The Story of Mary, Part 2

The Story of Mary, Part 2 So now you have a sketch of Mary from our experience with her. This is how the story proceeds from here. Things that I forgot to mention in the first part was that Mary told us repeatedly that once she was asleep, she was dead to the world and noise did not bother her. She had the bedroom on the street side and there is a jazz club across the street that can get noisy on weekends. She always said once asleep, she was not bothered by the noise. The other thing is that Thursday when I got home, my computer screen was black with giant icons. There were icons in the bottom tray that were not mine and I had no idea where they came from. Ron said Mary had been on AOL and doing things on the computer. It took me an hour to figure out that somehow it had been converted to the disability screen for the visually impaired. Friday morning, my virus protection software died and I could not figure out why. I told Mary to stay off of the computer since I was not protected from Viruses. When I got back from Veszprém, I would figure it out. In the meanwhile, she would have to use the Internet café to check her e-mail. I password locked the computer, so she could not sneak on. We left Budapest on the train for Veszpém on Friday afternoon and arrived two hours later. We were booked at an adorable little B and B that looked like a Swiss chalet, for $20.00 a night with breakfast. The pillows were the most comfortable I had ever used. Oh, I am getting off of the subject. Back to the story, the first night of the conference was fun being with so many teachers, mostly Hungarians, but others from Croatia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, England, and the States. Saturday morning, we were at the plenary session and my mobile rang. I forgot to switch it to silent and immediately did not without answering it. I was to present that afternoon and Ron was to present Sunday afternoon. After the session, I checked my messages on the phone. One was a call from Fernando, hysterical telling me that Mary called him and the apt. was robbed. The other was from Mary with the same message. I called Mary back and the line was busy. I called Fernando back and only got his voice mail. Then I found Ron and told him that I did not have any details yet. When I reached Mary, she said: “We have been robbed. My bag is gone. (She kept her bag on a chair in the entry hallway) Kristen (her new friend from my writers group) was over and I saw her to the door when she left. To be honest, I am not sure whether or not I locked it with the key (the door will lock automatically when closed, but the deadbolt needs the key). I went to bed and fell asleep. Later, I heard noises and thought I you guys had come home early. At first I did not think about it, but then I got up to investigate. (Why would we return the same night we left when we intended to be gone until Monday?). When I went to investigate, the door was locked (no mention of the deadbolt) and I did not see anything unusual. I stayed up and watched television and did crossword puzzles (my printer ink again) for an hour or so, then I took a sleeping pill and went back to bed. (You think someone is trying to break in and you take a sleeping pill?) The next morning, I discovered that my shoulder bag was not on the chair where I thought I left it and looked all over the apartment. After a checking everywhere, I could not find it and realized the front door was open (open-open or just not locked with the key?) I hope you have your laptop with you. It is not on the desk any longer. (Three days ago, I made a point of saying that I was putting it away since I no longer needed it daily.) I do not see anything else that looks disturbed. Imagine, my diamond ring is worth $8,000 and was sitting right by my head, but thankfully, they did not take that.” Her shoulder bag had: her makeup case, a brush, her transportation pass, keys to this apartment, keys to her new apartment, a survival book I made for her with all the addresses in it, passport, wallet with little cash, but all of her credit cards, ATM card, driver’s license, and probably other things I am forgetting. She tried calling the police, which is a waste of time. They don’t run out for residents let alone for foreigners. She called her friend Kristen who came over to translate when needed. Supposedly, apts on the second, fifth, and first floors have also been robbed in the past, time uncertain. The phone calls started flowing between Mary, Fernando, our friend Shuli, our property owner, and us. First we needed a locksmith to change the lock and to put a safety bar on the door. Fernando and Shuli started making calls, but locksmiths do not do 24 hour service here and they each called ten with no luck. Fernando finally found an ad for one who would come out on short notice. He put a safety bar in. Until then Mary was stuck in the apt. since out keys were loose in the world. When I spoke with her, she told me she had things to do and needed to leave. If I had been here, I would have slapped her. I could not see any reason for us to return early since the damage had been done already and there was nothing we could do, not speaking the language. Fernando took control and organized the locksmith, so it was Mary’s responsibility to wait for him. In the meanwhile, she called the credit card companies and stopped her cards. Her international calling card had run out of time, so I told her where mine was and that I had not used it at all, so it was full. She called her kids to wire her money since she could not access the ATM. The calls flew around all day long and we continued to call and check on her. After the bar was in, she left the apt. and went to her new apt. where the locks needed changing also since her keys were also stolen. She stayed at Kristen’s apt. that night and her own the next. On Sunday, she and Kristen went shopping at Ikea after getting the wired money since she needed basic supplies for her new apt. (All apts. come with basic supplies, but she wanted to supplement them). Sunday, Fernando called to say some old woman came to our apt. and gave Mary a plastic bag of things that were in her bag. This woman supposedly found them in a trash can on a street out of town and on the way to the airport. He said it was strange that someone could identify all of these things and return them such a long way away. We arrived home Monday afternoon and she had to meet us at the apt. since she had the new key to the