half way

I haven't been writing much lately, I know. I think it's because I haven't been having that many crazy adventures- I few trips to Budapest (not so exciting now that I know the bus schedule, and how to get almost everywhere in the city by Metro and bus from where my bus drops me) I meet the same people when I go- other CETPers and the occasional ex-Pat who they have met. We go to the same places- Andrew's favourite restaurant where I can get a GREEN salad with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes (going to Budapest is like a little trip home to the US) and then we go to Szimpla and drink beer or hot wine and I over-hear more English then I have heard in weeks. There isn't anything wrong with this routine- I enjoy it, it's just not as exciting to write about as walking for hours because you can't find the Italy-Slovenia border.
School is also falling into a routine, I no longer have to ask where room 14 is (although I do sometimes find myself opening the door to a class only to find there is another teacher teaching a different class in there- but that has much more to do with the spontaneous room changes that occur so seamlessly that every student knows it happened and yet no one manages to tell me.) I know all of my student's names now (although I still mix up Ádam and Erik at least twice a lesson.) Generally I have found myself to be falling into everything quite comfortably lately.

One of the reasons I started thinking about this- reflecting a bit if you will- has to do with my most recent trip to Budapest. The first semester is over and the second is beginning and while that mostly means that I have new room assignments and a wicked long Thursday, it also means that the CETP teachers that were only signed on for a semester have left. My good friend Becky (star of so many blog entries including the adventures of Slovenia) took her last torturous 3 hour bus ride to Budapest and flew home to Baltimore. This also means that a whole new crop of fresh American teachers flew in so Ian, Eve, Laura and Emily and I did the friendly thing and went to the city to meet them (actually we just wanted to scope out the new blood!) I was going to write about the new teachers but there is no way I can compete with Laura's excellent story so you'll just have to head to her blog for that one.

Mostly the departure of the first semester teachers and the arrival of the newbies gave me a chance to step back and look at where I was in my time line of Hungary- right smack in the middle. I listened to Becky reminisce about her time here and how she will miss her students (even if they can be little monsters) and I got to talk to the newbies, fresh and excited and eager to know how to say "thank you" in Hungarian and jump into teaching. I needed this. It reminded me how excited I was when I first got here and how even the little things- doing laundry, going grocery shopping and eating lunch were adventures and not just the routine chores that I tend to think of them as now. The teachers who left also helped me to realize that no matter how much I want to scream at and throw text books at my monster students, when I have to leave, I'll miss them- even Csaba (well that's wishful thinking...but maybe.)

So I may not be having a traveling adventure this weekend but I do have some dishes to do which has it's own "Hungarian quirks" (I have to run the bathtub to get hot water to come out of the kitchen sink.)