September 16, 2010: Opening a bank account

September 16, 2010: Classes were par for the course today. I started with only half the 9E class 2 students (the others were taking a mandatory exam), so the class went smoothly for a change. This class definitely needs more patience on my part since their English skills are very limited, but I think they'll make it with plenty of work. For the intermediate students, I found I had some time to spare at the end of class so I used the time to just talk with them by first asking them questions from the dialogs we learned for their own situations. Then I opened it up to questions they have about me. The first question: "Why haven't you updated your blog for several days?" I guess that sort of tells me which students have been reading my blog – mystery solved. Other questions asked of me ranged from my favorite football team (Ohio State Buckeyes of course), what I do for hobbies, etc.

After I had finished teaching my four classes, I had to stick around school so Kati and I could go to the bank to open my banking account. I used part of my wait time to go to the Ujpest market to buy food for this evening's dinner. Shopping is getting easier to do, and my numbers are coming along.

Going to the bank was a real adventure. The bank has a similar numbering system to the visa and insurance departments where the numbers skip all over the place, so it's anyone's guess as to when your number is going to be called. A short wait and we were speaking to the bank attendant to open my account. If you think that the number of pages at the insurance department is great, wait until you open a bank account in Hungary! We sat with the patient attendant for about two hours filling in form after form. I signed my signature over twenty times – I stopped counting after 18. Hungarian institutions don't believe in initials so it was my full signature every time. By the time we had finished, the attendant had stapled at least eight packets of paper together: a stack of papers for the account, a stack of papers for on-line banking, a stack of papers for the 50 forints (~ 20 cents) per month for paying the bank to send me an SMS every time money is withdrawn from my account (so that if I get a call when I didn't withdraw money I'd be notified), etc. I'm even signed up for a 150 forint (~60 cents) per month charge for a 1 million forint life insurance policy with this account. After a while, I stopped asking Kati what the forms were that I was signing – I just wanted it over with! However, most of the work was done by the banking attendant who seemed to enjoy her job. This left time for Kati and Balazs (one of Kati's students from two years ago who joined us "for fun") to talk. I learned that the retirement age for women is different than that for men. I learned that the retirement age has increased by five years in the past five years (so that anyone hoping to have retired in ten years from 2005 still has to wait ten years from now to retire!) I learned that the average age of death for men is the late sixties because after retirement, men seem to have little to live for. Kati said that until the last year or so, Hungary had the highest percentage of suicides in the world; they are now down to number two or three. And of course, my hunch about death due to cancer (there really are a lot of smokers in Hungary) and drinking is high as well. Of course the recession in Hungary's economy hasn't helped things around here and because of poor economic decisions, many people lost their homes when the recession hit. Things are definitely not pretty here economically, and it's anyone's guess as to how the new government will fare in improving the economy. Hungarians are keeping their fingers crossed.

After the bank, I returned home and cooked dinner and am about to open the last of the two bags of things the teachers gave me for housekeeping. It's Christmas in September this year.

Post note: If you think that signing your name 20 plus times was enough at the bank, when I went to school the next day, I had to sign my signature another nine times for my salary to be direct deposited into the bank!