December 6, 2010: Miklós Nap (Santa Claus Day)

December 6, 2010: When I arrived at school, I found some candy in my mailbox and on my desk. I guess that I must have been good this year after all so that Miklós did leave me some gifts. And throughout the day I could see that students had exchanged gifts with each other. One boy received a DVD of a slasher movie -- something I'm sure anyone would want to see to celebrate Christmas!


However, when it came to classes, I'm afraid the students really didn't have their minds on their studies. One thing I did start doing and will continue to do is have the students discuss a thought provoking statement at the beginning of each class. This seemed to work in the three classes that I tried it out on today. I actually got them to present opposing views on the statement. (No, I'm not revealing what the topic is since three of the classes have not been presented with the statement yet and I don't want to spoil the surprise.)


After school I had my Hungarian lesson. I've finally reached the point where I can repeat a long sentence fairly easily. I may not understand what the entire sentence means, but I can feel improvement. I must admit that Hungarian is the most difficult language I have learned to date. Learning Malaysian, Korean, and Chinese were all a piece of cake compared to Hungarian -- it seems there are always exceptions to the patterns of speech I'm learning, and I'm no where near being able to conduct the simplest of conversations. I can, however, get around in the market buying food. As I've said before, I go to the same vegetable and meat stands and the sellers have sort of gotten to know me and are patient with me when I speak Hungarian. We'll see how things proceed. I'm still trying hard to learn the dialog that my students wrote for me several weeks ago, but I'm afraid the last couple sentences of that dialog are too complex for me ("I'll stand in line for the movie box office because there are a lot of people today." which translates to "Addig en elmegyek, sorba allok a jegypenztarnal, mert ma nagyon sokan vannak!" See what I mean?) Maybe by the time I'm finished, I can at least speak a few sentences!