First days of school

Most years I'm scrambling to get my syllabi done in mid-August, then I'm in faculty meetings and orientations, and I barely get to track my children's first days of school. This year was a little different. Of course we're in Szeged, but it was also different because we all had the first day of school on the same day. This never happens at home. At home Ronan goes in preschool a couple of weeks before my own school begins so that I have a little time to prepare for my classes. Then Tristan usually starts a week after I do. This year was also different because we have all kind of had two "first" days of school.

The official first day of school for all of us was September 3rd. I woke up, showered -- all normal stuff -- and then realised there was a thunderstorm going on. I got the boys up, made pancakes for a special treat, and got us all out of the door by 7:30am. Ronan declined to be photographed for his first day, so here's Tristan wearing his formal school clothes -- it's not a uniform, but I guess everyone wears a white top and black bottoms for special days at school.

Tristan knew which tram to take, and had his pass (Multi Pass!) and ID. I had arranged to take Ronan to his kindergarten by bicycle, and apparently the weather was testing my resolve. (I was told later that in Hungary they say that when the children have to go back to school they all cry, so the weather cries, too -- so I guess the rain was normal and expected!) Luckily, by the time we left the thunder had stopped, and it was just lightly raining. Still. I remembered a lot of things about bike commuting that I hadn't thought about in a long time. (I think the last time I bike commuted was around 11 years ago...) For example: remember to use your flasher lights when it's raining, even during the daytime; also: buses are scary, even when you're in a bike lane.

To my surprise, Ronan wiped his eyes a few times, but didn't cry when I left him at school. (Yay!
That's the first time ever!) I biked back home, quickly changed my clothes, then walked to the immigration office. I'd received a letter from them the previous Friday (right after returning from Balatonlelle, incidentally) that there was some problem with my biometric data (?) and I needed to come in within 5 days to get it taken care of. This wouldn't have been a big deal, except that their office is only open Tuesday through Thursday, and I was scheduled to be in Budapest Tuesday through Friday afternoon for Fulbright training. After some panicking, my wonderful colleagues in Chemistry called the immigration office and arranged for me to come in at 9am on Monday morning.

So I got to the office a few minutes early, the guards let me in, and then I was told that no, it was impossible, I had to come back during their normal office hours. I meekly said that we had called on Friday and talked to someone, and she said it was OK, so they said they'd talk to her. They came back in a bit to say that no, that person hadn't authorized me to come in on Monday, but that they were going to help me out anyway. I said thank you, and waited.

It turned out that there had been some entry errors in the system, and somebody hadn't written my mother's maiden name correctly, so they needed me there to verify what was correct. I mentally agonised that maybe I wasn't spelling my mother's middle name correctly, but I just went for it anyway. Then they took my picture and fingerprints again, and I was all set. Apparently they have already approved my residence permit (yay!), they just needed the updated information so they could issue the card -- so I should have that in 2-3 weeks. (Very big yay!)

So this was all before 9:30am. At that point, I took myself into my office and worked on school stuff. Since I wasn't going to be around the rest of the week because we had Fulbright orientation in Budapest, we arranged not to start classes on Monday. Also, it's apparently normal for the graduate classes here not to start until mid-September, even though the official start of classes is September 3rd. So I had a luxuriously undisturbed three hours or so (first in AGES) of preparing class materials and uploading them to the course software. If you're scratching your head about why that was so pleasant, you probably don't have young children.

Tristan only had a half-day at his school, so I rolled home around 1pm and debriefed with him - he'd had a good day. His head teacher asked me to call, so I did and we made some plans. I picked up Ronan around 3pm, and we finished packing and caught the 4:45pm train to Budapest. So that was our first first day of school. The Fulbright orientation was great. Lots of useful information, and plenty of fun, too. Here we are on a brief stop at Buda castle (you can see Pest behind us.) (Hey look: a photo with all three of us in it for a change!)

Fast forward a week and we were ready for our next first day of school -- this time for real. Tristan had a full day of classes, Ronan had a full day at kindergarten, and I got to teach my first class with my PhD students. All went well for the boys, and I'm so pleased because Tristan really likes some of his classes (and he didn't have any complaints about the others.) He was joyful about his English teacher, enjoyed his art class immensely, and loved the fact that his PE class is really a dance class. I love that he's happy. I also love that art and music are normal parts of the curriculum here. I love that PE isn't confined to team sports. Why wouldn't we want to do dance in a PE class? It means I'm also going to look into dance classes for him to take outside of school, though -- here and at home -- since he actually enjoys it.

My class went well, too. Teaching writing/communication skills is definitely a very different animal than teaching chemistry, though! It's going to be a learning curve for me as well as for my students. But I'm really excited and having fun with it. And I shared two quotes on writing from amazing USA authors they probably hadn't heard of before -- Ta-Nehisi Coates and Terry Tempest Williams. I'm also using Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird) and Joshua Schimel (Writing Science) to give tips on writing and science writing, respectively. I figure that introducing science students to non-standard USA authors is probably part of my mission.

Since I'm not a fast blog writer, it's now Friday, and I can report that we had a few bumps this week, too. My classes all went well, but I think that the Master's students got scared -- we went from a fully enrolled class (the max is 20, since it's a writing course) with one or two waiting to get in, to only having 11 students attend yesterday. I tried to be as nice and reassuring as possible, so I hope they'll tell their friends that I'm not scary, and that they'll be successful in my class. On the other hand, I went from 11 students enrolled in my PhD class on Monday to approximately 17 or 18 who are interested in attending (again, maxed at 20) -- and one or two may appear. We'll see. So I'm trying to be optimistic about enrolment.

Other bumps included my bike breaking down yesterday on the way to take Ronan to kindergarten. Nothing serious -- the chain just kept falling off. So we improvised. Luckily there's a lot of busses, and I already knew which ones go near his kindergarten. Also luckily there's a really great bike repair guy that I already knew, too, so repairs are underway. But that definitely interrupts one's plans for a day. It meant I got to school about an hour later than I'd hoped to get there, which made me a little stressed for my class. But all's well that end's well, right? I taught a good lesson, and got everything done that had to be done.