Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Thank You Mom and Fall Library Update

I would like to give a big THANK YOU to my mom for sending me these:



The students love colouring with the assortment of markers, crayons and pencil crayons that she sent.

This fall the library has been busy as we celebrated TEEN READ WEEK (TRW) and kicked off a reading competition with American candy as the prizes.  I went on an adventure to Culinaris on the other side of Budapest by public transit to get the candy.

Signs were posted around the school to encourage student participation in TRW
Culinaris - expensive but the only place in Budapest where you can buy many 'American' and other imported products

Display of prizes for the reading competition


The elementary students have been learning the Dewey Decmimal Classification System and other important library skills using these cute animal cut outs:


 I have been busy selecting and ordering new books.  Here is the 'small' order we recieved this fall.  We will have the 'large' order in the spring:






Thursday, November 11, 2010

Szabadság

Here I am sitting on the continent where so many soldiers gave their lives for freedom during the two world wars – at least for the West. Yet, here in Hungary the dates that we celebrate in Canada as the dates of freedom can be seen as times of repression. For many Hungarians the end of World War One is viewed as the time they lost 2/3 of their territory and the end of World War Two as the time the soviets moved in starting 40 years of communism. Hungarians have other dates that they use to celebrate their great desire for and for their present ‘Szabadság’ or ‘freedom’.


Being half ethnic Hungarian living in Hungary, but born in Canadian to a Canadian mother causes me to think about what today November 11th actually means to me. My Canadianess and my great thankfulness to the Canadian people for opening their gates for the 1956 Hungarian freedom fighters tells me that today I need to be thankful and remember all of those soldiers who fought for the freedom of the West which in turn gave freedom to my family and many others in need a safe haven from war.

So today – the eleventh day of the eleventh month – lest we forget.

Thank you to Tina for the reminder.


Monday, November 1, 2010

Tanulok Magyarul - I study Hungarian II

As a continuation of the post on studying Hungarian here are some related pictures:

I labeled all of these kitchen items and then kept them on the counter for over a week to help me learn the names




Ki-Be two prefexes we recently learned in class.  On, off, into, out of, etc. they have opened up a brand new world of Hungarian. Also do not leave out le, fel, rá, el, vissa or meg!

My Hungarian classmates and a couple of friends out for the afternoon at the gyermekvasut (children's railway)