Thursday

Well we finished today. The last of the class notes were taken and all that is left is the review and the final exam tomorrow morning.

This was the smallest class I have taught, but it was nice to just have the three students and get to know them a little better.

Betty is the wife of a minister here in Budapest and has two children 12 and 10. They have been at this church now for the past 2 years.

Gabor has a little 18 month old baby boy. He plays keyboards and does some arranging for the church where he attends. He uses Sibelius for a notation program. I told him I wanted to learn it, so after lunch he showed me some shortcuts in Sibelius to write music without using a keyboard. He was fast! I use Finale and I have to use the keyboard because using the qwerty keyboard is way to slow for me.

Mariam has a class full of students come the fall!!!

Now let me tell you about Laszlo my interpreter. Laszlo had been teaching and interpreting for quite some time now, he is 77 now! When Billy Graham would come to Hungary to have is Crusades, Laszlo would be his interpreter. He has written over 800 hymns (words and some music) for the church here. I picked up the new Baptist Hymnal (copyright 2003) and he must have about 30 songs printed in it. The first time I ever taught a class using an interpreter, it was Laszlo. I was spoiled! So needless to say, this week had very little problems with words or thoughts not being translated correctly. Laszlo is somewhat of a fixture here in the Baptist church in Budapest and all of Hungary. To show you the kind of person he is, when we had our discussion about Copyright material, he mentioned that he has never asked for any money in return for his hymn writing, but that he is always getting checks for his songs. Later on in class he mentioned something that kind of told me that the money he receives from the hymns he gives away to charity.
We all went to a little cafeteria just down at the end of the block for lunch today. I wanted to try some Hungarian food, so I picked out what I though was Hungarian food. After I got the plate in front of me Gabor tells me that what I have is Mexican food. If you know me well, you know that I like a lot of different foods but Mexican is the one that I really don't have a preference for! But I ate it anyway. Most of the conversation was in Hungarian, but every once in a while they asked me a question. Sometimes it was a guessing match as to what they were asking and where the question was going, but it was fun and we did manage to have a good conversation. Between the three of them they got all the words out close enough for me to understand them. Actually it was easy... I taught Junior High for 10 years so I'm used to hearing broken sentences!


Well that's about it. This happens to be the last class I had to teach this summer with TCMI. Next week I go back to Haus Edelweiss and go to some faculty meetings before Pam and I head on home to the states.