Friends of Skype sessions

English as a Second Language Playground
1

Hello Mujibur,

Thank you for inviting me to add myself to the group of the old friends. I will search for you all in Skype, it will be a pleasure to find and speak with you, Kati, Yuri, Evelinda - where is she? and Youri’s students.

All the best until then.
Bye!
Luiza

“Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere. I try to stay just above the surface…”

Hello, Mujibur, Stoicescu, Yury and everybody

Can I ask you that we continue our correspondence on a new thread. As you saw that the title of the thread where we began to write to each other is PoemHunter. You can use this thread if you want to send to the Forum a poem what you like.

Many thanks:
Kati Svaby

2

Dear Stoicescu,

I am very sorry that I wrote about this event when you say you don’t care about it. You say you believe in my mind and my heart. Don’t believe in it. What you don’t care about it is the Romanian-Hungarian Friendship which was always very sensible because of the nationalism “It’s easy to inflict a wound, but it is difficult to heal it.” I wrote not about the “circenses”, but about our great politics which poisons the relations between the Romanian and Hungarian, which sets against the different Hungarian parties in Transylvania because they want win the local elections. The reburial was a pretext what the President of the Parliament celebrated and he said: “László Kövér sharply criticized the Romanian government, and called the banning of the reburial and the Romanian police hunt for Nyírő’s ashes “uncivilized”, “barbarous”,” hysterical”,” paranoid” and “comic” acts. “ .
budapost.eu/2012/05/the-failed-r … nsylvania/
I never read anything from Armanca Brindusha, I know her very little, she is a Romanian woman who did lot in interest for Hungarian -Romanian Friendship that’s why I respect her.

They play a very dangerous game. After the change-over the main Hungarian party in Romania reached that they could cooperate with the new Romanian government , they got into the Romanian Parliament and have ministers. Now- due to our government’s politics, the RMDSZ had to leave his membership in the Parlaiment in Romania, the RMDSZ split up so of course they had been deprived their position in the Parliament. Its crime was: this party wasn’t nationalist, and they believed in the EU, where two ethnic minorities can live together in peace. So this isn’t “circenses”.

  1. About Mairead Maguire’s letter to his son:

Only short: A quote from the letter: ." It is possible, Luke, to change to this kind of world. You just have to refuse to accept the old ways of ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’ things, and begin to ‘think’ and ‘act’ in a way more in tune with the magnificent goodness in man."

Who tells these words she received the Nobel Peace Laureat. But this didn’t keep her back to pronounce this insulting words which don’t contain the thought of “magnificent goodness in man”
“Nuclear weapons are only gas chambers perfected … and for a people who already know what gas chambers are, how can you even think of building perfect gas chambers.”

After these words I couldn’t believe in her philanthropy. To say these words to Jewish people, it is equal to as she would have been stabbed them to death.

The Nobel prize is influenced by lot of things. Only one example: When Selma Lagerlöf received the Literary Nobel prize his contemporaries , August Srindberg, the biggest figure of the Swedish Literature, Leo Tolstoy,(He was put up twice:He was considered for the initial prize in 1901, but the judges determined that for his anarchism and his eccentric religious views, he should be passed over. The award went instead to the French poet René F. A. Sully-Prudhomme, surely a name familiar to all.
Tolstoy was again nominated in 1902, but was again rejected. Tolstoy said that he didn’t mind “because it saved me from the painful necessity of dealing in some way with money–generally regarded as very necessary and useful, but which I regard as the source of every kind of evil.” let alone :Fyodor Dostoyevsky" who wasn’t nominated. etc.

The next letter are written by an Afghanistan-Iranian man who is Forum member:
"I appreciate your sympathy and compassion in relation to my depressing live story a life in which none of my dreams were materialised though it would never indicate that I quit striving for achieving what I am sure I am deserved and am adamant to ascend the pinnacles of prosperity.

