Thursday, September 27, 2007
Happy Anniversary
At 10PM it's far past my teacher bedtime and I am too tired for a substantial post. Only, today while dating my lesson logs I realized that the 27th was my one month anniversary with Hungary and it seems fitting that I write something short here. A month ago today I landed in Budapest, excited and terrified. Living alone in a foreign country is full of ups and downs, but I have to say that if I could have taken a peek at my day to day here in Szentes, I think I would have been much less nervous as that plane landed.
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3 comments:
Hi Paul --
Congrats on making it to the one-month mark. Sounds like you've settled in quite nicely, even if the routine isn't exactly thrilling. (Welcome to the world of teaching, land of not-thrilling routines!)
I'm sure that most of your students do appreciate that you're making them do something. I always feel like a slave driver, but then on my student evaluations, it seems they don't actually view me as such. Basically, I give them as much work as I can stand to grade! And, yeah, I find myself resenting that I work so much harder than the majority of my students.
It's gotten now, though, that when I get an illegible paper or one typed single-spaced, I just hand it right back to the student and tell them to do it over. Dammit, I know for a fact I'll spend more time correcting it than they did in producing it.
My advice is just pace yourself -- do what your conscience dictates, but don't get too worked up about whether you've doing "too much" or "too little." The weirdest things (usually unintentional) will inspire students or get them thinking. It's sort of depressing that serendipity plays such a huge role in teaching, but it does.
Sorry about the lack of varied food, but I think I could have seen that one coming, at least in smaller towns (i.e., anywhere outside Budapest). Experiences with Russian friends has taught me that the majority of them view ethnic food suspiciously and that they seem to have an endless appetite for food that I think is dull and repetitive ("variations on a theme of potatoes and sour cream").
Hopefully, you and Taylor will find some good places to buy at least the ingredients for a few ethnic splurges.
Here's a link to photos I took at the National Book Festival on Saturday. Standing ten feet from Ken Burns while he did a C-Span interview was a huge thrill for me. ("You know you're a geek when...") -
www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/360592/
(Sorry, can't get the HTML for that link to work -- you'll have to cut and paste.)
Yay! One month closer to coming home!!
I have nothing great to post, but I wanted to give a virtual wave. A year ago, you and I were in Portland. I'm still considering it as a potential future home. You should come. We could eat good, cheap Indian food and smell some roses.
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