Ode to the Split Pea

O yellow Split Pea!
You are filling and tasty
and affordable.

I went whole hog making split pea soup the other night. I even went to the market and asked for a pig bone -- what a thrill to look at a pot of water and sauteed vegetables and then chuck in a huge piece of spine!

Eventually you blend the soup and with it any small pieces of meat you could tear off from the spine. So, I ate some blended meat soup.

One of the few downsides of split pea soup is that when it is room temperature or colder, it tends to harden into a gelatinous lump. My solution last night was to reheat it in a pan with some water, thus doubling the volume of soup and improving the consistency. I encourage all of you to try this!

Yurrup

I remembered something I really like about Europe this Christmas when I chatted to a 100% straight male (Turkish) friend of mine who was wearing a well-fitting sweater with two diagonal fashion zippers.

I was eating pizza the other day when one of the three songs that had been playing all break came on the radio. Except, because we're in Europe, it was a techno dance mix. Obviously.

Something I want to bring back to America is well-fitting men's jeans. Seriously, guys! The day of the potato sack trousers is done.

One thing I will not bring back, though, is the fashion mullet.

This semester will be the semester of studying languages! Surprising even myself I am back at the Goethe for part two of Deutsch A. Honestly, I went in last fall really skeptical about German... I have little or not interest in German food or German history, I don't want to live in Germany, I probably won't be an academic and it's not useful outside of Europe, so really I have no reason to spend the time. But I made some friends and caught the language bug and here I am.

And... I'll be taking Hungarian at CEU! I had thought about it and waffled and kind of convinced myself not to, but then B. mentioned that he was doing it and I said heck, why not? So I'm in the Intermediate (=highest level) class. Suffice to say I am pretty pleased with myself at the moment. I'll go tonight and see how it is.

Every Monday and Wednesday I mean to leave home at 7:30 but instead end up leaving closer to 7:34. Every day as I leave the door of my apartment I see across the street the bus I’m supposed to take. There are two that go in my direction and, due either to the unforeseen forces that control the public transportation system, or probably rather to bad planning, the second bus tends to follow almost directly behind the first. So, this morning as all others, I walked to the crosswalk and just missed the light. As I waited for it to turn green the second bus appeared, following on the heels of the first. It drove through the light, paused momentarily at the empty bus stop, and drove away as my light turned green. This vision I have of my bus pulling away as the two of us are hopelessly separated by traffic is my daily tablespoon of regret.
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I’m back in Hungary again after really more than a month away; I’m surprised to be enjoying myself much more than I thought I would be. The dread I faced at the prospect of return in fact dissipated in JFK airport Saturday evening as the woman at the ticket counter told me I couldn’t leave that evening because my reservation was, in fact, for the following day. Suffice to say, I felt like an ass.

But more than that, being denied from returning made me realize how much I did want to get back. My plans are only partially formed but I feel like I do have plans here, or at least a reason to get up in the morning, which is much more than I could have said in December. I feel now as I did when I was younger and I came back to my bedroom in Tokyo at the end of the summer after two months away. I dreaded my return to school and the end of my continuous leisure, but opening up my bedroom door (perturbing the thin film of dust that had accumulated in my absence) and seeing once more my things in their place reminded me of everything I liked about being home.
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Because I didn’t find out that I wasn’t coming back to Budapest on Sunday until late Saturday evening, I didn’t have the chance to ask my boss to tell my students not to be in class on Monday. As I feared, they were there and I was not. Today the two out of five students who bothered to come were thirty and forty minutes late, respectively. I mentioned to the first that I was surprised that anyone had showed up and she said, “Well, we were all here Monday.” Twisted logic, but perhaps justified? I was really sorry, if that’s any compensation.

Small world

I spent all summer either applying for jobs or worrying that I was broke and not applying to enough jobs. Occasionally I had fun as well, but not as much as I should have been having. I dropped my resume off at maybe twenty language schools; some offered interviews and most never responded, but only one saw fit to send me a letter that was actually rude:
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dear N. ,

Thank you for your interest in our school, but unfortunately, we cannot offer a teaching position for you. We employ experienced, fully qualified teachers of English with university or college degree in teaching languages, native or non-native speakers of English. We have to meet the special requirements of the Accredition Board.

Best regards,

X
_______________________________________________________________________________


I checked my email today and was both surprised and amused to have received the following:

_____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Ms. B,

Thank you very much for your CV and interest in our school.

I would like to invite you for a personal interview.

Could you visit me on 18 January 2010, at 3:30 p.m.?

