September 2, 2010: Day 4 of school

September 2, 20120: Since I was up early, I ended up going to school in time to be there for period 1 at 7:45. Students in grade 9 began the day by taking a placement exam in English. The test consisted of selecting between two possible words to place in sentences, a true false portion, and other problems which enabled us graders to easily grade the test using an answer key. (I would have missed one of the questions myself: 

   Select between one of the two provided words in the sentence "Children look forward to
   eating food at/on Easter." 

The correct answer was "at" because in Hungary Easter is celebrated on Sunday and Monday denoting a time period, whereas in the US we would have selected the word "on" because Easter is only on Sunday. Live and learn.)  

The students had two periods to take the test and the plan for period three was for us teachers to grade the tests and then partition the students into one of three groups: beginner, pre-intermediate, and intermediate. Because of the number of problems on the test, when we ordered the students by the results of the tests, it turned out that in some instances, a student placed in the beginner's group was only one question short of being placed in the pre-intermediate group, etc. But a process had to be established to determine who was in which group and this was the best we could do. So, the groups were formed.

At the end of period 2, Jermendi Andi, the lead English teacher for 9C informed me that I should be  prepared to teach the Intermediate English group for period 4. However, as it turned out, there wasn't enough time to complete grading the placement exams let alone decide who was in what group, so instead of my teaching the Intermediate English group, two of the other English teachers completed grading the placement exams in the classroom while I introduced myself to the entire class and tried to elicit questions about who I am, where I'm from, etc. Let me tell you that that was one of the most quiet sessions I've every led! I told the boys that I am from California and asked what they knew about California. One boy told me that it was a city in the US; another said that it was located in the southwest; and when I asked why California was famous, one student volunteered that "Arnold was the leader." This got us talking a bit about Arnold, so I asked if they knew where Arnold was from -- "Serbia" one student answered, and eventually I got them to tell me that he was in "Terminator", etc. I told them a bit about my family, JPL, etc. and I might as well have been talking about differential equations for all that many of them understood. Although they appeared to understand little of what I said, I'm confident that with time, they will get the hang of learning English -- things will be just fine.

As for the rest of my day, all remaining class time I was supposed to have had with the students (even after they had been partitioned) was taken away from me by their form masters who seemed very concerned about establishing a good rapport with the boys rather than subject them to studying their first day. The form teachers seemed to be in over their heads with what had to be done and when it had to be done and ran from place to place like chickens with their heads cut off. 

Meanwhile, Andi, my office mate who is in the choir, brought me three Hungarian jazz CDs to listen to. I'm quite anxious to listen to them because they seem to contain the kind of jazz I'd enjoy hearing. (Post Note: the CDs are EXACTLY the kind of jazz I really enjoy!  I'm very pleased.)

A word about classroom keys: At the entrance to the school is an office manned by a lady  who monitors TV security cameras that have images around the school. She is also responsible for giving teachers keys to the various rooms. I learned how important and complex this job is: every classroom is locked after the teachers have finished teaching in a room and students have left it for their next classroom, and the teachers then return their keys to this key lady. Then all the teachers will ask for the key to the next classroom they are to teach in. Can you imagine the logjam that will ensue as every teacher in the school comes to this office with the key to the class he's/she's just completed and then request the key for his/her next classroom? I can't wait to see how this turns out. Not only that, but the school is huge and having to run to this office between classes will be a challenge!

Around 11:30, Gabor and I went to have lunch. Today's menu consisted of cold fruit soup (plums), a beef stew type mixture on rice, and a cookie with a dab of apricot jam plopped in the middle of it. Not bad. Then Gabor and I just talked since there seemed to be no classes for us to teach due to the form teachers taking our teaching slots away from us. However, later in the afternoon, I received a phone call from Fekete Kati informing me that my apartment was about done and that she would like to meet me this evening to take me to see it. So, I will return to Ujpest later this afternoon to finally view my apartment. Kati says that it's located a five minute walk from the school . Looking at the apartments that I pass every morning getting to school, this may mean that I'm in a cement block apartment structure that is about ten stories tall. We'll see.


Another observation about my school: teachers are permitted to smoke in their offices. Fortunately, none of my office mates smoke, so I'm protected from smoke in the confines of my office. However, walk about ten feet down the hall, and smoke fumes permeate the hall since the teachers who occupy the next faculty office down the hall smoke. Imagine what that's going to be like in the winter when the windows are closed.

Later: I returned from seeing my(?) apartment. I met Feket Kati at the school and it was about a ten minute walk to the apartment. It is located in a ten floor building, but the apartment is on the second floor.  There's even an elevator. The outside of the building looked a bit out of shape with rickety furniture cluttering some areas. We met the real estate agent and shortly thereafter, the owner came. The owner was relatively young (30+?) and had long stringy hair. He never cracked a smile as long as we talked with him. We went upstairs to see the apartment.  He first opened a metal gate that enclosed two neighboring apartments. We then went inside his apartment. It was very clean -- in fact it looked like the floors were replaced with tile in the hallway and pergo flooring in the living room and bedroom. The kitchen cupboards looked brand new and the closets, etc. appeared to be IKEA units. The kitchen is very small but it has a two burner gas stove, oven, a tiny refrigerator (not sure if there's a freezer or not), washing machine, and of course a sink. The bathroom is very clean (looks like new tile on the walls) and the toilet actually has a tank. The shower is open but I believe I could buy a bar so that I could hang a shower curtain to it. The living room has a dining table, a vacuum cleaner (not sure if it works), and a double bed in it. Then, there's a bonus room that is large enough for a single mattress!  That means I'm all set to even entertain company who happen to visit! The only problem with this is that the owner co owns the apartment with his brother and so he needs to talk with his brother to see if he wants to live in the apartment. I'll find out the answer to this tomorrow, so I'll know then if the apartment is mine.


Meanwhile, tomorrow promises to be the first day that the students will actually attend English lessons. Hope that things go as planned, but if the past four days are any indication, there are going to be more changes coming up. They say that after two weeks the schedule stabilizes. We'll see.

Another Hungarian curiosity: Hungarian computer keyboards don't put the letters in the same places that American computer keyboards do -- the "z" and the "y" have been reversed and the "0" is placed to the left of the "1". The "@" is entered by using a alt G key that's on the Hungarian keyboard. Fortunately I have my own computer here so I can quickly enter my blog contents!