February 16, 2011: Poetry Contest Finals

February 16, 2011: In class we've been studying different foods and the students mentioned Hungarian style donuts. Since I had never eaten a Hungarian donut before, one of the students brought in a container full of Hungarian donuts that his grandmother had baked the night before. I took them home for dessert last night and could not stop after eating only one. They were delicious! From what I could taste, Hungarian donuts are like large American donut holes, and the ones I ate last night were covered with chocolate or chopped nuts. I look forward to having some tonight for dessert!

This morning I woke up to snow! I couldn't believe it especially after having had several days where the weather was almost warm enough to go without a jacket. We'll see how long this lasts.

Today was the final round of the poetry competition. Ujpest High School was the host of this event and four schools sent their top poetry reciters for this annual poetry reading that has been going on since 1994. I served as the host of the event. I was given a script of the program and the Hungarian names of the schools and judges were provided to me minutes before the contest began. Nothing like having to learn how to read foreign names minutes before I was to be filmed by a TV camera! At any rate, things went fine. First on the agenda were the recitation of two English poems by two students at a nearby primary school. I'd say the age of these kids was around ten, and boy did they do a great job reciting fairly lengthy poems! And these weren't poems such as "Hickery Dickery Dock" or "Little Miss Muffett"; they were rather mature poems for kids to be reciting. 

After that the eighteen contestants came up and recited their "non compulsory" poems. Following that, there was a break where everyone had biscuits, candy, and tea. Then the contest resumed with another primary school student reciting a poem and after that the contestants recited the compulsory poem. I then announced that the judges needed some time to determine the winner and so we adjourned for more refreshments. Then I turned the event over to the chief judge who made some comments about the contest and presented the winners with their awards.

Immediately following the contest, Fekete Kati invited the UMSZKI staff to her office where she served some wine and champagne. It was fun to interact socially with my colleagues and we stayed and laughed for a couple hours before I made my way home. I also saw the video of the waka waka dance that we had danced several weeks ago at the UMSZKI Ribbon Ceremony. When I get my copy, I'll be attaching it to my blog so you can see what it really looked like up close. I also learned that by popular demand, we will be performing the waka waka before the entire school on April 15th. Ruth will be here then so she will be witnessing this live. Stay tuned.