Berlitz and Bullwinkle

My lifestyle has gone from a slow, self-dictated pace, to scattered and crazy. Of course, it's the latter style that I am most used to, but it came as a shock to my system this week to have very little free time. I guess it's time that I joined the working world. Teaching is going well so far, and I am lucky, because the school spoon-feeds my lesson plans to me. So, if I don't feel like getting creative, I don't have to.

So far, I have 5 different classes that I teach, but I've only met three, one of which I am dropping. The students I see the most are two business men from South Korea. They are here working at a bank for the next two months. As if the culture shock between leaving their families in Korea and moving to Budapest weren't enough, they've subjected themselves to taking both English and Hungarian lessons simultaneously. Yikes. I really like them, and I think they like me too, except they are not accustomed to the American accent, so I am hard to follow as they say.

The next class is advanced speakers which I have already dubbed the Bullwinkle class. This is because it has two people in it, and one of them is from an area right outside from Russia, and her name is Natasha. Naturally, she is pretty, tall and pale, just like the cartoons. She is a great student who learned English while working for the Red Cross. Now, she's taking lessons to master her English and entertain herself while her kids are at school. Today, she brought her adorable 3-year-old son to class, and he slept through the entire thing. Hopefully, that's not an indication of my teaching enthusiasm. The other man is Hungarian and named Atilla . . insert Atilla the Hun jokes here. He is another businessman and is a very good speaker, so it makes my job easy. Things will go well as long as I don't slip and call him Boris.

My other class is horrendous and will be dropped asap. It begins at 7:30 a.m., which is do-able. But, when I agreed to take it, the secretary neglected to tell me that it is on the Eastern outskirts of Pest, which is about as far away from my flat as you can get. Some of Berlitz's classes are taught in actual businesses, and this one was at a Volvo factory. I left my apartment at 6:30 and still managed to be half an hour late. I had to ride the entire line of a metro, get off, and take a bus for 45 minutes. So, I commuted for 3 hours to teach and get paid for 1.5 hours. Of course, the day I had to go was only 50 some degrees, windy and rainy. I was sleep deprived, grumpy, and not prepared to teach level one students, which is exceptionally challenging. Luckily, Berlitz realized that this was ridiculous and told me I don't have to do it anymore, except for tomorrow. So, my alarm clock is set for WAY too early tomorrow. When my alarm clock goes off, I wonder how I ever woke up for swim team practice at 5:30 am all those years . . .

Starting the week after next, I get two more groups of students. I hope they are as interesting as my current students. On Saturday, my Mom gets here, and I can't wait! We have lots of fun activities planned, and I took most the week off from teaching, so we can go explore wine country and Budapest.