English Camp in Hodod (by Satu Mare)

Pictures are above (Hungarian Headlines and Pictures from Camp)

This camp was significantly different from my last camp in Ocland. This time there were a little over 60 kids, they all stayed at camp and there was much more drama between the boys and the girls. This was also the first time they had Americans at this camp (Justin, Heather, and myself). In Ocland, there were only 23 kids and some of them lived in the village so some slept at home.

When we were going to Hodod (from Satu Mare), we met an individual boy named Josh (father’s Hungarian and mother is Filipino), just moved from Canada a couple of weeks ago and now needs to learn Hungarian and Romanian and his parents thought it would be a good idea to go to this camp. He’s about 13 yrs old and was scared about being in this camp since he had no friends and couldn’t speak the language. Justin and I tried to give him a little pep talk but we would soon find out, none was needed.

We had English class every morning for about two hours and instead of going by they lessons, I would usually just talk to each individual which I found much more amusing. For example, I would ask ‘What is your favorite food?’, one boy would say ‘Pizza’, What do you like on your pizza?’, he would answer ‘Ham’. I would then ask, ‘Where does ham come from?’, he would answer ‘Europe’. Questions like, Where does chicken come from?’, you would receive the most amusing answers and it seemed to keep everyone entertained.

We had about 5 different groups and they had to act out the group name and if the other groups can guess your name, you won points. We were the Cannibals ! (nice huh?, hey the kids chose it, I just helped choreograph the cooking of the kids, as my nephews can atest, that is my specialty!). In the pictures are the Ogres, Vikings, and Cannibals.

Hodod challenge: Groups ran around the village doing a treasure hunt and certain challenges such as, eating hanging bread from a tree, wrapping a person with toilet paper into a mummy basically trekking around town to find clues. Hats off to the three teachers who organized the event while the rest of us were swimming at the pool.

The Strand (The Pool): We took the kids to a really nice swimming location. It had three different pools; one really cold, one warm, and one natural thermal heat pool which was really hot (but relaxing). Probably teaching them how to do chicken fights in the pool wasn’t the best idea but we had a blast.

Poker Night: Now, this was a mistake, Justin and I were playing poker and one by one, the kids wanted to learn how to play. Now, talk about having kids learn english fast; some of the ones that were struggling with english were picking up the lingo fast ; ‘I’ll raise’, ‘I knock’, ‘I call’. At first we thought it was harmless but boy did they like to play and wanted to play almost everyday, hey they learned English pretty well through it.

Soccer Game: The local village kids wanted to play a game against the camp. Justin and I thought this was a bad idea and wanted to mix the teams but they insisted and wanted Justin and I to play (one as a goalie and one as defense). Yeah, we were doing pretty well until the first half and then it just went downhill from there. We left some of our pride on the football field somewhere.

Birthday: This was really nice, they had a big chocolate birthday cake for me on my birthday and I received little presents and pupics from all the kids. One boy gave me his wallet, didn’t want to take it from him but I mentioned before that it was really cool, so he insisted that I take it (almost teared there for a second). They sang Happy Birthday and it was anarchy trying to give each person a piece of cake, almost didn’t make it out alive.

Trekking through the mountains and village was really nice. As you can see in one of the pictures I adopted a little baby to hold on my back through the trek.

Drama: You think soap operas have a lot of drama, since there were soo many kids this time, there were boys trying to get girlfriends, girls having to choose which boy they wanted. There were some wars going on between the boys. They also tried to do a lot of sneeking around (I think some of the adults tried to sneak around also). The kids usually did not fall asleep until 1 or 2 a.m. every morning. Josh (half Hungarian/half Filipino) being different had his pick of the girls (Justin and I no longer felt sorry for him and he was having such a blast he did not want to go home – I’m sure you can pick him out in the picture). One kid asked me for advice about what to do since one of the girls lived in Satu Mare and he lives 5 hours away. Now for a kid, might as well try to keep a trans-atlantic relationship. Basically told him to try your best to keep in touch so you don’t have regrets and if things don’t work out, you still have the time you spent together and no telling what the future will bring.

Accomodations:
Let’s just say by the last night, there was such a strong odor sharing a room with 12 other boys and their stinky little feet, especially with that one that just didn’t shower. The odor was soooo strong that I was actually in tears at one point. AND WHO’s BRIGHT IDEA WAS IT TO SERVE BEANS FOR DINNER ONE NIGHT ???!!! Cruel and inhumane punishment! I needed an extra dose of palinka just to get through that night.

Hodod was a very cool little Hungarian village and still used the Town Crier ! He is the man with a drum banging on it and telling everyone what was going on. At this time he was just anouncing an auction the following week.