bar. Mary recounted the story of Saturday morning, but significant pieces were different… “Kristen was over and I saw her to the door when she left. I locked the door with the key immediately after she was gone. I would never leave it unlocked, especially when I am home alone. I went to bed and fell asleep. Later, I heard noises and thought I you guys had come home early. At first I did not think about it, but then I got up to investigate. When I went to investigate, the door was locked. I looked out the kitchen windows and then went into your bedroom and looked out those windows and I did not see anything unusual. (Note: our bedroom windows are double windows with a mini blind between the two windows. One would need to open the first window to open the blinds to see out. Neither the blinds nor the curtain looked disturbed in either the kitchen or the bedroom.) I stayed up and watched television and did crossword puzzles for an hour or so, then I went back to bed. (No mention of the sleeping pill and I did not confront her on it) The next morning, I did things around here, vacuumed, and by the way, I vacuumed your bedroom, then I cleaned up a bit (vacuum cleaner is in the pantry, which is directly across from the front door) and about an hour or so later, I went looking for my bag. It was gone. Then I realized the front door was wide open. Thankfully, they did not take my diamond ring, which was right by my head in the bedroom. It is worth $9,000.” (It went up $1,000. overnight. Forget stocks, buy diamonds for a good investment). When I confronted her about what she had said about not being sure whether or not she locked the door with the key, she denied ever saying it and claimed that is not a thing she would ever forget to do. Then comes the story about the returned goods. The story changes again. “An old drunk buzzed the intercom and when he spoke Hungarian, I gave it to Kristen to answer (how to you tell it is an old drunk over the intercom?). He wanted to come in, but she would not let him in. He later appeared at the door and was let in by the building manager after telling her he had something for me. (Notice the gender changed from what she told Fernando). He handed me a plastic bag and it had some of my things in it that he said he found in a trash can (location was much closer to the apt that before). She then showed us a ripped up wallet and shredded make-up case, her transportation pass, and a hairbrush. She went on to say how many robberies have occurred in this building according to the building manager, etc. I asked her how someone knew that these items belonged to her? Mary said that she always kept a little slip of paper in her wallet that had this address on it. I did and still not know why she would have that since she also had our business cards with the address as well as it was in her notebook that I made for her. But with the benefit of the doubt, if she did have this slip of paper, how could it have survived the shredded wallet when there was absolutely nothing else in this scrap of leather? She could not answer that question. My next question was that if these items were tossed into a trashcan, how did some ‘bum’ know that all of these isolated items should be returned to this address? What was the connecting factor to return these things together and what if there were other things in the trash that belonged to her, but the ‘bum’ did not realize they were also connected. This too went unanswered. What incentive would some ‘bum’ have in returning these items? The hope of getting an reward? Slim chance under any circumstances, but even slimmer when the important items like the wallet and makeup case were obviously emptied and destroyed beyond repair. Why would anyone think they were important enough to return to someone? The real mystery came when she produced two keys that were supposedly returned. One was my mailbox key, which she had on her key ring and the other was a key to the apartment front door. BUT, the apt. key was not the key we had given her. This key, though it worked, was a different shape at the top, handle part and was painted black. If someone had a copy of our key, why would they throw it away and not save it for a future burglary? Why did they keep the key to the building and not these also? Mary showed us this little hole on the outside of the door and some scraped paint marks where they tried to break in the window on the door. She was sure they popped the lock through this little hole. If the bolt were on, there is no way the bolt could have been popped through this little hole. The scraped paint was no where near the edge of the window, but away from it. The windows have iron decorative grates on them and even if they were opened, they would need a key to open the bolt if it were on. Then Mary had the audacity to tell us that we needed to tell our property owner that she needed to reimburse her for her losses. Keeping my temper, a first, I said “Mary, you are a guest. Your name is not on the lease and she has no responsibility toward you at all. She owes you nothing. Mentally, I was thinking what Mary owed us for food, supplies, aggravation, and stress. Every Hungarian that I have told this story to, thinks it is too weird for words and none of them believe it. The U.S. Embassy people that were at the conference with us were given minute-by-minute updates in hopes that they could be of assistance. They thought this was a fishy story and there was more to it than we were being told. Our property owner found it very suspicious. She spoke with the building manager who also thought it was strange. The other robberies were ancient history and not current at all. When we showed the property owner the door and the hole with paint scraped off, she said that was done by a locksmith a long time ago. She was living here at the time and she lost her key. She had to have a locksmith come and let her in. When he replaced the lock with the current lock, he drilled too far and created the little gap that is there now. We could not remember if it had been there or not. The scraped paint was old too, which we thought was the case, but she confirmed it. The other thing that she thought was strange was that if the lock were jimmied in any way, the way Mary claims it was, why was the lock intact? There was no damage to it at all. The questions that are still in my mind are:

1. If you thought someone were coming into the apartment and went to investigate, wouldn’t you realize the front door was wide open?
