October 2010: Arrival into Budapest
I've made it!!! After traveling for a harrowing 26 hours!!! I arrived Tuesday night Hungarian time and stayed at a temporary apartment for two nights. Tonight will officially be my first night in my new home which I love! Gergo (my Regional Coordinator) took me all around the city searching for the perfect home yesterday. My permanent residence is now a flat on the very top floor of a 5 story building with a balcony peaking above the other roofs of the beautifully serene Budapest. All that is missing is a view of the river.
On top of this perfect apartment, my landlord is amazing. He came and helped me move in, stayed and helped me clean, and then took me out to lunch! Him and his wife lived in this apartment for 3 years and the place is artfully decorated by his wife who is a painter.
After unpacking, I took a trip to Ikea all by myself on the public metro system. It never occurred to me how difficult shopping at Ikea could be when you can't understand anything! Including the signs giving direction in the showroom, which caused me to circle around a couple of times. On top of that, this whole Hungarian currency is messing with my head big time. 187 HF to 1 dollar, that's some serious calculation for every purchase.
I tried Goulash for the first time today. It is basically beef stew! What is all the fuss about? I guess it makes sense to have that as a meal once the weather starts to get colder. Don't get me wrong, it is already freezing! I've been wearing two layers underneath my winter coat accompanied by scarfs and gloves. I don't know what I'm going to do once the real winter rolls around. Thank God for indoor heating!
October 2012: Hungarian Yoga
I went to my first Hungarian yoga class yesterday, a very interesting experience. While it was not the best yoga class ever, the teacher was impressively able to navigate between Hungarian, English, and Sanskrit and she was very cognizant of which student spoke which language.
On a completely different note, I met with the director of the organization I'll be working with today. The Romaversitad, a non profit seeking to provide scholarships and other resources for the minority Roma students in Hungary. A big part of the work that I'll be doing will consist of preparing these students for the English exam they must pass in order to graduate college. In preparing myself to work with them, I started googling resources on teaching TOEFL. The creators of TOEFL, which is the exam for international students wishing to pursue a degree in the United States, is none other than ETS. ETS writes the SAT, GREs, AP exams, PSAT, just to name a few. As a non profit, they work to "advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorousresearch." (or so says their website) Where are they getting their research from? And why this need to standardize everything? Last I heard the big buzz word in education was "Differentiate." Teachers were berated for not creating individualized lesson plans that would teach to the idiosyncratic learning needs of all the diverse students. So how can we possibly expect these vastly different individuals, having been educated with different teaching methods, to have their intelligence be defined by the exact same test?! And in the case of the TOEFL, it is this exact same test that commands and defines English Language Learners WORLD WIDE! Thats 7 continents, 194 (plus or minus) countries, and over 6,000 different language speakers. Does anyone else see the absurdity in all of this?
Thanksgiving in Budapest with Students of Romaversitas
It reached below zero degrees Celsius the other day and I am so glad for the warm sweaters my aunt sent me. The recent change in weather also helps provide insight into the drinking habits and love for goulash of the Hungarians. Warm soup and sweet brandy are about the only two things that help mitigate the situation.
Anyways, here are some pictures of Thanksgiving. I had to carry 12 pounds of turkey up 5 flights of stairs and still have 5 pounds sitting in my fridge. But all in all, it was a wonderful evening and everyone went home full and happy. Mission accomplished.
Christmas in Budapest and New Years in Montenegro with the Balkin Express
The Balkan Express…
The trip to Montenegro was one of those trips that came at the most unexpected yet perfect time. Because of planning and organizational mishaps, I had decided to cancel the trip to Montenegro all together and just stay in Budapest for New Years. In fact, on my first attempted to the train station, I had miscalculated the time and ended up missing my train by 4 minutes! I took it as a sign that maybe I should just cancel the trip. At the very last minute, I decided to go anyways and that was the right decision.
The first leg of the trip was an eight-hour train ride from Budapest to Belgrade, Serbia, which turned into a 12-hour train ride! Thankfully I met a crazy artificial intelligence student and who kept me mentally stimulated despite the four-hour delay.
The train from Belgrade to Sutomore, Montenegro turned into a 16 hour train ride with no food, water, and no place to exchange money. The only currency I had with me was Hungarian Forints, which isn’t really accepted anywhere else in the world. I had thought that I would be able to buy a train ticket on the train using Forints (since Hungary and Serbia are neighboring countries). Instead, with the language barrier, the ticket man just looked at me like I was crazy. I apologized and showed him my wallet, which only had credit cards and Forints and he then disappeared and came back minutes later with two police officers. Everyone else in the cart looked scared and worried and unsure of what might happen next. The policemen asked for my passport and started flipping through it over and over. When they discovered the city where my passport was issued, which was San Francisco, they stopped and ecstatically cried out “San Francisco, San Francisco.”Words were exchanged that I didn’t understand. They looked at me and smiled, returned my passport, and left. So the glorious city of San Francisco once again saved my life and saved me 20 Euros. Everyone in my cart laughed and motioned for me to thank God. Good old Serbian trains, unreliable and unorganized for the better.
Living at sea and learning to scuba dive
Alexandria
It has been months, countries, and some monumental events since I've last written. I am now in Dubai and have been here for the past month working as an English teacher at an Emirati military. Stay with me and I will bring you up to date.
Budapest came and left like a Shanghai bullet train and the 10 months in Europe left me with some life-long friends, relationships, some life lessons, two near death experiences, and an insatiable aching for more. I took a couple of trips while in Hungary including the ever-so dramatic trip to Egypt that ended with emergency evacuation and chartered flights to Greece. But before the life-threatening tanks driving down the streets, the never ending shots fired in the middle of the night, and the empty aisles at grocery stores, Egypt was a magical place where mystical places like Abu Simbel meets Middle Eastern warmth and hospitality. On my last night in Alexandria, I had met a random stranger, who ended up driving me to the bus station, taking me to his favorite dessert shop before hand, and refusing to accept my money for my bus ticket which he bought for me. When I told him how speechless I was for his kindness, he looked at me with a matter-of-fact expression and said: "But if I ever visited American, wouldn't the people there show the same kindness towards me?"
Busu festival in Hungary
me and my Busu
the busu parade
Burning of winter
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