June-the end of school.

Wow, June was a blur!  The kids were done in their heads about the end of May.  It seemed to me to be a more pronounced shift in attitude than in the U.S. but that may have been due to my having been retired for the last 3 years.  The entire last week of school I gave up trying to teach.  Part of the problem was that I had to turn in all of my curriculum 5 days before school was over.  At that point it would have been ridiculous to have tried to maintain class as usual.  I ended up taking all of my classes outside.  But, one day the door to the courtyard area where we had been going was locked.  I sent one of the kids to get a key from the porter (not giving it a second thought).  He ambled over with his key ring and instead of being his jovial self, he was scowling and would hardly look at me.  I thought to myself, "Even the porter is dead tired at this point in the year."  This was during first period.  When I told my second period class that we would be going out, they responded that Clari (one of the administrators) had told their first period class that no one would be able to go into the play yard that morning.  Since I had no lesson plans and the classrooms were hotter than hell, I said, "Well, no one told me, so we are going out". (I guess that explained the porter's attitude when I had him unlock the door, he was going against orders.) This is an example of the  lack of communication that proved to be one of the most frustrating aspects of our teaching in Hungary.


As challenging as it was to teach in Hungary, I had become very attached to most of the kids.  One of my 5th grade classes in particular has been really fun to work with and I like all of the kids (even the tough ones.)  On the last day I went into their classroom and kissed each one of them on both cheeks (as I had become comfortable with doing) and said goodbye to them.  As I write this I still get a lump in my throat knowing that I will probably never see them again.