End of Global Volunteer time

The last week of assisting in the classes went by quickly, as we only worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We had a little celebration with the teachers at the hotel in the evening on Wednesday, and two of our teachers were able to attend. Many of the teachers were not able to attend as some were heading out of town for the four day weekend and others were busy with "school leaving" activities at school.


The three teachers I worked with were quite professional. I was very surprised that one of them was an English teacher however, as her pronunciation and understanding of English was quite limited. But, she had a great attitude with the kids and really seemed to enjoy them.

Overall, the Global Volunteers program was a good one. We had a balance of working with the students and teachers, developing our lesson plans, cultural activities, time to build friendships with team mates, and free time. I think it could have been improved by our knowing in advance what grade levels and English skill levels we would be working with, to allow us to bring appropriate material and prepare for working with the students. All of us had brought material, but much of it was traded between us to make sure we had age and level appropriate materials. This is definately a program where you make your own success. We did not receive much guidance from GV on the teaching aspects and some of us received more guidance from our teachers than others. I stated directly to the head teacher, Heni, that I did not have experience as a teacher, and would need to work with her on what to do each class period. This worked very well, and I really felt I had the hang of it by the second week. One of the other teachers really worked with me as well, and the third teacher kind of left me to do what I would like -- although I really bugged her for info on what they were doing in the class.

The teachers really like having the volunteers come into the classrooms so that the students can hear native English speakers. Info on Alaska was a big hit and the animal names were used as vocabulary words for some of the classes. The kids were good at asking rote questions and giving rote answers, but would be totally thrown off if the question or answer was a little different than what they learned from the book. For example, I could ask, "How are you?" and they could answer, but if I asked, "How are you today?", I would get blank stares. As we walked in the halls to and from classes, the kids would come running up to ask how we were -- even if it was the third or fourth time we had seen them that day!


On Thursday a trip to Szeged was available for those of us who wanted to go. Five of us chose to do this. Thursday was May 1 and a holiday, so although we went to Szeged, almost everything was closed! We drove through the town and got out of the van at a number of locations and viewed the architecture. There was a street fair going on, and we walked through that and I have a number of pictures from my friend Terri that you can view here later!


After we had lunch at a restaurant near the Tisza River, we went to the National Historical Memorial Part at Opusztaszeri. Here is a link to the park info. I can't seem to get it to switch to English, but you may have better luck. http://www.opusztaszer.hu/

This is an outdoor museum which includes old homes and village buildings; an explanation of the flooding of the Tizsa River and the dike projects to help contain it; a rotunda with a panoramic mural of the Hungarians moving into the Carpathian Valley; and a series of buildings with Hungarian natural history information. While we were walking through, we ran into Szoltz, our Global Volunteers Coordinator with the Municipality of Hod... He was enjoying a picnic with his fiance and his boss, the bosses wife, and their two children. It was kind of funny to run into someone we knew while we were out and about!


Earlier in the week, one of our volunteers was not feeling well and was taken to the hospital. This was Margaret, the 88 year old from Canada. They diagnosed her with congestive heart failure and determined she needed to have an operation. The long and short of it is that they finally determined that she didn't, and she has regained her strength enough to travel home this weekend. Her insurance company is supplying a nurse to travel with her. She has been in the hospital in Hod... even after we all left. One of the teachers who is instrumental in the program has been visiting her daily.