I am determined to pursue my education on returning to my country and major in political science or law, field of study that could bring about changes in the community for the better and this interest has chiefly stemmed from observing the policies of our incumbentcorrupt politicians and governmental officials, having said that I am determined to change the way the people view politics and basically I have lots of problem with our religious laws that confine our humanity to comply to the power of the rulers who are wolves in sheep clothing and a religion that has done nothing in face of our miseries and plight and only make us to pray and be consented with whatever adversity we sustain and undergo.

Please accept my apology if I bothered you with my ideology appertaining to the world around me.

Thanks for your precious time being allocated for reading my story.

Another one:
"I was born in Afghanistan and when i was five we migrated to Iran as the results of the USR invasion. We are five brothers and six sisters i am the smallest except one of my sister who is two years smaller than me. Two of my sisters live in Iran and the remaining brothers and sisters live in Afghanistan.
Being migrants, we used to live in tents for quite a long time, not having the money to pay for rents and other expenses. when I was ten I was sent to Pakistan both Iran’s and Afghanistan’s neighbour to go to school. There were no schools being constructed by that time for Afghans migrants and since my two elder brothers were members of a political organization called’’ RAWA’’ which stands for Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, they took me there to get education. The first i looked at the moon and crying for my mothers two years in Pakistan, hundreds of miles away from home from my mother and father were terrible and I vividly remember all the nights I recall the sentences I told to myself, I used to said; oh dear moon I miss my mother and you are our connection because my mother is watching you tonight and you look the same to my mother as you do so beautifully to me and I cried and cried and cried. My childhood memories are terribly painful. We were allowed to come to our homes once a year for two months and then were taken to the same prison for one whole year, how agonizing were the days when i was told that you should gather your personal effects and someone is coming to take you to Pakistan. I finished high school in six years two classes each year I was a very talented boy by that time, but my family didn’t allowed to me to enter university because they couldn’t afford the tuition. We were 300 hundred students gathered there from different parts of Afghanistan. The organization I talked about earlier made us not to believe in any sort of gods and hereafter i had studied a lot in this regard and reached to my own personal opinion about the existence and nonexistence of god. I believe that if there by any chance is a god this entity is not worth praising due to the all the plight we have on earth.
I am a morally responsible person but hate the restrictions religions have created for humans and all the bloods being shed by religious extremists throughout the history."

To this people when we began to write I told him that I am half-Jewish. His answer was the religion isn’t interesting only the human kindness, compassion. He learned by himself what Mairead Maguire’s taught to his son.

Bye:
Kati

3

Hello Torsten,

I would like if you read this article, and everybody who understands in German.
Stoicescu wrote me:

“I just don’t care about what was happening there. The more “circenses” they (they both, from the both sides of the border) will put there, the more I’ll trust in you and in friendship and humanity. I don’t want to subdue my will and my horizont to any misunderstandings.”

Stoicescu doesn’t care about it but luckily the today Der Spiegel interested in it. The Der Spiegel is the first, but I am sure that English/American papers will write about it.

spiegel.de/politik/ausland/u … 35958.html

Best regards:
Kati Svaby

4

Hello Stoicescu,

I thought that you wouldn’t answer my letter.

Do you know the Romanian Nine O’clock.ro-this appeared today.
Here is an article, if you didn’t read it, it is not a required reading only I call your attention to it.
nineoclock.ro/bucharest-reje … -reburial/

I am really sorry that the Hungarian-Romanian Friendship had been again derailed.

I am sorry why don’t you like Brindusa Armanca ? Perhaps once you tell me.
As I wrote I probably know her less than you. So I read some article from her.

Here is her Wikipedia:

Brînduşa Armanca
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brînduşa Armanca (born 1954) is a Romanian academic and journalist. Holding a PhD in Philology, she has taught journalism at the Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, West University of Timişoara and Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu and is the author of six books on journalism.[1]
A former manager of TVR Timişoara (1997–2004),[2] a regional studio of the public television, she was the editorial director of the Ziua daily in Bucharest,[3] the president of Videovest Association, and Board member of Transparency International, Romania.[4] Armanca holds many awards for TV documentaries and journalism.[citation needed] From October 2006 she is the director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Budapest,[5] and from 2010 to 2011 held the presidency of the European Union National Institutes for Culture.[6]
[edit]Law suit against TVR

In August 2007, after a two year legal battle Armanca won her lawsuit against TVR. Armanca had been fired from TVR after publicly arguing that TVR’s terms of employment violated the constitution and European Convention on Human Rights. After this incident the US State Department reported that media watchdog groups had called for a reconsideration of state TV’s policies which had been found to be restricting the right of its employees to freely express themselves and interfering with the public nature of the TVR as an institution.[7][8]

Is this PURE FABRICATION?

