Violence

Nowadays news is full of violence and aggressive moments. If you watch TV in evening, you'll probably hear about some brutalities taking place in the Middle East. Unfortunately it's almost usual that daily 50 or 100 people die because of explosions and street riots in Iraq.

But we don't have to go so far to get to know about such news. In few weeks time the leading news are about aggressive kids beating up their teachers. I think these situations are very tragic, because it seems to be the result of unsolved conflicts and tension. At this point a question can be raised: whose is the responsibility in these cases? Whom should be blamed about these?

I think this problem has several reasons. We cannot blame only the teachers on not being able to keeping discipline in classroom. We should talk about the family background of these children. I know many people whose parents have aggressive habit, like beating their children if they are unsuccessful in their studies. They just deduce their tensions this way. In my opinion this attitude doesn't lead to solutions, it just makes children behave similarly. In primary schools stronger kids keep terrifying the weaker and/or cleverer ones. These children tend to continue this method in their secondary schools against their teachers.

I'm really desperate about it, because I would like to be a secondary school teacher and I've started to afraid of these cases. I'm thinking of how to solve these events, but I'm unable to find a perfect kind of solution. According to newspapers, teachers have to communicate with these students, or psychologists have to treat them. I can partly agree with them, but I guess we have to change our life style by getting rid of violence towards the others.

Off session

Our last Reading & Writing class was an extraordinary one: it was held outside the university. We went to the American Corner to watch a certain movie entitled Pulp Fiction.

The place had changed a little bit since the last time I was there. The Corner had moved downstairs and 2 classrooms were formed upstairs. As I could see the place had a bigger space on the ground floor, moreover it's much easier to find it.

Our session was held upstairs, so we took the stairs. As we entered the classroom, everybody was amazed: the whole room seemed to be a movie with a plasma TV-set and with comfortable seats. I had a feeling that I came for only to see a great film in a modern cinema instead of having a lesson. After Joe told us some basic information about the Midterm Progress Paper we wrote a page in our Thought book then we started to watch Pulp Fiction.

Although we could see the half of the movie we had a great time. Well, the whole film is about gangsters but they were shown in a very funny way. Almost every scene made us laugh. I also have to mention some actors who did a very good acting in this film, for example John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman. I wouldn't like to tell the whole story, because that would be impossible. The film is composed from smaller episodes and moments shown throughout different points of view.

All in all, this session was very good and joyful. (Thanks, Joe!) I think we should have more lessons in the American Corner. ;)

Tale in the reality

One morning I opened the local newspaper and I found an interesting news in connection with my hometown.

A few days ago a small wild pig was found in the garden of a family in Balatonalmádi. Well, this isn't surprising, because some part of Almádi is surrounded with forest. (Because of this, there can be seen foxes in autumn.) The animal had been there for some days, because he couldn't find his mother. As a small wild pig, he was friendly and chose the garden as his living place.

But this animal disturbed the neighbour of the family who decided to make a tasty food from him. How cruel people are there! Luckily, the family called the Zoo of Veszprém, so the wild pig was taken away. What a nice survivor! He has been named Gerzson and he has been treated well. Now he is one of the most visited and liked animal in the zoo. Moreover, he got a female partner called Juliska and now they are living together. :)
I think this news is similar to a modern fairy tale with a very nice ending. :))

Easter holiday

I was surprised when I realised that we have the break so soon. It came into my mind that we've done the half of the spring semester so far...

Practice for the Proficiency Exam

As the well-known Proficiency Exams are coming slowly, I feel that I need some writing practice for it.
The task is: Retry, ETR and the instructions are the following:
1. explain what ETR is;
2. describe a good feature of it;
3. describe a bad feature of it;
4. tell a story about using ETR

ETR is a well-known system in Hungary used by numerous universities (ELTE, Szeged). The capital letters are standing for the abbreviation of Egységes Tanulmányi Rendszer. It was introduced in 2002 in order to help students and teachers to follow the lectures, the exams and the grades via the Internet. In other words, it was created to make every one's life easier.

One of the best features of this system is that it's online so we can have access to it anytime we want. This means that we don't have to travel or wait long hours to sign up for a course. Instead, we can get prepared for our writing up at home, then we just have to switch on the computer with an active Internet connection, type the address of the ETR in the browser and do the whole thing online. This feature has another advantage: we can avoid physical fights with other students.

