I heart my school.

School Opening. The usual. There was a ceremony. They handed out presents to the new kids. 2a did a little performance. All in all it was good fun for an hour.

1a, the new kids, all 20 of them, headed to the class and had a short speech from Igazgatobacsi.

I headed to the staff room to attempt to work on my schedule, last weeks version no longer worked. Ili was worried about it all, and asked Sanyi that I have fridays off. Yay for me! After two hours or working on it, we did come up with a set plan, but it will change. We have been warned. There is no finalized schedule for school. It just happens. Tomorrow I will go back in to sit through more arranging of the schedule.

I have been guaranteed a free friday. If the schedule doesn't change much, I will have a free Thursday afternoon too!

We will see how my school day tomorrow goes. I love how there is no set schedule and yet school is in session.

Last day of freedom.

Budapest this week was really nice. I got to meet the newbies and just hang out with some of the other returning teachers. I also got to go a little crazy at Ikea, although not too much because I had to drag the stuff back across the country.

My house is feeling homey once again with the new things I have bought, the cleaning and my spending time in it.

Tomorrow is the opening ceremony. I don't really know what to expect. It will be different from last year in that I already know what it is, but 2a is supposed to participate and we have done no prep yet. It will go alright I believe. I hope.

At the end of last year I thought about how much time I spent on the buses and trains, so from now on, I will keep a tab and see how much of my life I actually spend on them.

Train time since August 18: 621 minutes
Bus time since August 18: 100 minutes

That is it for now. Have a good night.

Discussions

Today, Ili and I had many serious discussions. Not very common for us, but still interesting. I learned that Kisleta, a town that is less than 6km from me, was the site of one of the recent murders. I will have to look at this more in depth. I heard that the men were caught, but was still warned because the people are not happy with each other.

Anyway, I head into Budapest tomorrow to meet the newbies. I hope they are great!

I should be back Friday, but who knows...

Slacking

Ever since I have gotten back home I have been seriously slacking. I haven't really done much other than watch TV and sleep. Considering me first few nights back in Europe I couldn't go to sleep until about 4am, I think it is ok that I slept in.

Anyway, I will try to be better now.

I went to Debrecen to visit Carla for a few days. I was trying to put off packing for a few more days so I did what I could, then picked up and left. Anyway, Debrecen is nice, but we ran out of things to do there quite fast.

I came back Saturday afternoon and lazed around some more. I just haven't felt right being back. Today I had a staff meeting that was to decide how many classes everyone would have. I must say it is going to be an interesting year. I found out that I will have 10 classes with my kids. I will also have first grade to deal with. They will be spilt in two, with 13 classes each. Sanyi also wants me to continue with the older kids in the afternoon. So, according to my math I am up to 40 hours...I am pretty sure this is not possible because a) that is all the hours in a week, everyday, every hour for class and b) There is a rule in Hungary that teachers can only work 23 hours, anything over that is overtime. I highly doubt that they will pay me 17 hours overtime a week. Anyway, I look forward to what will happen.

I am planning on going to Budapest on Wednesday to meet the newbies as well as catch up with the other teachers. I don't have to be back until 4pm on Monday for the school opening, so I honestly don't know what day I will be back.

I haven't really written about being home... I know this. It is hard for me to write about it because it just felt like I went back to life. I was with my family and friends enjoying life. I treasured every moment being home, just to be sitting there with people I had not seen in 11 months. Last year was amazing. But to be home again for the summer, somehow just felt right. The problem is, being here feels just right too.

Anyway, I will hopefully be able to write about things as often as I did last year. Until then...

Denmark and Iceland.

Here is part one of my journey home...
Denmark






Iceland