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.