BYE:
KATI

5

Hello,

What is our problem is our problem. I don’t wish from anybody any sympathy. Every country has its own problem.

Every day something happens.

Today this picture appeared on Facebook.

Do you know whose tomb had been violated? Two brothers actors and their family who were adored by EVERYBODY. He had an incredible sense of humour and humanism. I can’t help but I burst into tears. What was their crime? They were Jewish. I should get used to seeing this, because it happens almost every day. But these actors caused to us so much joy. INCREDIBLE.

What happens in this country we need a strong nervous system. Unfortunately I don’t have it.

This morning there was a teacher demonstration. There will be lot of change in the education. The worst that they want to make slaves from our children. As happened with the hitlerjugend who went to die. The demonstration finished with: Verdi: Nabucco: Slaves’chorus

youtube.com/watch?v=7EN8RXnv … re=related

Not only me, but several teachers listened with tears in their eyes.

Many thanks to one of Forum members who wrote me yesterday an email. Its last paragraph is:

“From the outside, Hungary today paints a scary picture. There is Viktor Orbán who heavily censors the press, doesn’t allow certain demonstrations and curtails the freedom of speech. In press comments he makes comments against the EU, because he knows that that runs well with populist believes. But he is totally dependent on EU money, so if he were indeed to leave th EU the country would be confined to even bigger austerity, maybe poverty. And this is something that I find very sad. Even more sad are guys like Miklós Horthy. He is in line with Hitler, Milošević and Hussein. God help us.”

Many thanks to him for it.

Kati Svaby

6

Dear Kati,

This is my late answer for your first post. In time, I see now you posted more, and i’ll answer also.

I didn’t have any small intention to upset you or to say about the H-R Friendship something bad. Sometimes even in the some language it is hard to explain and to make yourself understandable. My point was, without a good information about what was happening there, that every inflammation, scandal between the two parts could/should be valued as circenses, like a football match and the scandal between fans. I know sometimes it is hard, for both nations. We have to cope with our history, but, more difficult, with our politicians, with their doubtful moral (at least, the Romanian ones). Even more, I suspect sometimes the politicians that want to move the attention from the real problems, as the recession, economy and what they should do, to other subjects with nationalist character.

I read in my newspapers some opinions about that event and its significations.
Maybe one day, in what I’ll “have with me more words”, i’ll write about the stereotypes of “Maghiar” with what I grew up. Or maybe i will not, because i’m not sure that you are interested in.

My dear Kati, we, you and me, we are the H-R friendship. And I am proud and happy with this.
How could I dare to say something bad about the friendship. No. It is amazing that there are people trying to carry this construction. That can try a new way of thinking.

My dear Kati, I believe in you, as I said, in your mind and heart, in your amazing humanism and dedication for culture. It is wonderful for me to meet somewhere a person like you. You can be a model in this troubled world that is in a continue search for its values.

You told me something very personal, if I understood well. You said that you are half-Jew. Waw! Do you know Hebrew or Yddish? Have you been in Israel? I hope for myself to visit one day Jerusalem, this amazing place full of spirituality and history.

I hope everything is well at you, and your husband is in a good shape now. My family and I had some days playing outside, we bought a trampoline and worked hard to ensembly, and until then it is a continue noise and laugh. Today it is dark and rain, so no more noise.

I wish you all the best and I hope to see you soon.

Luiza

7

Dear Kati,

I’ll say again: sometimes it is hard to be understood in your native language, so how hard can be in a second one.