2. If someone did try to break in and then realized someone were home, would they return to the same apartment after they thought they went to sleep?
3. There were other things on the table in the hallway next to the chair where Mary’s bag was. Why weren’t they taken too?
4. Why return destroyed items?
5. How does some stranger make the association of what belongs together in order to gather the items and return them?
6. If the slip of paper with our address on it happened to be in the trash also, how does someone associate that paper with these items?
7. From the looks of the wallet, the slip of paper could not have stayed in the wallet. There was nothing intact to hold the paper in it. So, how did this happen?
8. Why bother returning a transportation pass to someone?
9. Where did this mystery key come from? Why was it painted black?
10. Did Mary really have a “moment” and forget her back somewhere and forgot that she did it?
11. Did she forget her back and was too embarrassed to admit it and made up the whole story hoping for compensation from the property owner?
12. Will Kristen stick to this story to maintain their new friendship or will she have a different version?

With all of this, Mary moved forward to shop for her apt. and to stay on schedule for her trip to Germany at the end of this month. She moved out the Monday we returned. Afterward, she called to say “Thanks” for all that we did for her, but never once mentioned the money she was going to give us for her share of expenses or the aggravation over this incident. She continues to complain over the expenses that this has caused her. When she pays her rent and utilities, she will finally realize just how good she had it. We like her better now…from a distance. Lessons we have learned from this experience:

1. All guests not known to us, need to have three letters of reference, a security check and a lie detector test before an invitation is extended.
2. We will collect a security deposit upon arrival.
3. We need to see a return plane ticket with “NOT CHANGEABLE” stamped on it.
4. They need to assure us that they understand the meaning of “You are welcome to stay with us for a week or two.”
5. They need to understand that their possessions with be put in a plastic bag and placed in a trashcan on the way to the airport, if they overstay their welcome.
6. The locks will be changed on the 15th day of their stay.
7. Their names will be given to the Russian mafia who will be told that they are impinging on their territory.
8. We will report them to the U.S. Embassy saying they are making threats toward the Ambassador in their sleep.

Pin It Now!

