A Charlie Brown Christmas...

In December, Alyssa and I had a great Christmas surprise when we were given a tiny Christmas tree from the Frater school :)

The Hungarians don't decorate their trees nor put them up until the day before Christmas (celebrated the 24th) or on the day of Christmas. Alyssa and I badly want a Christmas tree for our flat. We have been talking about it since October. I see a potted plant that has fallen over after the crazy wind we had the night before; it is outside but within the school grounds. I think, well hey that could be the perfect little tree, it looked like a Christmas tree on a smaller scale. I asked Zsuzsa about it and she told me that no she will find something better and will have some students transport it to my flat. I am sooooo excited!!

When I arrived this afternoon, I saw the most pitiful little tree (no resemblance to a Christmas tree) with only a few branches, just enough to hold several ornaments. I just laughed and thought this is the tree from Charlie Brown's Christmas!!

Christmas WAS around the corner...

Just as another way of updating you on my life in Miskolc...this was another e-mail I sent my friends and family around Christmas time. I thought it would be a nice way for you to get a glimpse at a day of my life here :)

To all of my biggest fans in the U.S.A.---                                                                         November 2011

Christmas is just around the corner and I read a statistic the 20% of people have already started their Christmas shopping (aka Joan Welbourn, the perpetual Christmas shopper). So now that it is almost Christmas and I have lived here for about 3 months, I wanted to give you a picture of my life.

What the heck am I up to???

Let's take a glimpse at my Hungarian life by reading about my typical day:

8:50: teach 12th Grade English class at Frater high school

10:30: teach 11th grade English class at Frater high school

11:45: eat lunch in the school cafeteria with my colleagues 

12:15: take the tram to Zrinyi Ilona high school

12:30: teach 9th Grade English class at Zrinyi high school

1:30: teach 10th Grade English class at Zrinyi high school

2:30: write lesson plans, grade papers, and prepare for tomorrow

4:00: meet a student for coffee or run errands with my roommate Alyssa

6:30: teach a bible study at Miskolc orphanage 

8:00 cook dinner, send some e-mails, or Skype with friends and family

***All of these activities are well and good and surely enough to keep me busy and involved in positive ways here in this city. But the point of all of this is the people that I interact with on a daily basis. From students to other teachers, to the orphanage children and other friends I have the opportunity every day to be a Light to people that don't know about Jesus. Please pray for me to be in tune with the Spirit because if it were up to me, I couldn't make any impact here, it is completely the Holy Spirit in me doing this great work. Pray that I wouldn't get caught up in the schedule or the busyness that it creates but that I would be open to the movement of the Spirit to step out of the schedule when He asks.

Thanks for your support with prayers and reading my blog!!!

Love and blessings,

Abby

The Hot Chocolate Hideaway

I found another e-mail that I sent my family from October, the first time I visited the Mives Cafe, one of my favorite coffee places in the city, reading this made me realize how thankful I am for this place and for Tibi, who always makes my life feel pleasant when I sit among all of his old book and typewriters for hours.

"Hi Family,

I just met maybe my favorite Hungarian tonight in his cozy hot chocolate hideaway (as I am calling it). It is this tiny little tea house next to an art gallery in Miskolc and it is covered, ceiling to floor, with odd trinkets and just random things. We had tea and homemade hot chocolate that was THE BOMB. Mine was white chocolate with ginger, lemon, and a hint of Gin. Sounds like a weird combo but this man obviously knows what he is doing.

He speaks some English and told us about his crazy journey to the Grand Canyon when he visited the U.S. where he only ate welfare peanut butter for 3 weeks AND he is an amazing artist and teaches a ceramics course at the University. His wife was born in New York and moved to Hungary with her grandmother when she was 4 years old. She knows some English but she lost the English that she knew before. I told him that we would help her to remember it. So he is our new little friend and we are planning on making many visits to the "hot chocolate hideaway." 

Love everybody,

XOXO

The photo below is at the Mives..

Tibi is in the background of the photo with the glasses, beard, and beanie.

My Hungarian Top 10.

So this is an e-mail I sent to my family after living in Miskolc for one week and it is so fun for me to read now after living here for about 6 months. Some things I still feel the same about and others I don't love anymore, still others I have a new perspective about and realize I was totally wrong.


