Being a beginner

 

 

    Julie with our bulletin board "cheat sheet"

We have been wrestling with the Hungarian language for a long time now. First there were the three Calvin College semesters in Budapest that Jeff directed, and I came along on. For each of these semesters we sat in a basic survival Hungarian class which the Calvin students took and tried to absorb as much as we could from the one-and-only Kati Fügedi’s lessons. That was especially challenging for Jeff because those lessons took place at the beginning of the semester when many other organizational details were on his To-Do list, many or all of them to be done in unfamiliar systems and organizations.

But we tried, and learned enough to sometimes communicate simple requests and thoughts, even if not perfectly. I’ll never forget the sense of accomplishment I felt in fall of 2011 when I said to the lady at the cheese stand in the market, “Negyed kilo sajtot kérek,” and we completed the whole transaction in Hungarian. I asked for a quarter kilogram of cheese – I don’t remember the kind of cheese anymore.

And we tried other learning supplements. We borrowed Pimsleur Hungarian language CDs from the library and later bought a set of them. (We still had a way to listen to CDs then.) By the time we were thinking about the 2019 semester, there were now such things as apps. We spent many hours trying to figure out Hungarian in DuoLingo. It was kind of like trying to learn how to use a computer with no instructions, just trial and error.

When we were seriously contemplating a move to Budapest with Resonate Global Mission as a career change for Jeff, the Covid-19 pandemic changed the world as we knew it. We learned that a Hungarian friend who teaches Hungarian as a second language was offering online lessons. So we signed up for classes once a week. It was great having one-on-two attention to our learning needs, and we started learning things we never had before. Still, it was hard to make time to do homework and practice enough to internalize much of it.

Then, thanks to God and many of you, we reached the point in this faith journey (beginning? Middle? End? End and beginning? There are so many ways of looking at it!) when we were able to move to Budapest. Since shortly after our arrival, we have been taking lessons multiple time a week. Still online, with a new teacher, and now 5 days/week, Monday-Friday. There are some concepts we are starting to really understand and “get”. We’re surrounded by Hungarian language in print and voice. We understand more and can say more than we ever have before.

And yet… we’re still just at the beginning. Any normally developing Hungarian 3-year-old can say and understand more than we can – probably even 2-year-olds! It’s humbling. We’ve been here before. In our mid-20s we spent a year in Mexico and learned to speak Spanish (with much younger brains, but still past optimal language-learning age). And we remember that we will feel like children in this language for a long, long time. Maybe always. Hungarian is much harder for English speakers to learn than Spanish. It’s hard for most speakers of anything other than Hungarian!

Frankly, I don’t enjoy feeling like a child, even though I am a teacher by training and have great respect and love for children. By and large, being a child is not a position of power in the world. It’s not a comfortable place to be. But it is a position of truth. Children know they don’t know everything, and while they are wildly curious learning machines, they don’t pretend they know it all, even to themselves. While they’re proud of what they learn to do, they don’t think they’ve finished and have nothing else to learn.

And really, even if we were to completely master Hungarian, wouldn’t all those things that children know of themselves still be true of us? Weren’t they already true of us in Michigan where we felt comfortable in our “adult-ness” and our positions of relative power? So maybe, being beginning language learners is just helping us be aware of who we always are as humans: beginners on the journey of learning, no matter how long we’ve been traveling.

We left our home in Grand Rapids two weeks ago today.

We are still finding our home here in Budapest.

The attached article is about a Pakistani-Hungarian colleague at Kalunba, the refugee-serving arm of the Reformed Church in Hungary, whom we have not yet met, but who will be someone we work with closely. I hope it gives a good introduction to the ways this organization, and the Reformed Church in Hungary, is providing a place for flourishing for those who are displaced.

On March 2, the day we arrived, there were an average of 2, 764 daily cases of Covid being detected in this country of about 10 million (approximately the population of the state of Michigan). As of this morning, the seven-day average is now 6,380, a sharp and alarming increase. As a result, the country is in a two-week "pause," or partial lockdown, with all but essential business, and all schools either closed or on-line. Masks are required in all public spaces, with the exception of public parks and while exercising outside, and the streets are as empty as I ever expect to see them. Two close colleagues have been diagnosed positive with Covid recently, and both are recovering well after what appear to be mild cases. But the reality is that our arrival has been one with a very slow start, especially in terms of developing relationships with new colleagues, with students, refugees, and friends. We did have a recent (on-line) meeting with the education team Kalunba earlier this week, and we have had several other more personal meetings, both on-line and in-person (outside) where we have begun to re-develop our friendships and relationships. 