The Story of Mary in Two Parts

The Story of Mary in Two Parts Okay, Mary is not her real name and since we are in Hungary, her chances of a lawsuit are slim to none, but I am trying to be a nice guy and not embarrass anyone, even if she was a pain in the a**. I have tried to make this a creative story, a mystery story, or a children’s story with a moral, but it just will not come to fruition. Here is the long and short of it, but knowing me it will be the long of it. Mary was a stranger to us. She was the friend of a friend of ours who is on this list, but shall remain nameless. This mutual friend had shared my travel writings along our trip with Mary and she became fascinated. She was at an age when she was ready to retire from education; she has six different credentials some including Special Ed, Administration, and Counseling. Mary thought it would be interesting to spend a year living here in Budapest and started to e-mail me about the possibilities. With this touch of interest and my enthusiasm for living here, I was more than happy to supply her with details of our daily living, web sites to investigate, and other avenues to explore for more information. Some of the web sites were for The Budapest Sun: an English newspaper and the Ex-Pat Relocation Center that assists with Work Permits and Residency Permits. She was good about following up with all of them and sent comments that assured me of her having investigated each lead provided. All was going well with our exchange and I had offered Mary a place to stay for one to two weeks while she orients and settles once she arrived. Shortly into our, what turned into months of communication, she sent me a note that she had found someone else who lived in Budapest and was communicating with him also. She gave me the site of the bulletin board to see their exchange. When I went to read these, she had posted that “friends of mine have offered to allow me to stay as long with them as I wanted, until I find a place of my own.” I immediately, wrote her and reiterated that I had indeed said one to two weeks. She never responded to this correction. The next experience that I thought was unusual was that in spite of all of my notes about our difficulty with getting Work and Residency permits and all that it entailed, she contacted the Hungarian Consulate in L.A. and decided to start the paperwork. This could never be completed properly since she did not have any of the papers she would have needed from here to complete the application, like a job offer, her letter from the employment office stating no Hungarians were qualified first, etc. When she complained that she wasted the $50.00 fee, I could not sympathize since I had warned her against it multiple times. I have to admit that I was significant in sending her motivational sayings to move in some direction or another when she was faltering about when she would arrive. However, I explained factually, that if she arrived prior to our starting to teach, we would have more time to assist getting her oriented and out on her own. Also, we had our friends, Rochelle and Karl coming October 14th and would need the double bed that was to be hers in the meanwhile. She agreed with this logic and arranged to arrive on Friday, September 13th. This should have been an omen. Prior to her leaving California, I had asked Mary to please bring us a jar of anything from Trader Joe’s (a specialty grocery store) that had artichokes in it. We cannot get artichokes here and miss TJ’s tremendously for many reasons. She agreed to do this after asking me twenty questions, which at first I thought was a sign of her being thorough. A few e-mails later, she mentioned that she did not want to drag a jar around with her since she was first visiting friends in New Jersey, so would get the item there. I wrote back that TJ’s is a West coast chain and if it were available in NJ, I would have bought it myself on our last trip there. She agreed to get something for us. Though emotion can be misconstrued easily in e-mails, there seemed to be resistance there. When we were in the States, I sent Mary a flyer with the information on the airport shuttle that would take her directly to our door. I included 200 HUF for a tip for the driver since I guessed she would not have changed money at the airport. She had e-mailed that if she did not get it, she was sure that the driver would be thrilled to get a U.S. dollar. This really upset me since we had written about Hungarian pride, I had sent her sites about the Hungarians and their nationalism, and then to have the ethnocentric thinking that the Almighty U.S. dollar was so ingratiating that all would love to have one, really set me off. Aside for the above, exchanging one dollar for HUF would not be possible and therefore a waste for both giver and recipient. I then realized I had my hands full with cultural training and perhaps I had bit off more than I was willing to chew, but the forces were in motion. Mary was a self admitted clothes and shoe collector and had a difficult time paring down her wardrobe to two suitcases. Our mutual friend was thrilled since she inherited Mary’s left behinds. Again, I sent her a multitude of suggestions of what she would need for starting out her in the months ahead, what she would need to buy and the expense of the clothes, though the quality was poor. The day of arrival came and I greeted her at the downstairs door. On her bedroom door in the apartment, I had a sign welcoming her to Budapest and stating this would be her room. This sign was significant, so remember it existed. Ron had bought a lovely flower for her room and we bought a very nice woven basket for her to keep her toiletries in. We do not have shelves in the bathroom for our things and keep our own in baskets. In the basket were guides and brochures to the city, copies of the Budapest Sun, and other little things. We also bought a plastic container for other things that she may not have. I also bought a little notebook and named it “Mary’s Survival Guide to Budapest”. In it I had labels with what trams were closest to the apartment and how to come back from that stop. I did the same for the subway and various