will no one rid me of this meddlesome snow

It is one thing when it falls gently, hangs on the branches till midmorning, then drops and melts. Last Thursday was a wonderland. Then Friday took over, dropped another five inches, but not nicely, no. This was a bitter, angry snow that bit hard and wouldn't let go. It stayed on thru Saturday, made friends with the wind, and crusted over. Foot and vehicle traffic had no effect--it just got more and more solid, more and more slick.

It worked its way into my apartment, too. Not directly, but it soured my mood, made me edgy and fretful, fitful and jumpy. So now I have a ruined keyboard, one filled with the residue of tea and milk and sugar, one I cannot clean up because i need a micro phillips screwdriver to open up the base, which i have not.

Today only somewhat better; no spills, did make it to store before closing time (got there 3 min too late yesterday, another problem), and a least I have made some progress with the homework, which will probably take 8-10 hrs to finish grading.

22 periods, 15 different groups, x avg of 16 per class= 240 different papers at 2.5 minutes each equals 600 minutes = 10 hrs of grading = aaarrrggghhh.

and miles to go before I sleep

Winter Wonderland for a brief couple of hours

It snowed last night, the kind of snow I have never seen before. The air remained perfectly still, the temperature was hovering just under freezing, the humidity was high. The total snowfall must have been about three inches, and anything that hit on any kind of tree branch, telephone line, or fence wire stuck to it, so that even the thinnest tree branch, one even more slender than a standard pencil, had a 2" pile of snow on top of it. The entire landscape was white, almost blindout white. At the bus stop around 6:30 there were men shoveling the sidewalks, and I could tell by their efforts how heavy and water-logged the snow was.

As I entered the campus grounds of the gimnazium I could only shake my head in amazement at how incredibly lovely the grounds looked, smothered in a blanket that was so perfect it looked like it had jumped out of a Currier and Ives Hallmark Precious Moments painting by Kincade. I reached the English teachers' office on the second floor and looked out at the lake and across to the hills about 6/7 miles away: there was a slight opening in the clouds overhead and a pool of brightness sparked on a portion of the hill. Down on the lake, about a mile away, there were about 5,000 geese gathered at the edges of the ice sheet.

I had class at 8 AM; i took one last look at the scene and then we got immersed in Temple Grandin, the rights of animals, whether animals were only property or more than, the writing style of Grandin's article, PETA, confiscation of property by a socialist regime , abortion rights, justifications for war, and by the end of the period the temperature had warmed up and the snow had begun to drop off of the branches.

Now it late afternoon and all is brown water and sludge.

Do Anglophones Dream of Magar Phonecalls?

So in the dead of dreamland I am at a school function, a kind of picnic-outing when my mobile phone rings and I get a recorded message. In the dream I am aware of the background of what is going on so I am not surprised by the call: someone important is having a birthday soon and the idea is to create an aural birthday card with people recording themselves saying their names and then these spoken names will be the "signatures" on the aural card. So i know that the telephone message I just received says in effect "Please call the office and tell them you are calling to record your name for the birthday card," even if I didn't really understand the message as such. So in my dream I dial the number I am supposed to dial, and then someone answers speaking Hungarian, and I realize I have absolutely no way to explain to this person who I am and what I am doing. I remember being able to say UH UH UH a dozen times, then finally saying my name and "angolultanar" (English teacher) and then saying UH UH a few more times and then just hanging up.

A few moments later one of the people at the event speaks to me in English, and I glomm onto him to see if he can help me out. For some reason he is about 8 feet tall, and I have shrunk to about 5 feet, my attempt at conversation is like shouting up to the moon. I am trying to explain the concept of this card to him, but he is hung up on the idea that the phone calls have to be in some kind of special order--like a rank ordering of names. And I am trying to explain to him in English that, as far as birthday cards are concerned, it makes absolutely no difference in which order people sign their names, since the signatures appear in any configuration they please on the card: horizontal, slanted, vertical, and that there is no rank order of signatures. To illustrate, I grab a scrap piece of paper (something akin to a leftover post-it, only one of the rectangular kind, not a square one) and I fold it in half to make a sample birthday card, and proceed to scribble sample signatures onto it.

Just then my cell phone rings agai; it is someone from the school calling me back, using the caller ID from my previous call. This person has some English knowledge, and I explain that I was just trying to call to leave my name for the aural birthday card. Then the person says that there was a mistake, today is the 11th, and I am not supposed to call them to record until the 14th.

There was more detail to the dream, color, men (mostly unusually tall) women and children (lots of children), some kind of playground. All this happened after an earlier dream in which I was in the Army and was enrolled in some kind of training camp and my fellow conscripts and I knew we were going to be in trouble with the authorities because we were not lining up right...we were too close to each other.

