some pics from work

Here are some pictures from my work. Together with a colleague and four refugees we did a workshop in an elementary school trying to teach the kids what it means to be a refugee but also just to play some games with them and to teach them about cultures of other countries.

After the kids all learned how to spell their name in Russian, here they are drawing a person while being blindfolded. The woman on the left is a refugee from Chechnya.

Two kids interested in a waterpipe from Syria.

The kids all had to draw the flags of the countries where the refugees are from. Here they are proudly holding up the Chechnyan flag.

The girl in the middle from Syria wanted me to take her picture - the other just sort of snuck in.

The kids were all allowed to help us prepare a Chechnyan dessert, which they could later try of course.

Here are my Mongolian friends teaching the kids how to write their name in Mongolian - the most fascinating language for most kids!

My friend from Palastine is showing these kids what the Palstinian flag looks like while telling them a bit about his country's long history.

Budapest, Hungary

Last weekend, Todrick and I were invited to my friend's wedding. She is Hungarian, her husband German, so they decided to have the church wedding in Budapest, Hungary. Todrick and I took a train there on Friday night. The wedding was on Saturday, followed by a brunch on Sunday. It was a weekend full of surprises. On the wedding day, the groom's nephew got knocked down by a door-size mirror in a department store and had to be rushed to the hospital. Fortunately, he was allowed to go home the same day after some tests, but he couldn't attend the wedding. Also, this incident resulted in a general delay and a bit of confusion amongst the waiting guests. Once the ceremony started, however, everything went well and the groom managed to say his wedding vows in Hungarian - not one of the easiest languages! The reception took place at a hotel downtown. We had four tables with 10 people on each table. As Todrick and I were sitting down on our table and couple from Germany joined us - but that was it. As the groom told us later, the rest of the people who were supposed to sit at our table either canceled or didn't feel comfortable sitting there because they didn't speak English. That was not problem for us. We had a good time :-) Todrick even got to sing a few songs with the keyboard player and people kept wanting more but unfortunately Todrick and the keyboard player didn't know the same songs. At about midnight, everybody was tipsy and the "older" folks decided to go home. Not the "young ones"! We all wanted to have another drink in a bar on a boat on the Danube River. After some confusion about where to go, how to get there, and who is going to drive home, we managed to sit down in this bar - that was almost about to close - and ordered our drinks. Todrick then offered to drive home because he was the least drunk. Well, as one would expect, we got pulled over by the police, two young men who wanted to show their power. The car Todrick was driving belonged to the bride's brother and unfortunately the tabs had expired. For that the police wanted to take Todrick to the station! The only people speaking Hungarian in the car were the bride and her sister - and they managed to get us out of this situation without going to the station or even a fine (that's after we had tried to "give" the police men some money!).
But the weekend of "fun" incidents wasn't over yet. The next day we had all arranged to go to brunch together. The groom and the bride were supposed to pick us up at 10. At 10:45 the bride's sister showed up, but how could one be upset with her? She is just so sweet! However, she didn't know where we were all supposed to meet for brunch, so we decided to walk around downtown hoping to run into the others...surely that wasn't gonna happen, but it was fun walking around with Silvy and getting a brief tour through Budapest. After about an hour we managed to find out - through mom - where the others were dining, and we met with them. What followed was a comfortable brunch in a busy dining area of Budapest and afterwards we all went to the "Hero Square" where our ways soon parted as Todrick and I had to catch a train to go back to Graz.

T-Wayne - pimpin'. Mary, the waitress, fell for it :-)

This is Sylvi, the bride's sister, who gave us the "tour" through Budapest :-)

The lovely couple - unfortunately we couldn't really get a good shot of them in the church.

T-Wayne in action...the wedding singer

The bride dancing with some kids. Her sister in the red dress is filming.

This girl asked Todrick for the dance and of course he couldn't resist.

After our odyssey through Budapest, we were finally all gathered to have brunch. The newly weds are on the right in the front.

These are a couple of the "heroes" of Hungarian history. On the "Heroes Square" they have lined up 12 of Hungarian's most important people - of course they are all men...

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As we were walking to the train station we saw this rather run down building which turned out to be a hospital. Budapest seems to have two sides: the inner city is very fancy, glamourous and touristy, but as one walks away from it it becomes clear that most of this is just a facade.