On the other hand it has several bad properties. The most annoying one is that this system is not elaborated enough. I mean that there are some cases when a student can take up a lesson as many times as he/she wants. Due to this disadvantage there will be no places for those who have to sign up to the same course but actually they cannot. The results of this mistake aren't very good: students have to go to the tutor and fill in a paper with their EHA-codes. In this case everybody has to use the traditional paperwork because of the error of the system.

My experience about using the ETR is bad. Last time I used the system I had to face with the fact that I wasn't fast enough to take up all of my lectures. I sat down in front of my switched computer on time and I started to sign up for my courses. I was successful in case of the first three ones. By the time I arrived at the end of the lesson-list, all the possible places were full so I couldn't write me up ten more classes. The solution for this problem was the mentioned paper filling method that I had to with all of my teachers.
By the way, I hope the new version of ETR will be much better than this one was.

Accident

My last weekend was very busy: I had to study a lot and I had so little time to do that. Anyway, Sunday came, which meant that I had to come back to Pécs. Being exhausted, my only hope was that it was going to be my ultimate week before the Easter holiday. "Hurray! I just have to survive 5 more days, then I'll have some rest. :D"

So, I got prepared for my usual 4 hour-long journey, then I left home. When I arrived at Pécs, it was completely dark. But the most changeable situation came after this travelling: reaching the first bus of line 30. It really seemed to be impossible, because there were numerous people with huge baggage attending for this bus. By the way, I could catch the vehicle, so I didn't have to be waiting for the next one.

But the problem came when I had to get off it. My bags were heavy, the bus was overcrowded and everybody wanted to leave the bus-station at once. I started to get off, but suddenly I misstepped, so I fell down and collapsed. The worst thing is that I couldn't stand up. I fell onto my right ankle which was aching and bulged: I couldn't do anything at all.

Fortunately, there were some kind people among the passengers who could help me in that situation (Thank you very much!) , so I could reach the dorm somehow.
But now I can move hardly as the pain in my ankle obstructs me in my daily routine and in my moving, too.
Anyway, I feel a little bit depressed, because I don't know whether it is broken or not and will it recover by the spring brake. I hope so! :)

Money...

It's March, which means one special change in our life: we cannot use the Hungarian 1 and 2 Forints for paying any more. The reason is that their production is not really economic for the state. More precisely, the manufacturing of a 1 Ft coin costs more than the worth of the money indeed.

I have ambivalent feelings toward this issue. On one hand I'm happy, because sometimes I had some troubles with these coins in shops. Their size was so small that it took me for hours to find them in my purse. Moreover, there were cases when they fell out of my pocket and I had to collect them fast in order not to keep up the long queue behind me.

On the other hand, I'm a little bit afraid of the disappearance of the 5 Ft coins. It seems that sooner or later there will be no need for this money and everything will be rounded to a zero-ended number.

Anyway, I'm very excited whether this new system without the 1 and 2 Ft-s works or not. One good feature that I can feel now is that my purse is not as heavy as it used to be. :)

Cheers :))

"Best of"-s

As you could hear in the last week's news, the Oscar Awards were given. Luckily, the scriptwriters didn't boycott the event with their attempt for higher wages. :)

I could see that the prized films and actors/actresses were predictable; in other words there were not much surprises. I wouldn't like to enlist every awarded things (because that would be a little bit difficult), just a few of them.

So, the most Oscars went to the film No country for old men; best picture, best directing, best adapted screenplay and the best actor in supporting role (Javier Bardem).
The other prized films were:
The golden compass (best visual effects),
Ratatouille (best animated film),
Elisabeth: The Golden Age (best costume design),
Juno (best original screenplay) and
La vie en rose (best make-up and best actress in a leading role (Marion Cotillard)).

Seeing this list, I can say that these are very great films, although I haven't watched all of them. What I saw are Ratatouille and La vie en rose. They are related to France but this isn't the reason why I chose them. They have two different genres: animated movie and drama. I believe that everyone can enjoy these films, even if he/she doesn't like these two movie categories. But I can recommend these 2 films (and also the others listed above), because they deserved the awards for their fascinating features.

But recently I have heard from many people that they watch only those films, which were prized somehow. I think that the people can decide the quality of a film in many cases. So, if I have the chance, I'll see those films I haven't seen before among the enlisted ones. :))