their traditional costumes...ahhhhh. I felt like a parent. A very, very illegitimate parent.(there they are in the photo!) After the concert was a reception, where I spent some time first with Nori and her husband (who, once again, forced me to drink a few shots of palinka!), and then with my boys. One of my 12th grade boys actually asked me to dance, which was terribly awkward but cute as well. Then they all showed me music on their ipods, and asked me about American movies I've seen, and so on. Nori told me she was leaving, and that her son and the other boys could walk me home. Oh, small towns. Apparently this is all totally normal for teachers to do, or at least the American teachers. Who knows. Oh, and before the night was through, I bitched out a couple of my boys for smoking. That was fun too. Here's me with my star folk-dancing students:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Next adorable moment. OK, this was odd: this Wednesday, I was walking to my class with 11D, when suddenly Sanyi, the tech guy, grabbed me and said I was needed in the Diszterem (auditorium). I was like, "oh, uhh...aright?" (thinking it would only take a second.) Turns out--SURPRISE!--today was the day that my school did a Skype video-conference with a guy from the US Embassy in Budapest. I had heard word about it, but nobody clued me in on when it was happening, or what the details were. Supposedly, upper-level students were preparing questions to ask the guy about the US. Long story short, I got thrown in there to "introduce the school" and host everything. It was slightly awkward....but I think I handled an auditorium full of nervous students AND teachers pretty well, and without having any time to get stage fright. The students were all really scared to read their questions (and the PA system was awful, so no one could understand the guy's answers), so I stayed behind the students while they asked them, just in case they needed backup. One of my "bad" 12th graders (who has been getting progressively better), asked shyly if he could sit next to me the whole time because he was so nervous. Awww.
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As for other heart-melting events, all week long I've been coming into classes to find myself presented with a gift of chocolate or an ornament, offered by one brave student on behalf of the whole class. Then they all say, "Boldog Karacsonyt, Miss Plous!" Ahhhhhhhhh. The best was my 13A's: both sections asked their other English teachers for help selecting Christmas poems to read in English, which they then recited to me, WITH CANDLES, in the dark in the Lieb room when I walked in. Then they sang Christmas carols in Hungarian, and gave me a hand-drawn card and candy. I seriously almost cried in class like 8 times this week.
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Today was the last day of class before break, on Saturday. For the first hour, I watched "Scrooged" with my 12D's (the class with the bad boys who are getting better), and one of them offered me a Christmas ornament from 12D. Again, adorable. Then I had class with my 9D beginners, by far the cutest class in the world, and we watched Mickey's Christmas Carol. Some of them gave me cards. I now have a collection going. My favorite is other-Zoli's, which says, and I quote:
"Dear Ms Plous,
Thanks for the teaching of this year. I appreciate your hard work with a crazy child like me. I'm sorry that I'm sometimes crazy. I'm lucky to have a teacher like you. I hope you are happy in the new year. I wish you the best of luck in the new year. I'm glad that I met with you. I promis to work harder. Have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year!
-Zoli"
Granted, most of that came from a template of appropriate phrases to use in a greeting card, but the "crazy" parts were 100% Zoli. That one is goin' on the fridge.
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One last tale of cuteness: my last class on Thursdays is 12C. This is a really small class, and their English isn't very good. The best student in class, by far, is Norbert...a really obedient, round-faced blond guy with glasses who--get this--isn't even actually in the class. He just goes for fun, to hang out with his friends. Anyway, the first thing is that on November 12, he presented me with a note and a bouqet of flowers for my nameday (Aliz, on the 13th). Then he read me a description of my character, which he wrote himself. The other students all stood up while he read it. Omg. Then, a couple weeks ago, I came into class and Norbi immediately showed me a beautiful Christmas tree he'd brought in, on a table in the corner. THEN he showed me that he had constructed a self-watering system, complete with a time-release....every 12 hours it gets watered for 1 minute. I'm pretty sure Norbert is a genius, but I don't know because he doesn't speak much English. Anyway, it's the coolest freaking thing I've ever seen.
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OK, well now that I've shared these little tidbits of my darling little students, I'd better get crackin' on packing! (ha.) I leave for London and Dublin tomorrow.....meeting Trash! Should be amazing, and by amazing I mean expensive. Boldog Karacsonyt, errrvrybody!
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