April Cold

I came down with a heavy cold this past week. I had a very sore throat on Sunday which gradually progressed up to the back and roof of my mouth during the week. It was aggravated by a post nasal drip. We ran out of aspirin and had to buy some. While Americans may overpay for prescription drugs the cost of an over the counter drug like aspirin was over $4 for 20 big old fashioned round tablets sold only in an apothecary. We did pick up some antibacterial mouth wash at what would be a drug store in US but here sells everything but the drugs. Tari put in the ear plugs for a few nights and we both survived the week.

On Tuesday I met with Zita Paprika and Gitta at Corvinus to talk about a possible exchange program with MSU College of Social Science and Department of Sociology. They had sent me a copy of their latest catalogue to look up courses that might be a good match for exchange students. I didn’t find much for sociology in their catalogue but went on line and found a degree program in English for Sociology. That had quite a few courses with similar titles and even texts that we might use in our Sociology courses.

But when I met Zita and Gitta, I discovered that the program and those courses were offered by a different faculty. Zita was in the faculty of business and directed its international program. Not that some things couldn’t be worked out but it clearly was not her first choice. So we went over other courses her faculty offered. The best matches were in economics and political science. One or two psych courses were possibilities as were two of the sociology courses in her catalogue. I said I would go back and see about matching the courses to the MSU course descriptions, and would report back to the MSU people on our discussion.

Finding the MSU course description was a minor problem since the MSU website had been totally revamped from scratch and opened April 2. In my opinion whenever programmers redo something from scratch the new version is twice as bad as they say it is going to be good, and inevitably has to be revised.
The new home page has big rotating pictures (including our final four basketball appearance), seven dropdown tabs: About, Admission, Academics, Research, Global, Engagement, and Athletics. Below the rotating pictures were three panels containing a video promotional, three news headlines and one or two upcoming events. While I could navigate to the course descriptions without too much difficulty under the academics tab, I couldn’t even figure out how to get to the faculty pages I use for class records, grading etc. The faculty page contained all sorts of links to human resources. It is as if the faculty never has to use the website for class related tasks. After several emails a few people told me how to get where I wanted to go, but it took a minimum of four clicks. So I simply created icons on my desktop that allows me a one click access to where I want to be and I no longer have the MSU website as my home page. [by the next Tuesday, mirabile dictu they have added “logins” for instructor menu and the ANGEL site that has all our course syllabi, assignments etc under the smaller faculty tab on the front page!] But despite my cold and frustration, I managed to find corresponding course titles and descriptions and send off my report.

On Wednesday I managed to give my class presentation on Clinton to Obama health care reform in a very hoarse voice. The students were understanding and the one or two Americans asked about how they or ex-pats would be treated if and when they returned to US. Very good questions and my only response was that it would hopefully be covered in the rules and to contact the US embassy.

I stayed home the rest of the week working on an article on the Obama Health Reforms that Peter will translate into Hungarian and publish at the end of April. Tari meanwhile had to go clothes shopping. Between her continued efforts to eat less and walk more she has dropped a size or two and desperately needed new pants and tops. After checking out a few of the higher end stores at one of the malls on a peanut butter run, she found a reasonably priced clothing store and bought several tops and a pair of pants. She has said several thank yous to whatever impulse led her to buy 3 paris of pants in the US hat were almost too small. They have become a mainstay of her wardrobe.

On Thursday night we treated Kristin and her husband to dinner at their favorite restaurant. She had helped us get through those first few weeks—dealing with the condo manager, getting us cell phones, finding all the heating, water and electric meters in the flat, giving us additional book on Hungary, Budapest, and Hungarian, and explaining how the washing machine worked. The food was great and we had a very nice conversation with them. None of us wanted to leave.

On Friday Fulbright took us to Pecs, one of three or four European Cultural Capitals for 2010. Pecs is a university town with the famous Zsolnay Ceramics and porcelain factory. We met with several of the Fulbrighters who were teaching or working in Pecs. One gave us a tour of the high school where he taught English as a second language and American literature studies. We also had tours of the Zsolnay museum and the Csontvary Museum, the latter containing the works of a rather eccentric 20th century painter. On Friday night we selected tickets to a Varadi Roma Concert. Unfortunately as I have discovered, almost all concerts these days are amplified as if they were blasting into an open field at Woodstock. But this was in a packed small room that couldn’t have seated more that 250 people. The music was good but our ears were ringing. On Saturday afternoon we had free time. We had lunch with Tom, Carol and Lori at a nice restaurant and then Tom took us on a tour of the countryside. We visited an old castle monastery north of Pecs, got lost looking for a second historical ruin and then couldn’t find the monument marking some major battle against the Turks. Afterwards we had a nice snack at Tom and Carol’s apartment before taking the train back to Budapest.