A hard day's something...

Sooo. This morning I was interviewing for a position at József Attila gimnázium. It took 5 minutes... Seriously... The head of the school has forgotten that we had an appointment. But I found out that she is willing to give me a full-time job as both an English and a Hungarian teacher form September. She also asked if I had sent my CV anywhere else. I said yes. She told me that she gives me 2 weeks to decide whether I want the job... Two more interviews to go: Radnóti and Móricz. We shall see!
To be contintubed...

"It's OK with me, I'm unemployed."

This line seems to be my motto this week.
Head of department: "Are you sure you want to teach here next semester (for free) too?"
My esteemed colleague: "Are you sure you don't have anything better to do than stapling exam-papers together?"
My esteemed colleague again: "Are you sure you want to invigilate at the Proficiency exam?"
My esteemed boyfriend: "Is Wednesday fine for Indy?"

Guess what the answers were...

Down Under

Yesterday I met an Australian lad for the very first time :) I had him visit one of my classes in the evening. In fact, he's going to lead that group from now on. He's a nice litte chap, eats kangaroo-steak, though...

Little something on group-dynamics

So I was thinkng... what do you do with a group of youngsters who absulutely hate another member, who is older, who is a manager (probably the only IT person with whom I don't get on well...) and who is simply annoying... This is my second semester with this group, the guy is a newcomer. The main problem, I reckon, is that we had agreed to start at 5 pm. He didn't turn up for at least 2 weeks and when he eventually did, he started a big fuss about it: he wanted to start at 5.15 because this was the advertised time slot... (btw. I don't really understand why I was not informed about it, but that's on my boss...). So, anyway, the whole group seemed to develop this angry attitude towards him. On top of all, he's always late ... (they hate him even more :). Kind of a big issue now: the other members of the group refuse to work with him in pairs on in groups, they laugh at him when he arrives and starts to pack his things, fidding with this cell, etc.
My first idea: use the 15 minutes when he's not yet there for having a small-talk with the group.
My second idea: start 5 min earlier so that everybody will be satisfied (maybe...).
My third idea: ignore the whole issue (that would be neary imopssible).
My fourth idea: the combination of the 1st and 2nd ...
It's impressive how fast learners can improve such a massive, innate negative feeling towards another group-member. And it's spreading like a virus :) totally contagious. I think the dynamo is a very nice young 16 year-old lad ...
Any suggestions are welcome :)

When the English teacher goes shoe-shopping...

Sorry guys out there, but this is a MUST...



Shoes = my 2nd major thesis has been graded 5.



There's nothing else to say, really....

(Not so) little catch up

Since my last entry: I got hired, I had my second msn class, I got unhired...
Apparently, the teacher wanted to get salary for the summer as well, so he returned to the school and that meant my grand exit. But it's ok, I have shiny new namecards and a shiny new CV and some fancy (not shiny but new) envelopes. Did you know that there are 320 secondary schools in Budapest? I really hope that at least one needs a very well experienced English teacher :)
The other thing, (probably the biggest succes of mine ever :) the msn lesson 2.0 was even better than the first one. New and improved. Just for the record, I'm still dealing with 3-4 people at a time...never managed to have all 6 of them in front of ther PCs/Macs... I doubt that it would work as nice and smooth as it worked with this little number of people. Note to self: solve the probs:)
Linktime: these were the things I found to be serious stuffz out there on the net...
http://szotar.mokk.bme.hu/hunglish/search/corpus - this is funny like hell. You enter a word and it'll give you dozens of variations (lierature, subtitles etc.) of the required language (Ok, English and Hungarian). Check out! God bless you Nyelvtudományi Intézet.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/docarchive/ - everybody fancy BBC. BBC related any materials are nice and highly recommended to use in-class :) That was what I did. You can listen to the programmes online, download them on your PCs/Macs or on your iPods/iAnythings as podcasts! Niiice.....
Later on I'll share some of my doubts concerning group-dynamics in one of my language school groups but it's time for me to get prepared for my next advernture, namely finding out my thesis grade! :)