2022.10.17. A-B-C-D, rajtam kezdé

Had my first class today, finally. (And yesterday I was at home and didn't do anything noteworthy.)

I can hardly believe that we’re finally here: me teaching. With all the administration and bureaucracy and running errands and paperwork, and with all the postponing stuff and negotiating obviously, I had actually forgotten how much I like being a teacher. This morning, I was trying to put up a front but in all fairness I wasn’t even excited for my first class – which, in true Mongolian fashion, I’d only learned I’d have to teach last evening. Yes, I got a text message from Otgontuya at 8 pm Sunday evening like ‘hey, sorry, you’ll have a class tomorrow at 11, good evening’. Lucky I’d had everything ready. So anyway, today I walked into my first class not very enthusiastic but determined to make it a good one anyway. And only a few minutes in, I’ve already started to enjoy myself; by the time our 90 minutes were over, I was full of energy and excitement and happiness. Like, yes, this is exactly why I chose to be a teacher instead of an air traffic controller. This is exactly why I came here – to teach. Trudging through all the paperwork and trying not to have a stroke from all the obstacles had completely overshadowed my love for teaching, but at last, I see the light. I still have no idea when and where my next classes will be (and how I’ll manage to get enough research credits), but I am much calmer now, having finally started teaching.

Btw it was very interesting to me how little my students know of Hungary. I always ask my students in our first class to tell me any Hungarian expressions, fun facts, Hungarikums, whatever they might have heard about. Usually, I get quite a few Hungarian words, maybe some greetings, and definitely some foods, dishes, maybe cities or names. Not here, oh no. They told me 3 things altogether, the whole class of 26 students: one guy knew about Hungarian football (and had known the name Ferenc Puskás), someone said something like ‘maybe Dracula is historically Hungarian’ which is at least not completely incorrect, and a girl knew that Budapest was our capital city. And that’s it. When I asked them if they’d heard about gulyás (knowing they must have, as I’ve already seen it on a menu on our second day here), there was a cacophony of voices declaring that they absolutely love gulyás but had no idea it was Hungarian. Like, what?! They have also never heard about pálinka. When asked if they knew where Hungary is located, some people knew that we are next to Ukraine and Romania, but nobody knew the other countries. They were so surprised when I told them Austria and Croatia and Slovenia (and Serbia) are also our neighbours, and you should’ve seen their faces when I told them you can get to most European capitals by plane in about 2 hours from Budapest. And these are the students who have plans to come to Hungary – not just random people from the street.

Someone left this thing on the windowsill next to my desk at uni

After my class, I had an IT guy help me sort the internet and printer issues on my laptop, then went to see Munkh. We had a brief meeting about my research work and about our living situation. Then I came home for lunch and went right back to the embassy to get some roll-up posters about Hungary which we took to the university with two guys who work there. I’ll need to see how many of them I can put up and where. Before coming back home, I also stopped to top up my units on my SIM card.

I didn’t stay long, leaving for Shangri-La soon after getting home, to have a nice swim – there were way too many people but since they could swim, they weren’t so annoying. After dinner, I did some work (sending out homework, scheduling, writing this entry, picking pics for Instagram).

Crossing Sukhbaatar square on my way home
(bundled up bc it's like -9 degrees outside and my hair was still dump)