Top ten things that I love about Hungary:

10. Bottled drinks. They are 3x the size of an American ones and about $1.50 (U.S $)

  9. Old architecture. Looking good.

  8. Greeting each other with a kiss. So much more fun.

  7. Obsession with chocolates. There is even an off-brand chocolate at the grocery.

  6. Obsession with American music. I still hear Lady Gaga at the mall. (Yes, we have a mall here!)

  5. Aversion to air conditioning. No fans, no nothing, sweat it out the old fashioned way. 

  4. The Spar!!! I bought about a week or so worth of groceries for under $20.

  3. Bus systerm. You buy a ticket, but nobody checks it. 

  2. Hungarian greetings. "Hello" means hello & goodbye and Szia (pronounced See-ya) means hello & goodbye.

  1. GOULASH!!! 

10. Still totally into the cheap bottled beverages, but now I don't buy them so much after the empty bottles started cluttering the top of my refrigerator. I recently purchased a Brita water filter pitcher that is my jam right now.

9. Old architecture, was confusing. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that I started realizing that inside every old building, there are really normal things like dentist offices and music schools. I just thought they were all mini museums.

8. I miss hugging.

7. I ate an entire Milka strawberry chocolate bar today...still into it. 

6. The love of American music draws students into the English language more than anything else and is a big source of influence for their lives- many of my students are aware of songs becoming popular even before some Americans. I also cannot believe I said we have a mall here! I was really thinking this place would be alot less modern than it actually is.

5. Obsession with blasting the heat in winter. holy moly!!! I am baking people.. and all because of the superstition that if you get cold you will be sick or infertile.

4. Still loving the cheapness of things here compared to the U.S. but also now realizing that it means nothing since I am paid in Forints and the only reason I still convert it in my mind is so that I can make sense of its worth. I am also understanding that while the monetary strength of the Forint is an advantage for an outsider, I feel a part of the country now and I see that it represents something negative for Hungarians, a failing economy and an unstable political system.

3. Bus system. You buy a ticket and when you least expect it, someone actually does check it :)

2. Hungarian greetings: still loving them. I have even perfected the correct pronunciation. 

1. GOULASH!!! The thing that I will probably miss the most when I go back to America.

Since the Goulash

It is evident that writing may not exactly be my passion, but in a random thought I decided to check out my blog. Ha that is a funny thought. Someone reading through their own blog posts, because they don't know what they wrote, well that is exactly what I just did. I have been a little lost (get it---Lost&Found) from the blog world since I arrived here in Miskolc a little over 5 months ago.
Here is the issue at hand...I want to update you but oh where to begin? How can I relay all of the things that happened in such a long time and make it really meaningful for you? It is difficult.
As I mentioned in previous posts, the purpose of this blog is to highlight the "losts" and "founds" of my life. As they are an inevitable part of any life and sometimes not really considered.
I will start the story of my adventures with a list of "lost" and a list of "found."

LOST: (when I get confused because of the culture)
anytime my German co-worker speaks to me in German, Hungarian, or his version of English
when I pressed the emergency stop button on the tram and it stopped in the middle of the road
when speaking with an art student who told me he wanted to "draw" me and days later I found that he wanted to draw me nude
realizing I had been asking people "where is the _____(insert person's name)" as if to say they are an object
calling myself "a loser" in Hungarian when I thought I was saying "badass"
telling someone I like your "hair" when I actually said "fat"
not fitting inside of a very crowded tram, stepping out of it only to be ushered back inside by other passengers and a precious Hungarian grandmother putting her arms around me like a human seatbelt
almost-falling down the steps of a tram, only to see a man waiting at the bottom with outstretched arms in case it did happen (My hero!)
being so confused with a woman speaking Hungarian to me at the checkout line of the grocery store, only to find that she was asking me how to say "lime" IN ENGLISH!
realizing that I had been washing my clothing with fabric softener for the first few months of living in Hungary
missing my train in Budapest not one but two times in a row and the second time I was sitting on a bench next to the train I needed to ride (for about 30 minutes)

FOUND: (when I have peace in this new culture)
anytime I am at the orphanage and I can sit down with the children at the dinner table, reminds me of being at home
when I had a small conversation with a woman in a shop using broken Hungarian but we understood each other nonetheless
being invited by my students to numerous parties, school programs, and most recently- to sing and dance in their performance
going to a new restaurant and being able to order my food independently
being invited to my student's village and eating a traditional meal of stuffed cabbage with her family
eating Thanksgiving dinner in Hungary with my coworker and her family, which she prepared in honor of me!
being able to give someone else directions in Miskolc instead of having to be given them
whenever I go to an exercise class because I don't have to worry about language barriers
people telling me that I look like a Hungarian girl
finding heart shaped foam on the top of my cappuccino
when I learn how to cook traditional meals with my Hungarian "mom" Rita

Until next time...
which is hopefully in the near future....
Abby