The Saddest, but the 2nd Best

There are a couple of things I have been sitting on due to lack of time to share. As it often happens, when I hold on to one thing, something associated however weakly, comes to my attention to form a bridge between the two.

This is quoted from Hungary Around the Clock

Hungary Scores Low On Happiness
“Hungary ranks 110th, behind Iraq, Serbia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Bangladesh and Laos in the listings of countries put together in the UN’s latest World Happiness Report. The happiest peoples are the Danes, Norwegians and the Swiss.

The prevalence of corruption and absence of generosity are particularly disappointing in Hungary. Hungary also scored poorly in perceptions of freedom to make life choices.”

Today, I read that Condé Nast Traveler announced its 26th annual Reader Choice Awards.
Again quoting from the source

World's best cities
The "Top 25 Cities in the World" list had refreshingly surprising additions and rankings -- Paris came in at a lowly 22 while Bruges and Cape Town tied for 11th place.

Budapest and Florence tied for second, while the very top spot was seized by the colonial city of San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico, which took the crown from last year's favorite of Charleston, South Carolina (which was tied for fifth this year). Italy snapped up five of the top 25 cities, while Spain managed to take three.
 
Top cities in the world
1. San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
2.= Budapest, Hungary
2.= Florence, Italy
4. Salzburg, Austria
5.= Charleston, South Carolina, United States
5.= San Sebastián, Spain
7. Vienna, Austria
8. Rome
9. Siena, Italy
10. Québec City
11.= Cape Town, South Africa
11.= Bruges, Belgium
13. Vancouver, Canada
14. Kyoto, Japan
15.= Prague, Czech Republic
15.= Kraków, Poland
17.= Victoria, Canada
17.= Sydney
17.= Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States
20.= Seville, Spain
20.= Beirut, Lebanon
22.= Paris
22.= Melbourne, Australia
24.= Venice, Italy
24.= Barcelona, Spain

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BudaPest News

There are some interesting things in the current English translated news that I want to share and also have for reference, so this will kill two birds...


1. For Hungarian university students, 30% will not receive their degree, because they lack the needed exam certificate in a foreign language. 


Less than 80% of Hungarian high school students learn foreign languages, compared to 92.9% in Poland, 98.1% in Romania, 98.3% in Slovakia and 100% in the Czech Republic.


My comment: The US and the UK are both disgraceful in their foreign language education, so don't think this is a condemning commentary on Hungarians. Some of my students are so fluent in English, when they speak Hungarian, it takes me by surprise.


2. "The Hungarian state has repossessed the Buda Castle Labyrinth from a company which has been operating it without permission," according to RealDeal.hu. This really cracks me up. This has been part of Night of the Museums for years, the tourism offices promote it, and there are tacky pictures of the Disney-like drawings they have added to the walls. According to the person in charge, the labyrinth has been operating for thirty years; however, "Eszter Dolla, director of the authority - which belongs to the ministry of rural development - said that the protected cave system was the property of the state, and Budavári Labirintus Kft. was not paying rent for using it. Moveover, the company had no permission to utilize the cave and even damaged the protected natural treasure."
Someone suddenly come out of their thirty year coma and discover something was amiss?

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Survey spotlights Hungarians' poor foreign language skills - Caboodle.hu

Survey spotlights Hungarians' poor foreign language skills - Caboodle.hu

I will relate a recent experience connected with this in another post.

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Almost at the End

Tomorrow is the last day of school for this semester and then SUMMER vacation starts and lasts until September. Glory be, I thought it would never get here. Burn out is when you take on too many new classes, too many thesis students in one semester, and then have to chase after them. The chasing was my choice, hoping to avoid last minute disasters. Hungarians are major procrastinators. Three of my advisees really did exceptional work on their thesis. One student did excellent work on Information Technology in Education, but unfortunately, it was read and graded by my office-mate, a young Hungarian. She mentioned to me that she only gave it a B grade or a 4 in this system. It took self-control not to lunge over the desks at her throat, but I asked why. She said that "Everyone knows that information systems are taught in the Hungarian curriculum" so it was not relevant since he did not state where this type of education should take place. After I relocated my jaw, with tact I responded that since this is an American Studies degree and since this is an American Studies thesis, it should not be relating to Hungary at all. If there is so much technology in the Hungarian school systems, why do student come to the university not knowing anything about it? Then I went on to say that the only division of the university to use Moodle for online teaching was the Psychology Department and when I wanted to teach an online course, no one in the department knew what I was talking about. She said "Moodle? What is Moodle?" If she had indeed read the thesis, she should have known what Moodle is. Teaching with Luddites is getting on my nerves. One of my former students who will soon be graduating with her MA came to ask me if I could supervise her for the doctoral program. While trying to explain that although I am on the doctoral faculty, I would not have time to do it with the new MA course I will be teaching come fall. She said if I couldn't do it she would not even apply. Although I was flattered, this is not the way to make life decisions and I told her so. She responded with the fact that all of the other instructors would make her conform to doing what they wanted her to and not give her the freedom to pursue her own interests. After the confrontation with my colleague, I was reminded yet again that this is the sad truth.

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Joys and Concerns of Teaching

I have decided on two research topics that are interrelated, which I need to pursue. Through my five years of teaching here, I have developed a great concern about my students’ health. They seem to get ill at a greater statistical rate than U.S. students. Each semester, I have at least one hospitalized, but many others suffer with major illnesses that seem to manifest just at the time that an essay is due. An allergy to research or writing perhaps, I am not sure.

Strangely, this poor gene pool must be heredity, directly from the grandparents. This leads me to the second piece of research into Hungarian genealogy. It seems that many of my students have as many as ten different grandparents. The way I discovered this is, each time a paper is due, a grandparent is being buried, and the student needs to rush back to their hometown for the burial. When you have the same students for 4 semesters or more, you begin to realize that they have run out of the customary four grandparents, exceeded possible step-grandparents, and are now working on borrowed grandparents for their funeral get-out-of-Budapest escapades. Further research into these matters will be something of an avocation, but keeping an Excel database of family tragedies would help also.

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