other things that were close to the apartment. It included our address, our home number as well as our mobile phone numbers. It was sufficient for her to explore on her own without fears of getting lost and not finding her way back. She was duly impressed and grateful. She decided to stay up, though she had traveled all night and had had a full day in NYC with her friend prior to leaving the States. We took her to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner and she was amazed that we could have a dinner for $2.25 each. We did a brief walk around and then came home to go to bed. The next morning, Mary was as comfortable sitting around in her bathrobe as we were which added a tone of familiarity for all of us. If I am not going out, I have a tendency to work in my bathrobe for an extended period of time so as not to interrupt my momentum. At breakfast the first morning, Mary announces that she only drinks decaf coffee, which we never have in the house and we only have one coffee pot. Then she continues to say that she is prone to panic attacks and hates to read books, though not in the same sentence. Having someone in the house who hates to read books was enough to put me into a panic attack. How could anyone with any type of degree in education hate to read, yet one with six different credentials? I audibly ‘yelped’ at that comment, though being the licensed therapist, the panic attacks just rolled off my back. The idea for Saturday was to help her get a monthly transportation pass and orient her to the neighborhood. These are the grocery stores and this is how you shop in them, this is the bank with the ATM machine, this is the Red line Metro, this is the tram, and so on. However, after a couple of hours, she was exhausted and we had to return home with most of it incomplete. This was understandable considering jet lag. Sunday turned out to be much of the same, with her needing to rest more than she needed to be oriented. Monday turned into a clone of the weekend days. The other thing was that Mary was hungry every few hours. It was not like she was snacking, but EATING. Both of us eat a lot less here than we used to in CA, but Mary was putting away more than both of us combined. When we would normally have enough leftovers for another full meal for both of us, after her arrival, there was nothing left over at all. At first, we thought it may be a stress reaction, but it continued for the time she was here. She is a big woman, towering around 5’11”, though not fat. By Tuesday of that week we both started teaching school and thought she would wander the neighborhood on her own and explore. It did not happen. She clung to us like feather on a goose. This was surprising since she had been to Europe for lengthy periods on her own and was used to traveling independently. By the end of the first week, the lack of having a moment’s privacy was starting to wear on both of our nerves and Ron and I started to get snappy with each other. I soon realized that Mary was not one to clean up after herself in the kitchen and Ron started following her example. This put me into ballistic mode. There is nothing that makes me crazier than an mess in the kitchen. I really had to put my foot down with this and Mary called me compulsive. Regardless, I was not cleaning up after three people. I also had to keep putting all of her things that she left hanging around on her bed, hoping she would get the idea that I do not like clutter or a mess hanging around. It took her awhile. Every time we went out, she calculated how much we spent. Her wallet was safely tucked into her shoulder bag. It did not see the light of day except for when she bought her transportation pass. The first week, we bought all of the groceries and she never offered to chip in at all. Since she was a stranger and eating enough to keep an army alive, it was getting expensive. When we went shopping, she wanted to join us and added things to the basket that she recognized. It would seem that she would have offered to pay for those items, but she did not. We had mentioned in conversation that we will not get our salary from the universities until we have our final Visas and that may take months. This did not seem to sink in. During week two, when she followed us to the grocery store, she finally paid for a day’s groceries. We have to shop daily since our refrigerator is small and the freezer is almost non-existent. Groceries for a day runs around $5.00 to 7.00 depending on other staples needed. During her time with us, she footed the bill for groceries five times. She paid for dinner out twice, but we took her to our favorite cheap restaurants since that is where we normally eat anyway. Once she complained that dinner for the three of us was about $14.00 and she thought that was too expensive. She is the one that ordered the extra side dishes though. All during this time, Mary was talking about meeting her cousin in Germany and another friend in Turkey. She stated that since she was planning to travel in the near future (eons away for us), there was no sense in getting her own apartment right away. Whoa!!! What does this mean? Let’s reconnoiter here. You are not going to Germany until the end of October and Turkey possibly after that and you think you will have a room available and waiting for you all of this time? Then and only then you will start looking for an apartment? This is when I started having panic attacks. There was no questioning as to whether or not this plan was acceptable to us or not, it was assumed that it would be. I gently, yes, I had control and gently reminded her that we had company coming in October, therefore if she were to stay she was being moved to the single bed. That was fine with her. THEN she started talking about her daughter coming to visit her and staying with her in her room, HERE! This almost sent me to the doctor to be medicated. Of course, Ron never shared any of his feelings openly and continued to be the host with the most, so she felt assured that she was welcomed to make our home her own. The final straw was when we came home one day and found her original “Welcome” sign that I had on the door, flipped over and