June 15, 2011: Interesting Hungarian Observations

June 15, 2011: Kati gave me an interesting book to read entitled "A Country Full of Aliens - A Briton in Hungary" written by Colin Swatridge. Mr. Swatridge, a person of British descent, has lived and taught in Hungary for many years and during his stay he has observed a number of Hungarian traditions that are unusual to non natives like us living in Hungary. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and could resonate with most of it. In particular, many of these "idiosyncrasies" I've already communicated in my blog thus far, but there are a couple that Mr. Swatridge mentions that I've noticed but have yet to make note of in my blog:

• Buses: I have noticed on a number of occasions, in fact daily, that on buses, many Hungarians prefer to stand even if there are vacant seats available for them to sit in. It is not unusual for more people to be standing on a bus than are seated even with half the seats unused!
• Heating ducts: I have noticed from bus rides that there are stretches along the road where raised tubes seem to stretch from one building to another. These tubes are roughly 1 foot in diameter and often there are two of them that are parallel to each other. They stretch over fields, go over buildings and roads and seem to go on for hundreds of yards. I'd always wondered what their purpose was and then in his book, Mr. Swatridge mentioned that they are for sending heat from one building to the next since Hungarians are loathe to waste heat.
• Communication: Last week on the train coming home from Slovenia, three elderly women sat in my compartment and spent their whole trip from Szekesfehervar to Budapest talking. Although not unusual for three close friends to talk during the two hour trip, there were times when all three women were talking to each other simultaneously. I marveled at how they could communicate their thoughts while at the same instant listen to and comprehend what the other two ladies were saying. Mr. Swatridge commented about the same observation. As for his other comments on Hungarian communication, I have already made the same observations in previous blog entries, so I completely resonate with Mr. Swatridge's book about communication.

While we're on the subject of curiosities, perhaps one of the most telling topics that I went over with the students in my class had to do with school. I asked each student in turn to answer the following questions (plus some other ones that I will not be commenting on in this blog entry). Although I expected rather routine answers, I was surprised at how consistently the students in all of my classes answered them.

• Question: "If you could change one thing about UMSZKI, what would it be?" The answer that many students provided was for there to be more girls in the classes. Although this answer is not surprising what with the boys going through adolescence, in discussing this with another teacher, we wondered how the boys would have acted had there been more girls in the classes. We surmised that they would probably be "forced" to behave more gentlemanly in class and to not be so crude in their language. Perhaps had there been more girls in class, our job as teachers wouldn't have been so difficult in disciplining the students.
• Question: "What do you think about homework?" Of course I expected most students to tell me that they don't like it which was the norm. But in following this question up with each student, I was surprised to hear that in general they spend only 30 minutes doing the homework of ALL their subjects! In fact some of them confessed they did absolutely no homework at all because not all teachers check to see if they've done it or not.
• Question: "What do you like most about school?"  To my surprise, there were some boys who answered this question by beginning "If the school had a..." and then would finish their thought. When I responded that that didn't answer my question since I wanted to know what thing the school has now that they like best. Even after telling them this, they would respond "If the school had a... and I would again say that that didn't answer my question. After this the boys would communicate to each other in Hungarian (which I could understand) "Never mind. The teacher doesn't understand what his question means to us." I was rather surprised to receive such a comment but noted that there were other instances where the students presumed that I didn't understand the English language (e.g., when in another class I discussed "sports jackets", the students were picturing athletic warmup jackets instead of the more formal sports jackets that Americans wear for formal affairs, and when I tried to explain this to them, they would tell each other in Hungarian "Never mind. He doesn't know what a sports jacket is.")

At any rate, the book "A Country Full of Aliens" was certainly an entertaining book, one that I could identify with, and one that I could expand on with experiences and ideas of my own. I guess that's what this blog is all about. And, I wonder if any of my compatriots teaching English in Hungary resonate with the things I have said.