September 1, 2010: third day at school (first day with students present)

September 1, 2010: Today was the first day of school for the students. When I arrived at school, I saw all the boys hanging out, just like it would be in the US. You could sense a slight nervousness on their part. After making my way down the hallway, I first went into the teachers' lounge to see if I had any mail (I currently don't even have a mailbox so I guess I had no mail).

Teachers' room at Ujpesti High School

Then I went to my office and talked with my office mates. It turns out that Andi is in a choir that performs classical concerts. It must be a pretty talented choir because they're doing Beethoven's Mass in C Major, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, Handel's Messiah, and a work by Cherubini. When she found out I have an interest in music she invited me to join her choir. I didn't accept her invitation but said "We'll see". She also showed me the programs of a number of other classical music venues and I learned that Mahler's 1st, 4th, and 7th will be performed in the next two months at various concert halls here in Budapest! I guess this is an anniversary year for Mahler so they're doing a lot of concerts by him this year. She also showed me a pamphlet advertising a major wine festival at the Buda Castle that will take place September 8th through the 12th. Not only will wine be served but there are jazz, rock, and classical music concerts that will take place from the mid afternoon to 11:00 p.m. each day. There will also be Hungarian dancing. She then played on the internet what one of the jazz groups sounds like. Who would have thought that a quartet of cimbalon, Hungarian wooden flute, drum, and bass could produce such great jazz! Listen for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GN1-l0UPAI. She also played a number of other youtube videos for me to sample some of the other acts that will be performing. Sounds like something I'd really like to do!

After a little while, Bede Kati came rushing into the office and said, "Dick, the students would really like to meet you, so could you come to class with me to meet them?" I followed her and as I entered the room, they all stood to meet me (just like old days in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). Since they are all first year students, they were wearing white shirts/blouses for the first day. After today they will wear what any other teenager in the world wears -- tee's and jeans. They didn't say one word but seemed to give me their rapt attention. A little bit too quiet for me, so we'll see what I can do about that.

I returned to the office and waited until it was lunch time. Then Gabor and I went to eat our first lunch at the school. 

Ujpesti High School cafeteria

 As advertised, we were given string bean soup (not bad but a bit watery), cabbage salad (strong flavor of carraway seeds), buttery potatoes, and a pork dish that was tough pork stuffed with green peas, rice, and other things. The pork wasn't one of the best dishes I've tasted, but certainly worth the $1.50 I paid.

That's about it for today so far. I'll close with some other random observations:

• On many occasions, I've practically slammed into doors when entering/leaving buildings.  That's because doors appear to open going into buildings rather than out of them.
• The school is very reluctant to use electricity (just like Korea) and so most rooms are only lit by the light shining in through the windows. 
• Paper in schools is very precious. I don't recall if I said this in yesterday's blog entry, but the students are required to give each teacher a ream of paper at the beginning of the school year. This ream of paper is then given to the office who collects tax on it (i.e., the office confiscates 250 sheets of it to use for their purposes) and the teacher uses the remaining paper for printing assignments, etc. until they run out and then they get more paper from the students and the process starts all over again.
• Fekete Kati told me that in Hungary, 95% of all teachers are women.  However, in Ujpesti High School, there are 50% women and 50% men. Further, there are 1000 boys in Ujpesti and 35 girls. 

Later: After regrouping in the afternoon, I decided to take a walk along the Danube. As usual, I ended up at the central market and suddenly thought "I've been putting off making a major recipe until I move into my permanent apartment -- why?" So on the spot I decided to make some beef stroganoff. I headed to the market and bought half a kilo of the finest cut of beef in one of the stalls -- the butchers were quite proud of their beef. Then I went to my "regular" vegetable guy and bought some onions and mushrooms (He even allowed me to pick out the mushrooms I wanted!). 

On the way home I saw an English newspaper and decided that after almost three weeks living here, I'd better see what is going on in the world. I purchased this scrawny newspaper for $2.70! It had better have some noteworthy news in it for that price!  I guess they figure if you read English newspapers, you must have some money. 

Then I returned home to look up my beef stroganoff recipe to see what else I needed to buy at the nearby supermarket. I wrote my list including beef consomme, lemon, dry mustard, sour cream, noodles, oil, and flour. I then translated what words I could find in the English/Hungarian dictionary and off I went. I quickly found the sour cream (a staple of Hungarian food), lemon, noodles, and oil. I found what I thought was "liszt" (flour) but it said "Buzafinomliszt". Not wanting to end up with flour mixed with garlic or any other unexpected ingredient this time, I asked the deli lady where "liszt" was and she took me to the shelf where the Buzafinomliszt was. Dry mustard was a bit of a problem because all they had was the moist mustard and not dry mustard. I decided my recipe could forgo this ingredient. The deli lady also said they had no broth. Since I thought this would be an important ingredient I decided to select a Knorr's soup packet but couldn't tell which one was beef. I asked a lady shopper if she spoke English (she didn't) so I pointed to the Knorr's selections and said "tehan", the word for cow. To make sure she understood what I wanted I then went "Moo" and she searched and found some beef soup mixture for me. I was all set.

Back home I went and prepared what I hope will be my first attempt at a more complex recipe. It has only 25 more minutes to cook before I get to pour in the sour cream and test it out. We'll see.

Meanwhile, on my stroll, I took a picture of the Vigado, the concert hall that is being refurbished. They've removed the scaffolding so it's beginning to look more like the stately building it once was.

Vigado -- the Budapest concert hall under renovation

Later still: The beef stroganoff was okay -- if someone were to perform the blind taste test on it, they would say it was stroganoff, but I thought that the beef consomme substitute I used made it a bit salty. It was still good though. Read the newspaper while I ate and almost lost my appetite. There was a big article about a faceoff between Sarah Palin and Arianna Huffington. If either one of them makes it into politics in any significant way, I'm staying here!