she had written “Advanced to Roomate”. Yes, I know roommate has two m’s, but I am relating this as it was written. Ah, pardon me, but roommates SHARE expenses equally. By this point, Ron and I were having to go out for coffee just to have fifteen minutes alone together. When we were home, she was with us every minute unless we sequestered ourselves in the bedroom, but we felt rude doing that. She spend every minute I was not here on the computer and much of the time when I was here and would allow her on. I found out later that she was printing crossword puzzles from the Sacramento Bee and other sources. At one point, I found our business stationery in the printer and she was printing on the back of it. When I told her about it, she blamed it on Ron and denied doing it. Ron certainly knows the expense of it and does not use it for general reasons. I also told her that printer cartridges were $16.00 a piece for black ink and that the crosswords were using a lot of ink. Though she said she would replace a cartridge and stop printing them out, neither happened. Finally, I shoved her out the door and forced her to get out of the apartment on her own. She attended a meeting of the International Women’s Association and started to meet some other women. Our friend Shuli, who is looking for another apartment, took Mary with her one day when she was with the realtor. Mary’s comments were about the expense, but not about the possibility of moving out. Shuli called me later to say that Mary bought cigarettes and then forgot them on the counter where she bought them. The clerk came running after her to give them to her. Also, she forgot her bag at the coffee house and they had to go back for it. The home phone is billed by the minute and it is expensive. Everyone uses a mobile phone since they are much cheaper to use and no on gives out their home phone number if they can help it. This knowledge did not keep her from using the phone to make her calls to her newfound friends or any other person she could think of calling. Our friend Attila brought her to get a mobile phone, which is a necessity here, after much prompting from me. She did not know if she wanted the expense of a mobile phone. Since she is not a resident and does not have a business, she could not get a subscription service anyway. She could buy a phone for $40.00 and then buy cards with pre-paid minutes on them. This was a cheaper option and would save us money on our phone bill. Mary made good use of her phone. One day she called me to say she was in the subway and did not know whether to take the train on the left or right side of the platform. I reminded her that the stops were listed in big letters on the wall and she just needed to look at the arrows pointing to our stop. She claims to like maps and be good at reading them, but she was continually disoriented or confused as to where she was. I contributed it to culture shock at first. Ron and I bought subscription seats to the English language theater. Tickets for the season were $36.00 each for six plays and one bonus play. At the end of September, it was Mary’s birthday. We bought her a ticket for the play that we were scheduled for the night of her birthday. She invited a newfound friend, a young woman from my writers group to come along. After the play, we stayed at the theater and had dinner at the restaurant there. Since it was Mary’s birthday, we treated for dinner. With Kristen there, we naturally treated her also. Mary announced that she wanted to take the three of us for dinner as her birthday present to us. Ron had found a review of a restaurant that he had wanted to try, so we all agreed on Sunday for brunch. That Sunday, Ron and Mary went to the cathedral for mass and the music. I met them at the restaurant later as did Kristen. Each entree on the menu was in the range of $2.50 to $3.50, but Mary kept commenting about how expensive everything was priced. I was ready to offer to pay for ourselves just to shut her up. It was really getting irritating that she complained about expenses so much when she was not doling out her share, but could go on and on about her potential trips to Germany and Turkey. As October 1st approached, we decided that if she was to be a roommate (with two m’s), then she would be presented with her share of the bills. Ron figured out all of our expenses of rent, utilities, cable, Internet, and house phone and divided it by 3. He gave it to her and said this is what sharing the costs would be. It came to $180.00 a month. He then said that we would collect all grocery receipts and split the cost three ways at the end of each week. Since this was like feeding a growing teen boy, she was getting the lion’s share of that deal. Although she agreed that this was reasonable and even offered to increase the amount by a few bucks, the next day she found a realtor and was apartment hunting. Praise all higher powers regardless of their names. Prior to leaving home, Mary had taken interior design classes at the community college. Thinking there was light at the end of the tunnel with her apartment hunting; she analyzed the furnishings of each apartment and nixed it. My mantra was, “You are only planning on a year here, why do you care?” Well she could not possibly live anywhere that did not have design potential after staying in our apartment. The light at the end of the tunnel was getting dimmer and dimmer by the day. We were to leave on October 4th for Veszprém, in another part of Hungary. We were both presenting at an IATEFL conference (International Association for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language). Days before, Mary announced she found an apartment and would be signing the lease the day we were leaving town. The choir of angels singing the Alleluia chorus was audible to all and not just in my head. There still was no sight of any money to assist in feeding her, the phone bill, the ink cartridge, etc., but there was an end in sight. Funny, but her apartment costs around $450.00 a month, but that did not seem to be an issue. She planned on staying in our apartment until Monday and then moving to her own when we returned. To be continued…

Pin It Now!