I didn’t say I don’t like Brandusha A. . I said not every time i agree with the direction of the weekly newspaper in what I read her articles. This isn’t a reason to not like her, especialy that she writes more about non politic subjects. I don’t have any to reproch her, and, even more, I appreciate her, so every week I read her texts there.
So, my apologise if you felt an offense about what you believed to be my opinion.

With the same affection,
Luiza

8

Hello Katy,

9

Hello Mauricio,

Sváby Peti szereplése a klarinétversenyen Monoron:

youtube.com/watch?v=YLfqTbf7KdI

10

Hello Mauricio,

11

Hello Katy,

12

Hello Mujibur

13

Dear Luiza,

I was very happy for your letter. I understand you because from Ireland everything can seem very simple. I know when we travel in a foreign country we relief and after two days we don’t care about what happens in our country.
When we return we can’t refrain from listening to the news and everything begins from the beginning.
As you probably heard these things were not “circenses”. Of course the responsibility rests with our government. It is no end of this event.
You know I am really half-Jew, but my parents didn’t speak about this. The Jewish ancestors rechristened and I was born in a protestant family. At that, my father was a superintendant in the church. After the second WW the children liked to badmouth the Jewish. My parents educated me to never look down on Jewish, peasants and Gipsies.

I could be 10 when one of my classmates told everything bad about Jewish and I began to say me also. Then she told me don’t tell like things because you are Jewish you also. Of course I didn’t believed and I hurried up home to tell my parents what this girl said to me and I waited of course that they would say to me. “Nonsense”

But non, my father showed an armchair and tell me sit down. In this moment everything became clear, and I listened to him. He told that: Do you love your grandfather, your mother’s father? Yes-I told as I loved him. He is a Lutheran but his parents were Jewish. Etc . To cut a long story short when I was 18 year-old my fatherly grandmother revealed to me that she loved a young man and he loved her also. But the man was Jewish and her father was a protestant pastor so one of the families didn’t give the permit to get married. And she expected my father. When my grandmother told me this I decided that this remains my secret and I would speak about only to my mother. When I told my mother she had told me, yes, she knows, and this Jewish family took care of my father. And my mother asked me to never tell my father that my grandmother revealed this to me because he never wanted to tell us as my grandmother got married a man, who always he called my father whereas he couldn’t live with them he had been adopted by a relative couple.

So I never told this anybody even to my husband I told about 2 years after our marriage. When we were going out with my husband and he decided to would get married with me, he told me that there is a problem that his mother Jewish. I couldn’t describe what I felt. I said to myself this will never end.

Today I shame that I was so idiot. I have only one excuse that after the change-over I heard lot of reportages with Jewish people who are in the same age than me and they were not half-Jew but whole Jew and their parents never revealed this to them. After the WW II they were afraid that this could happen again.

My husband’s 6 close relatives died in the camps, 4 middle-aged adults and two university students.

Of course I don’t speak either in Hebrew or in Yiddish.

We have been in Israel and when I first there I very easily learned some words and they told me if I stayed here I could speak in Hebrew. The first word was “hamec” this is vinegar. My husband’s uncle asked me to cook to them a Hungarian meal: pork stew with sauerkraut. But they have not sauerkraut. I told no problem if they have cabbage and vinegar. But they didn’t have vinegar. I told them I would buy it but how say in Hebrew vinegar, they told me “Hamec” . I went to the shop, as I couldn’t read in Hebrew I entered the shop and said a Hello, and after I said: Hamec. It was enough they gave me the vinegar. My relatives laughed very much when I returned with a bottle of vinegar. The pork stew with sauerkraut was successful.

Since there is anti-Semitism in Hungary I feel than the Danish King who put the yellow badge when the Jewish had to wear it.I already never deny that there were Jewish in my family but I don’t proclaim. For example I shame that there was a Jewish young man here in the Forum, and I told him that there is anti-Semitism in Hungary and I didn’t tell him that I am also concerned. And he disappeared after asking how? why? e etc. and I answered him without saying anything about myself. He left the Forum and he very difficultly believed that it happens again in Europe.

Bye.

Kati

I detest the politics, but it is difficult not care about it.
.