So, there is no escape to dreamland; even there I am pursued by the demonic frustrations of everyday life.

men never ask for directions

Of course it helps if you can speak at least a few words in the language, which i cant. I spent about 45 minutes wandering around in circles trying to locate a gallery that was supposed to be only about 50 yards from a major grocery store. No luck. I had told one of my colleagues that I would try to meet her and her husband there at a concert of Irish music (hungarian musicians, irish music, yes). No such luck. And even if i had had the words available, i'm not sure i would have had any success. Is there a place around here called a gallery? it's supposed to be some kind of art gallery and there is apparently a concert going on there tonight. and it's supposed to be around here somewhere.

Yeah. Right.

Well, I at least got a good walk in. Now it's time to start grading homework, have a bite to eat, make some tea, and be productive.

6th period really sucks

I guess it is natural to the system, to any system. The day is close to over, students are hungry, they are anxious to catch the bus, get home, get lunch, decompress. The 1 o'clock class today was moody, bitchy, lethargic, desultory. I was afraid that 5th period would start out that way... it began with a couple of students (including one who is normally diligent) getting distracted over a new bracelet. But somehow things started to click, and they got the hang of what I was trying to get them to do, and they began to get into it a bit more, and then there was some real progress. I could see how the dynamic was working--they were in groups of five, and the stronger students were coaching the less strong ones, formulating English sentences, working over them, refining pronunciation, so that everyone in the group would put on a "good show."

Not so the sixth period, not so.

Though I did cajole them and remonstrate\

they did not respond.

Though I did model for them and beseech\

they were as those who were unaware.

Though I did shake and thunder as from on high\

they were as one who has seen it all.

And now, saith the Teacher, they shall see the wrath I have prepared\

for those who disdain my words,

Who listen not to the words of my lips nor the instructions of my mind.

They shall be as those who are dandelions.

The puff shall be puffed and the blow shall be blown\

And they shall scatter like the leaves before the wind

When the Quiz of the Teacher descends upon them

POP, like the corn in the hot pan.

an almost normal day

Soon, very soon, I promise myself VERY soon, I will figure out what the pattern of my classes is. I am all out of synch, thinking I have done X and Y with a group, when it turns out I did Q and Z with them instead. Which led to my introducing the phrase "egg on my face" to my 1 PM class today. No I had not gone over the poems with them, dammit, and I was so sure I had, what WAS I thinking?

I have to start keeping a diary of every class every day so that I can keep track. Well, I am making progress on the class lists, slowly starting to learn names, but it is hard if you see someone in class only once a week. A few people start to stand out. Student X (if you are reading this Student X, you , the one in 9A, yes > you! then pay attention and learn something for a change) is bright, cocky, a smart-ass , a know it all, and precisely the kind of student you want in your class if onlyyou can work things out so he becomes an asset to the class instead of just a pain in the asset. (Are you practicing your "W" sounds, Student X?? Do you want a Wiper for your car windshield, or a Viper? And you had better be able to say the difference clearly or I won't hear you right and you might end up very very dead (and that is VERY dead, not WARY dead). And Student Y in another class (I know he is reading this blog, he told me so) is another very bright person--eager to learn and a bit more helpful than Student X, he has a sense of group responsibility, acts as a natural leader rather than a natural obstructionist. He it was, for example, who helped get his class moving to sing the national anthem for me (minor key, lots of accidentals, grindingly slow and apparently matched perfectly in tone with the words, which deal with the blows of fate that have hammered Hungary and how it has struggled to survive) and also the other patriotic song (sort of our America the Beautiful ) which exhorts the Hungarian to stay true to the native land and never stray from it. (Thus those who have left the homeland are somehow no quite worthy to sing this song, or else they do it shedding tears.)

I may have also mentioned Bertholon, with whom I am discussing Slaughterhouse Five. I have greatly enjoyed our talks, we do them over lunch (well, my lunch) at the school, then we usually walk back to town together and talk about other things, his music, his other interests, plans for school. And OH that reminds me I need to look up some things so I can have them ready to talk with him about tomorrow. He, on the other hand, has to investigate the references to napalm in the novel, as well as check out the General Motors exhibition at the 1965 World's Fair in New York.

So nice to have a keyboard and a monitor. So nice to have music in the apt. for a change, I am listening to the first movement of the Beethoven 6th. Thank you again, Anne Trolard. Thank you again name unknown salesperson at the Photo Mall in Tatabanya. I am so happy and grateful right now that I am going to get up and make myself a cup of coffee and have a cookie. Or two. Or more.