First Week of Class

Can't miss that first day of school picture!

I have officially finished the first week of class. I can tell that I am going to love some of my classes and others were not the type of class I was expecting from this program. First, the strange thing about my program is that the first two weeks are a 'shopping period'. This means that we are able to sit in on any classes that we want to in order to decide what classes we want to register for. Registration then happens Sept. 22. Since there are only four BSME courses offered and I have to pick three, I don't have that many to choose from, so this 'shopping period' is not as necessary for us as it is for BSM students, who have many classes to choose from.

Because I don't have a lot to choose from, I've decided I will be taking the following:
1. Practicum: We will visit various schools in Hungary in this course to observe the Hungarian way of teaching and discuss the difference between the American and Hungarian education system.

2. Concept Building through Games and Manipulatives: In this course we discuss how to build math concepts in our classrooms based on games and activities. The thing that I highly enjoy about this class is that we also discuss how we would expect our students to answer and how we, as the teacher, would respond to these answers. It is a very interesting course and I'm starting to note some of the differences between the Hungarian and American way of teaching. For example, in Hungary, there is a larger focus on letting students figure out the solution on there own and guiding them in a way that doesn't let them know if they are right or not. Hence the teacher asks a lot of questions and seems to give less positive reinforcement.

3. Problem Solving in Secondary School Mathematics: This course is deceiving because most of math problems are problems I would never be able to use in a middle school or high school math classroom. I'm a little frustrated with this course because there tends to be a larger focus on the math than on the education. I came here to learn about math education, not just more math. The other course offered through BSME is also very similar to this class. After sitting in on both this one and the other one, I realized the format for each class seems the same. This also provides frustration because I don't understand why they are basically offering two of the same classes.

4. Introduction to Hungarian Culture: This course we will discuss Hungarian culture with a focus on history, politics, literature and art. During the first class, we took time to get to know each other and the cultures we each come from. I have feeling this course is going to be very interesting and highly enjoyable.

5. Then because I can for no additional cost, I am also taking a salsa dance class and possibly doing an internship at a local refugee program. I am attending an informational session on Monday about the internship and I am excited to learn more about their program.

Taking these courses also allows me to have Fridays off, which will be great for the occasional weekend travel plans.

Besides the start of classes, this week has been crazy busy. On Monday, we had our welcome party and academic orientation. We got to meet the professors and the other two BSME students who didn't take the language course. They had these delicious peanut butter brownies, which was surprising, because peanut butter is not a common food in Budapest (and most of Europe I believe).

The school also offered two events for students: a boat cruise Wednesday evening and pizza and games on Thursday. Both were fun and had good food, especially the boat cruise. Through these events I realized how grateful I am for taking the language course, because it gave me the chance to meet many people in BSM and BSME. On the boat cruise, a group of us decided to do an Escape Room Saturday evening and I am so excited. There are a ton here in Budapest and I have been wanting to do one (in general, not necessarily one in Budapest) for some time now. I can't express how anxious I am for tomorrow evening. Additionally, some of us also bought tickets to Les Miserable in October. Tickets were only $5, so although I won't be able to understand what they are saying, the experience is definitely worth it at that price. I also made plans with Molly and Meghan, my two best friends from CSB/SJU, to meet up in Berlin in November. Prior to all of our study abroad trips (Molly is in Ireland & Meghan is in France) we didn't know if there was going to be a weekend that the three of us could meet up somewhere, but when Molly texted us the date of one of the only weekends that she doesn't have a trip with her program, Meghan and I quickly agreed that that was the weekend to go somewhere. We decided on Berlin because it was the cheapest for all of us. I have booked my plane tickets and we are now figuring out where we are going to stay. This weekend trip is going to be so much fun.

So as you can see there are a lot of fun adventures ahead. I will continue to try to update the blog weekly, but can't make any promises as classes pick up.

Szia,
Ashley