What don't they celebrate?

As we are now in our fifth week here, life here has become extremely normal and things that I found strange and obscure at the start have become a lifestyle. The early mornings are no longer a big problem and the transport system causes us little stress and even the language is becoming less of a problem because we have the ability to spot a foreigner or an English speaking person a mile off!

In terms of culture I have learnt several things this week. Today is women's day! Every man in Budapest is carrying a rose under his arm and every girl and woman you pass is holding a rose and Kirsty, Alison and I also got roses! The day is to celebrate women, simply because women here felt that every other day here was men's day! They also celebrate children's day here as well. However, I find it strange that Hungary doesn't celebrate Mother's Day...

We also celebrated a name's day yesterday... Everyday in Hungray, a name (or sometimes two)is celebrated and yesterday we were at a name's day party yesterday. I now think I understand why so many people in Hungary have the same name... this must be so they will be entitled to celebrate their name's day! My name's day is the 30th of April apparently...


We all taught our own lessons this week which was really enjoyable because after observing for several weeks we just wanted to start teaching! I think the teachers were possibly a little hesitant to allow us to teach sooner, not because they didn't trust us, but because in Hungary you only do school based work in your third year so the schools aren't used to having the equivalent of third years teaching. I also found it a little strange at the start that English here is taught through games and it is so far from the teaching of English that we are used to. Children here love English because they learn through playing games and simply getting used to speaking the language with other people. There are no text book comprehensions, passages to read and certainly no worksheets! The schools, although they possess the bare minimum when it comes to resources still manage to inspire and keep the children interested. I have certainly learnt a lot through observing the classes over the past few weeks and will hopefully be able to start to implement these things when I teach here for the next eight weeks and then also back in Nrthern Ireland.


I have enjoyed spending time on my own this week, exploring new things by myself, likewise with the other girls and through doing that we keep discovering new places to share with each other. I have found a beautiful library that I love going to and a coffee shop as well and as the weather gets better I am looking forward to going for walks along the Danube and having picnics there. I am looking forward to the start of several visitors arriving this week and from then on we will have visitors out nearly everyweek, so I'm looking forward to showing them around all the beautiful places I have found!