Our address is below; the building is in the vicinity of Móricz Zsigmond circus.

Would you please send the electronic copies of your degrees and certificates and would you bring the originals with you.

I would also appreciate if you could reply to this message by Thursday this week (the 14th January) by mail or by phone.

Best regards,

X
____________________________________________________________________________

My response:

Dear X,

I appreciate your interest. However, your initial response to my CV (copied below) was so rude that it destroyed any interest I might have had in working at [Your Language School]. I hope you have better luck with your other applicants.

Best regards,

Natalie Bowlus

Rapid Descent into Madness

Although I'm not back Stateside until Saturday, tomorrow I'm hopping on a train for an eight-hour jaunt to Transylvania, home of Dracula and my buddy Christian (until January). This means that today is my last full day in Hungary. As such, every single errand that I want run before mid-January, when I return, must be done TODAY. Understandably, I'm feeling a little crazy.

I've had to pick up books, drop off books, read books, reschedule classes, grade a final exam, see all my private students one last time, invoice for both my language schools (in person), buy tickets for the train (in person), buy food for the train, buy tickets for the metro, buy Christmas presents for my friends and family, visit the doctor, pick up medicine, drop off a blender I borrowed, drop off an SAT book, register for Deutschkurs, pay for Deutschkurs (in person, duh), get a new stamp for my student ID (should have done this a month ago), not to mention get drinks with everyone one last time. Ahhhh!

Also, my tummy feels funny and I look pudgy.

I am enjoying squash more than I thought it would be possible for any one person to do so. My house is filled with blue smoke, but at least if we asphyxiate it will be to the smell of olive oil and delicious squash.

I have also been f*cked by the Hungarian VAT. I tried to order contacts online and send them to my parents' house. However, you need either an American doctor (if you want to mail something to an American address) OR you need to 1. order by phone and 2. fax your prescription. Well, finding a fax is a pain in the derrier and I have a tough time calling 1-800 numbers for whatever reason, so I decided to just bite the bullet and send everything to Hungary. Mistake! While ordering contacts online was significantly cheaper, I now have to pay more than 12,000 forint (or about $75) to pick them up. Fuck me.

On a different note, I've been thinking a lot about language in context.

Until last Wednesday I taught a class of five advanced students. I don't know what it was exactly that brought it up -- probably the bitchy one snickering when I asked them how they were doing -- but I realized that they were completely ignorant of any general conception of cross-cultural differences. I asked, "Do you have foreign friends?" They did not. I asked, "Do you use English ever?" They do not. So, they are grinding away at a language in order to pass an exam to get, what? A better job? Academic credentials? A gold start on their CVs?

Despite how uncomfortable my daily "How are you?" made them, I continued, because I saw my role as that not only of an English teacher, but of a conduit to living English-language culture. I'm an American; likely, I always will be; and where I come from we ask how you're doing. It doesn't mean you have to answer honestly (people rarely do), but you should ask.

A living language is more than a merely collection of grammar rules and vocabulary. The difficulty I see in almost all my students is that they have little or no feeling for this other spoken life. And that begs the question, how well can you really learn a language if you're not interested, to at least some minimal degree, in its cultural trappings? I meet students who are quite fluent but who have never read a poem, or a short story, or a play. I get the impression that in schools here, whether out of bureaucracy or sloth, teachers churn through language book after language book. Students continually discuss such inane topics as "hobbies" or "holidays."

I agree that this is as good a place as any to start. My only points of reference are my study of French in high school and my current study of Hungarian (the sun and the moon). In French we moved through a textbook for perhaps the first two (or even three) years, although this was heavily supplemented with Madame's own worksheets. By the second year, though, she had us reading poetry, and then a detective novel, The Little Prince, and eventually the Stranger. We watched movies, too. I think she let us read subtitles once and then forced us to listen on our own.

Now, this was an extremely different situation for any number of reasons. Being at an international school meant we were largely unhindered by state or national requirements. Madame also had us for four years, instead of a couple of months, like I have my students. She made us suffer and if we couldn't handle the suffering, it was suggested that we discontinue French. Clearly, I can't do this to students who are volunteering their time to take a language class. Finally, Madame was a truly exceptional woman and teacher with few equals.

But it seems slightly hypocritical of me to accuse my students of being disconnected from English when I learned French in Tokyo. To be fair, many of them watch English movies, and sometimes even in the original language. It's just... I feel like there is so much more out there for them, if only they would take an interest.

Perhaps this is the burden/wish/regret of those who speak a lingua franca as a native language; for most people, it's merely about functionality.