the weeks before Christmas...

I've been terrible lately about updating this thing, but that isn't to say that nothing exciting has happened. Since Thanksgiving I've made 2 trips to Budapest, 1 to Nyrígyháza and Debrecen, a school field tip to the theater in Eger and I even had a weekend here in Gyöngyös, with a visitor.

The first weekend of December I went to Budapest for the weekend and had a fabulous time enjoying the Christmas markets with Sarah- we shopped for gifts among the stalls set up in the square and drank hot wine. Later we met up with another of our American teacher friends, Andrew, as well as Sari Blum!- a friend and neighbor from back in Denver who has been studying in Rome- The four of us, along with another of Sari's friends, hit the town for dinner and then we showed our visitors the Budapest nightlife- we had a blast.

The next weekend I headed up to Nyrígyháza- a larger city on the far north eastern border, almost to Ukraine- where there are quite a a few American teachers from our program including Ian who hosted me for the weekend and showed me the sites of Nyrígyháza including yet another Christmas market in the main square as well as a few parades of his admiring high school students. We later met up with Andrew in Debrecen where we spent a nice afternoon/ evening. Debrecen is the second largest city in Hungary and has a very nice main square and large church that, at this time of year, is decorated with lights, filled with stalls selling Christmas trinkets, cookies and animal pelts- apparently a very big seller at Christmas markets all over the country. There was also a large Christmas tree and, of course, the Peruvian-Native-American-Musicians.
What? yes, everywhere you go, if there is a main square, a Christmas market, a train station or a large gathering of people, they will be there- this phenomenon is not limited to Hungary as I witnessed the same group or "franchise" (there are far too many of them for there to be just one- they're like mall Santas) on the streets of Berlin almost three years ago. They are a group of three or four men in full Native American dress, complete with full feather head-dresses that dance and sing "Native American Music" with wind pipes and drums- the Europeans flock around and buy their CDs- which are always prominently displayed on a table alongside their sound equipment. they call themselves Peruvian, dress like they are from the American West and sound like something I've never heard before- but certainly not like anything I've ever associated with Native American Music- but will now always associate with Eastern European Christmas.

Last weekend I decided to take a break from traveling and stay at home in Gyöngyös. Emily, another teacher who is living in Szolnok, came for a visit on Friday night and we did everything there is to do in Gyöngyös- walked around the main square and saw the lights, got pizza, saw a movie at the new cinema (something with Ashton Kutcher swimming- I think they just cut and pasted the scripts from White Squall, Top Gun, Water World and Titanic- "I'll never let go!") but it was in English so who cares. Next we hit the nightlife which involves a little bar owned by my seventh grade student's family- yes, it is a small town. A fantastic and relaxing weekend.

My attempt to stay home last weekend worked- but backfired only slightly in that I have left town twice already during the week! On Monday I took the afternoon bus to Budapest to buy train tickets for the upcoming Christmas/ New Years adventure in Slovenia- say it with me Ian and Becky- our new rallying cry to get through the last crazy weeks of class- SLOVENIA!!! Anyway...I figured I'd make the trip worth my time and met up with Andrew for dinner before heading back home.

Last night- Wednesday, I had another trip out of town- this time to Eger on a bus full of students to the theater to see the musical Oliver. There were 2 bus loads full of kids- only a handful of which were actually my students- and I wondered how effective I would be as a chaperone, keeping the kids quiet and well behaved on the bus and in the theater when most didn't know me and broken Hungarian is less then intimidating coming from an authority figure. But in the end the students were great and I even had a rush of my 6b girls fighting to sit next to me and my 8th grade girls introducing me to their dates- lots of fun. The performance itself was also a lot of fun, plenty of singing and dancing and great set pieces made it almost irrelevant that I couldn't understand a word being said- I did however catch "kerek sepen meg" "please, sir, I want some more".

Classes are over for the day and after a few Christmas games and a concert I'll be finished, then it's off to Slovenia on Saturday- more on that later.