Leaving Szeged

My time in Szeged is coming to a close. I will be leaving this afternoon. I would like to say that I am so thankful for all the people that spent time with me while I was here, speaking to me in English and showing me around the city. I am trying to picture myself doing that for someone in the United States, and while I could certainly do it in English, I do not know another language well enough to use it while showing people Baltimore. I really admire the dedication they have to learning the language and their willingness to use it while I visited. I cannot express how much I appreciate that.
When I arrived on Thursday afternoon I had time to get settled. Later in the evening Mary and Annie, two university students took me out to see Szeged. They showed me their university library, the theatre, museum and many other places. It was nice to have some time to walk around Szeged and get to know other students my age.

Friday morning I woke up and went to visit the Kindergarten classes, which in the United States is more like a preschool. In Kindergarten the teachers do not teach students how to read or write letters or numbers. I found this very interesting because I feel like it would give them a head start for first grade, especially because they are in Kindergarten from age 3-7 and then they continue to first grade. I asked the teacher why they didn't teach any of those skills and she said for as long as she can remember thats just how it has been so it's a custom. There were many differences I noticed in Kindergarten in Hungary and the United States. It was enlightening for me, but I believe an early childhood major would benefit a lot from the visit.

Friday afternoon I had tea with 5 tenth grade girls. They were very shy but after a while they started asking me questions in English. It was their first time ever meeting an American so I can imagine that they might be a little intimidated to use English. I brought a powerpoint with me to introduce myself and give them a few ideas of questions they would like to ask me. After tea I went out to see Szeged with another University student, Barbara. She took me to a pastry shop where we had Hungarian cake and Coke :) We also went to see the Dom Church. A tour guide took us up to the top tower and was able to tell us a lot about Szeged. It was very cool to see the entire city from the tower. On Friday evening I went out with another University student, Ava. Ava spent a year doing charity work in Liverpool so her English was very good. We went to a coffee house and were able to talk for a while about our different experiences traveling abroad.

This morning I went out to see Szeged with Sister Childa. We went around to a few different shops, one of the bigger ones being Coop Szuper. It reminded me a lot of the stores I saw in China, It was one big store, but there were a lot of separate vendors within the building. After shopping for a little while we walked down to the River Tisza and came back around to the Dom church. On our way home we stopped at a coffee shop where I had tropical fruit tea and an apple pastry that were delicious! I have never had as much tea as I am drinking now but it is very good.

 I am sad to say that I am leaving Szeged because everyone has been wonderfully nice here and it is a very interesting city. But I am happy to travel back to Mako to continue teaching the first grade English class :)