Our hardest work to date, by far, has been our Hungarian language lessons. We began last Monday, and we are meeting on-line three times a week for an hour and a half with our new teacher, and the homework is significant. Thankfully our local context also requires constant attention to the language, and Julie's brain appears to be wired for picking up on the important vocabulary and context clues. An example comes from the local neighborhood news flier that gets put in our mailbox once a week - while trying to decipher it at the kitchen table last week, Julie excitedly reported that "in the winter, the water police do not rest;" because she had successfully translated the headline, "Télen sem pihennek a vízirendorök." I am lucky to have her around as a guide who is a few steps ahead along the way. Apparently, Budapest has a water police force, which makes sense, since the city is divided literally by a significant river, the Danube (or Duna - in Hungarian).

We have also enjoyed the benefits of having previous relationships with a significant number of folks who are either local and Hungarian, or are long-term ex-pats with significant experience in Budapest. During our brief quarantine, our former student Jane was kind enough to bring us some extra groceries and a yoga mat we had requested; and another former student Ye In has been offering suggestions for learning Hungarian along with insights into local culture and food. Our very kind and now ten-year friend Zoltán brought us our big haul of start-up groceries, and also took us out of the city last week Sunday for a hike in the nearby city of Göd, along the Danube just to the north of Budapest. Yesterday our friend Edit texted Julie to see if she wanted to come over to help get some bikes out from storage and take a ride in the nearby City Park, so we did that, and we had a good ride on a beautiful day. We have a new Hungarian teacher, Anna; but we also have seen our friend Viki, who spent an hour a week with us from last March until this past February on-line, patiently and skillfully teaching us the basics of understanding Hungarian. Last week Saturday Viki also invited us to the City Park, and we had a good walk and a coffee together. We were also contacted last week by a Swedish-Canadian couple that we had previously met through our church here; they had heard we would soon be looking for a more permanent place to rent. So, last Sunday we looked at the apartment they would soon be vacating to move back to Sweden. It was very surprisingly beautiful, and quite large, and located just a five-minute walk from our church, and very central to many places we will need to get to in our work. If we lived there, we can easily imagine it as a very hospitable place, close to the church, in which we could provide hospitality to many groups and individuals. So, while we don't yet have a final agreement, we are hopeful that maybe we can arrange to move in there when we leave our current place in early June.

I was quite proud of myself tonight for my opportunity to practice speaking Hungarian. Those who know me well might not be shocked to learn that my style of learning is much more relational and experiential than it is intellectual and cognitive. Details are difficult for me to care about, which is a severe deficit in language learning. But practicing, and social connection, these are things I care a lot about, and I am very willing to look foolish if it connects me to someone else. So, I realized this afternoon that we have been here in Budapest for nearly two weeks already without ordering the signature Hungarian dish in any of our takeout orders - the classic Gulyás (or goulash/beef stew). I decided to go to the restaurant around the corner from our apartment, called Tüköry Étterem (Mirror Restaurant). This place is unusual in our neighborhood in that you cannot count on anyone in the restaurant speaking anything other than Hungarian (which is good if you're learning Hungarian, right?) I went in and very successfully ordered, in my beginner's Hungarian, "két gulyás és egy sült krumpli." (Two orders of goulash, and one order of french fries). The very kind lady understood me perfectly, which is rare, and I even was able to use physical sign language to ask her how many minutes it might take before it was ready. She told me "tiz perc" (ten minutes, and I understood!) so I made a quick dash to the Aldi, around the corner, for some other supplies we needed, and I returned. We made the cash exchange for the food, and I decided I would embellish my farewell greeting, which is too easy in its simple form (Viszlát), and say a fancier version, "szep estét," or "good/beautiful evening." But instead of "szép estét" (evening), I said "szép értem," which may mean nothing at all, or may mean something like "beautiful, I know," or "nice for me." Stick with what you know, that's the lesson I learned tonight.

Tomorrow, March 15, is a national holiday in Hungary. We will be remembering the 1848 revolution, and the 1988 commemoration of 1848 that helped lead to the modern political changes in Hungary. Unfortunately, due to Covid, most of the traditional celebrations will not be happening this year, but we'll be there for the early morning ceremonial raising of the flag at the Parliament, since it is in our neighborhood. 

We remain grateful for our clear calling, for the tremendous breadth of support and interest in our work, and for the beautiful surroundings in which we find ourselves. And we also remain challenged to find ways to personally connect with new colleagues, with old friends, and with the work to which we have been called. So much is on hold right now - we are trying hard to focus in on the language learning as our clear work right now, and to be disciplined in our efforts there.