The Misery Machine, and life in Hungary

Well, filling the Six's shoes is a tough job, I'll do my best.

First of all, I'm a child of my parents, and I love me a good zombie tale. I figure some of you out there may appreciate this as much as I do, cause I seriously need this shirt. Seriously!!Alas, it's sold out at the moment. Sigh. My life is so tough.

And now for something completely different...

The eldest child just started the first grade, and I'm sure I will have many stories too good not to pass on to you all. We've already had the first 'mishap' when the supply list had a box of matches listed as a required school supply. For 6 year olds. I'm gonna go with... No?

Yeah, turns out they wanted the match box and the translation software didn't understand that 6 year olds, bored in class, can't have matches. Damn computers. She also has a Hungarian class leader, a Hungarian that teaches them Hungarian, an American teacher that teaches English, Math and Social Studies, and a PE teacher. Remember when we had a teacher, and recess? Long gone, my friends, long gone! We lug gym clothes, with extra tennis shoes, to and from school 2 days a week, she has inside shoes (cause dirt = death round these parts), and all her school books are in Hungarian. Seriously. Cause, yeah, this is a bit of Hungarian. (Parts of the video are a bit slow, but he's actually pretty funny. The alphabet part starts at about 1:50, so feel free to fast forward)

The point is, that hungarian is hard. Boldog születésnapot is happy birthday, and goodbye is viszontlátásra. Yeeeeeah. The best, though, is kiss. Kiss in Hungarian is puszi. Remember, the sz sound is an s in Hungarian. Now say it out loud and you'll see why all the Americans freaked out when the teachers would say it to the kids!

As for the political stuff, Sarge has passed on a video about first amendment issues that I'll be working up in the next day or so. I'm also working on two term paper; one is about the ratification of the constitution and I'll try to pass on any interesting bits as they get written. The second is about the Greek influences on the Founders. If you are interested in history, at all, it's fascinating! Greek and Roman history to them was almost another language. They threw around stories that most modern Americans have never heard of the way we talk about crossing the Delaware and Gettysburg. (On a very sad note, the Safari spelling tool doesn't recognize the word Gettysburg. Talk about a headdesk moment)

Since the cold that the Girl brought home with her from school has effectively sapped any meaningful conversation I had left in my head (which bodes well for writing essays), I'll attempt to end this rambling post. Besides, the Hubby is TDY (in Germany, the turd, where they have a language I can actually pronounce!), the kids are home half the day, I have a cold, the house is a disaster, and I have two essays due tomorrow and two papers due next week, so I should probably wish you all a jó napot kívánok (good day) and actually attempt to do my job.

Or I could surf for more zombie shirts...

-The DO