My first class of the year was eight a.m. this morning. It seemed off to a rocky start when I spoke to the professor in English and his response was to look shocked and bug out his eyes, but after that things were better. The thing about this purported English-language program I'm in is that some classes are listed as being taught in English, but apparently what ends up happening is that for lack of any English-speakers they are generally taught in Hungarian. I'm hesitant to have an entire course taught in English for my benefit (or, semi-hesitant, considering the university advertises my degree and I am paying tuition), but the professor today was very kind and assured me that it would be good for the students. The material itself was all stuff I'd encountered before, although that will last probably until Friday. The other students in the course are in a very rigid program, and therefore have similar backgrounds, so I have a bit of catch-up to do.
It's funny, and this isn't true of everyone I've met, but being a native English speaker seems to give me in the eyes of some voodoo powers. (Very similar to telling artists that you study math, actually). It's strange to be a feared authority in a subject just in virtue of my upbringing.
My professor from this morning is writing an English-language graph theory text. He's going to send it to me for my benefit and I offered to edit it. That would be a cool experience! Maybe I could get listed in the credits.
The disadvantage of being the token English-speaker is that I stick out like a sore thumb and therefore feel even more of a need than I might usually to prove that I'm intellectually up to snuff. Combine this with being female and it adds up to no fucking around for me, I think.
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I went to a Contact Improvisation workshop in Budapest that switched to English for my benefit. I was shocked, and somewhat worried, but it was small, and all the other students seemed quite certain that they were going to be far less lost in English than I was in Hungarian. In fact, I never met a CI teacher there who didn't seem perfectly capable of giving the class in English, though mostly they didn't choose to, which was rather more comfortable.
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