Practically two thirds of the way through my time here and I’m now so at home here that I can’t imagine leaving! After yet another busy week I have once again seen and done things I have never done before.

Personal:

Personally this week I have been feeling rather frustrated because life here has become so normal, that sometimes I had the tendency to feel bored, just because I have done all the typical sight seeing things now, discovered new places and met new people and at the start of the week it felt like nothing else overly exciting was going to happen. But how wrong could I have been!

Culturally:

Yet again this city and this culture have surprised me! We all went to the Fine Arts Museum on Wednesday to see an exhibition that is here from the Pushkin Museum which was incredible and afterwards we were able to walk around Hero’s Square in the beautiful sunshine. On Friday night we went to our school’s Spring Festival which was absolutely amazing! We got to see our classes performing different role plays, dances, songs and snippets from musicals and even though the commentary and different parts of the programme were in Hungarian it didn’t seem to matter one bit. What made the whole event so special was the fact that the performers, even if they weren’t polished performers were still given the opportunity to perform for everyone.

I then got yet another surprise on Saturday when we went to a small little town called Szentendre- a beautiful little village just 45minutes outside Budapest on the banks of the Danube. We had lunch there and walked around the gorgeous cobbled streets and eat ice cream on the bank. It was so nice getting outside the city and being able to see another little bit of the country. I definitely want to go back! And finally, we went to a concert last night in a chapel after mass that our music teacher from school was singing at. The whole concert was in Latin but that didn’t take away from it at all. It was so nice to be invited by our teacher, especially because she was so eager for us to hear her choir.

Professional:

The teacher that I pair teach with for some of my English lessons was off sick this week, so I was left to teach the class alone. This turned out to be a great opportunity and I really enjoyed it. The children had spent enough time in my presence by this stage to understand that I could only converse with them in English, however they are not used to speaking English the whole way through lessons. This was therefore a challenge for them as well as for me. I feel like I have learnt more during these periods than during the periods when I have been pair teaching, so I am hoping I get more opportunities to do this again.

During our music lessons over the past few weeks we have been learning some Hungarian Folk songs and this week we had to perform these folksongs for our teacher as well as some well known Irish Folk songs. I have really enjoyed learning these Hungarian Folksongs, even though they were they quite a challenge to begin with, but I feel like I have accomplished so much in being able to perform them.

I’m looking forward to another week full of surprises, including some possibilities such as a trip to the zoo, hiring bikes, our trip to Bratislava and my mum and dad joining me here on Sunday!