Hungary: March 19
Wednesday, March 19
What a day! We left the hotel at 7:10am, then took the tram to the bus to the school. The teacher who invited us had breakfast ready for us (a crescent shaped roll and a ham, hard boiled egg and pickle sandwich plus warm tea), but we only had about 5 minutes to eat it as we had to race to the classes.
We divided up into 2 groups and were introduced to students ranging from 5th to 9th grade and all levels of English proficiency. Our charge was to talk to them about ourselves, US traditions, especially holidays, teach them songs and interact with them as much as possible, in order to help their English conversational skills. Overall, between today and tomorrow we will have stood, talked and sung before 300 kids. Our students go them to sing songs like “Five Little Monkeys” and “I’m a Little Teapot” and the Hungarian children took to the songs and the motions. It was quite a sight.
The children were amazing as expected. They received us with open arms and gifts they had made, especially bookmarks, postcards and even cake. We had candy from the US for them so it was a win-win situation all the way around. They had many questions about favorite colors and favorite sports, and brothers and sisters and pets. We will post pictures after tomorrow’s session.
Lunch was a delicious vegetable soup, but dessert was even better as we were gifted with homemade donuts, very similar to the ones in the US, except that these had a dollop of jam on top. They were still hot off the Dutch oven, prepared by Eva, mother of Pet’er, one of the Debrecen church laymen. The donuts were unbelievable! I don’t know that anyone in the group would want to confess as to how many they ate, but no one ate just … 3.
The afternoon was a bit more relaxed as some worked on the roof of the container, whereas others either planted flowers, rested or worked on the irrigation system. Around 4pm, in bright sunshine and a driving breeze, it started snowing! I ran out of the house camera in hand and could see a few flakes dancing in the breeze, but it stopped as quickly as it started and the 8 or 9 flakes died before they hit the ground. Still kind of cool.
Same drill tomorrow and we’ll be here to tell the story.
