Happy Habits Youth Exchange - Day 3

The third day we talked about cultures, subcultures and continued with identity. We also made group memes about the youth exchangs! The weather is starting to warm up more, as our mood gets better and better.

Happy Habits Youth Exchange - Day 2

Today we discovered more about Baskó, met with locals and even we got to know the myth of Baskó town...

We also had interesting and nice discussion about our rituals and habits today. We finished the day with common cooking with the very traditional Hungarian food called lecsó.

It is sure we are having a good time and there are still many things to discover.

Happy Habits Youth Exchange 2019

The Happy Habits youth exchange has officially started!

Now the group is finally complete: participants from Hungary, Romania, Ireland, Czech Republic, Italy and Germany all arrived yesterday to Budapest. Then we travelled to Basko where we are going to spend the following days and learn many things about habits, traditions.

The first day we got to know each other by games, group building activites, and even discovered that with teamwork everything is possible.

Stay updated about our days in Basko here :) ... 

From our project, Erasmus ACCESS, here you find our Step-by-Step Guide to make your youth events ACCESSIBLE!
Please feel free to make use of it, and let us know if you need further information or support in making your youth project accessible for all. We will be happy to support you.

We need allies, not excuses!

RED ONION EVS I Niki is in Thailand

Latest news are about my long awaited holiday.
It was basically the best part of the whole thing so far. I have collected all my days (and some extra with working on holidays/weekends) and took a nice 2-week-long trip around the central and northern part of the country.

This land is crazy big, just to say the very obvious. Five times as big as my home country it was a challenge to get from A to B (eventually traveling 23 hours, what) and there are a lot of points, for sure.

Started in the capital, went to the north, countless temples, breathtaking views, good food, sightseeing, cycling, trekking, back down to the seaside, swimming, sunrise, sunset, infinite number of photos - really an amazing time.

Niki

RED Onion EVS I Niki is in Thailand

Hi all again, here comes a short summary of what I have learnt so far. Short, as explaining would take ages or well, you know the other option… Try it yourself. 

July was obviously THE month of learning. So I began at the basics: how to get up really early and learnt to go to bed again, really early - also, how to exist in degrees varying between 30-40. All. The. Time. Basically, I had to re-learn how to sleep. 

 

Another basic step was food. People were surprised when I told them I like spicy - and then I was surprised what they actually mean by spicy. However, I adapted and now I can tell by the looks of the food if I (or anybody I know at home) could eat it. About ingredients: even the things I know are a bit different here. When they told me that the little green tomato-like balls are eggplants, I thought it must be a translation error. Or the famous morning glory, which I'm pretty sure was named by some foreigner with hangover. But Google is my friend and helped me to confirm that they were right. Turns out I knew even less about plants than I thought...

Cooking here is just like what you expect from master chèfs - throw everything you have at hand to a pan, add some soy and oyster sauce (and of course chili) and done. Put it on some rice and enjoy.

Oh and never forget that ANYTHING can be fried - even ice cream.
Let's see some other aspects, though: I have learnt to trust Thai people - try going home from ~350 km, on a 13 hours trip only by relying on 2 stickers on your T-shirt and let me know the result. Extra conditions: do not speak a single word of the local language and expect no-one to speak English. Here it was like: putting us here, sending us there, and then voilà, we're at home. One useful tip though: know how to correctly pronounce the name of the city you're going to.

Same goes if you're on a walk and just get tired of walking - you can count on someone to ask you to sit on the back of their motorbike in 5 minutes. If you are in such a small village like me, then you don't even have to say where you're going, they would know just by looking at you. The only other blond European in the district is a man, who's been living here for 15 years so there was no space for confusion. 

Language in 10 words: 5 intonations and no space between words in writing. If I know one thing, it's that “ka” is the most important word. Or at least the most used. It means please, okay, agreed, correct, good, thanks, no problem and so on and so on…
Unfortunately the different tones do not make any sense to my Hungarian ears so even when I'm trying to repeat what they say I don't succeed. Or when I do, that's totally by accident and I never know how I got that one right. Long story short: it's really unlikely that I'll be working with my Thai language knowledge after getting home. Sorry, bosses.

And a quick glance into teaching: kindergarten is a playground. For teachers.

And now something I'm still learning: how to let go of everything that's not positive. Stress? Nope. Hurry? Nope. Plans? Nope. Problems? Nope. Timetables? Nope. Anything not happening as you agreed/thought? 5555.

Niki Solymosi

Red Onion EVS I Niki is in Thailand

Hello all, first news flash from Thailand!

I've been here already a month, I cannot believe it! So far it has been a journey of surprises, shocks and a bit of sun sickness. Let me introduce you to the highlights of the month regarding my daily work. Teaching is really a difficult job (shout out to all the people doing this for a living, you are SUPERHEROES) and add that barely anyone speaks English here, not the kids, nor the teachers. However, people here just love you, whatever you do, which eases even your (claimed) failures. In school, the first shock came when students stood up in middle of class and went out to play or started running around in the classroom without any question. On the first day I tried to imagine what I would have received for this at their age at home... On the second day I tried not to reach the point where they get bored - day 27 and still trying. Not sure who developed more so far, them or me.

After all I'm also learning: the nature and interests of different age groups of kids, my own limits, coping, patience, improvising and how to be useful while having fun. I have to admit, it's not easy but well, no one ever said it would be.

And the strangest thing so far? To get used to being called Teacher, like all the time, just <Teacher> for kids, parents and even for people on the street. From dawn to dusk you can hear <Teacher> from every single angle around you, sometimes even in your dreams.

Niki