Cross-cultural holiday fun

If I had to rank my weekends since coming to Hungary, this weekend would certainly have placed near the top. There's a lot to cover, so here are the highlights:

• Friday night Christmas concert at the school. The music program is surprisingly good here, and it was cool to be able to see my students on stage.
• Saturday at the Kliewer's. The family invited us over to watch holiday movies, so I got my "Miracle on 34th Street" fix. It was nice to be around little kids!
• Sunday Agape Celebration. Heather, Lisa, Austin, and I went to a community gathering to hear our Jr and Sr Ensemble perform for some of the people of Diosd. Basically a lot of the senior citizens from the village were there -- with sütemény! I know, I know -- I said no more sugar. But it would have been rude to turn down the little old ladies! I declared Sunday a cheat day... They kept coming to our table with different kinds of desserts and pastries until we had quite a collection. Then they served us goulash, which was really good. I actually started to tear up a little bit, because my students sang Christmas carols beautifully, the community was so kind to us, and it was seriously like some scene out of a movie. or the Hungarian version of Mayberry.
• Sunday afternoon Heather and I went to hang out with the women from our ELL class. They were so sweet. Both of them had little gifts for us, and they had made... more sütemény! 'Tis the season to gain weight, apparently. We pulled out the dictionaries and the atlas [can you believe that my hometown of Rocky Mount was actually on the map of the United States?] and were able to communicate pretty well, albeit with a lot of laughter over our mistakes.

and since I didn't have any work to do for exams this week, we celebrated last night with DVDs! I love exam week---until I have to grade them...