{"id":1725,"date":"2016-11-19T17:49:45","date_gmt":"2016-11-19T17:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/?p=1725"},"modified":"2016-11-20T11:14:52","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T11:14:52","slug":"06-12-29-2013-finishing-the-first-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/06-12-29-2013-finishing-the-first-month\/","title":{"rendered":"06.12-29.2013 \u2013 Finishing the first month"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"sri<\/a>

The house which we live in (Photo: Istv\u00e1n K\u00e1rp\u00e1ti)<\/p><\/div>\n

The reckoning with our time and efforts at the end of the first month out of three have gained a lot of good thoughts and observations for us. Sometimes Pali has to draw our attention on how much the kids changed because the beginning of the turn seems so far away \u2013 so much have happened since then. We have some long term mini-plans with the kids. We\u2019re trying to rid one of the kids of the constant swearing by changing the swearwords to names of food. Anything goes \u2013 mac\u2019n\u2019cheese, beetroot, b\u00e9chamel-cauliflower-chicken breast, you name it. Another guy is desperately trying to give an individual nickname for everyone. Now our group includes G\u00e1bor, Amanda, Sophie, G\u00fcnther, G\u00fcnther two, Missus Linda, Big Daddy, etc. One of us was sleeping in the daytime and turned awake at the nighttime back in Hungary \u2013 now he wakes at seven every morning all by himself. The anger management issues are also improving. After seeing the acceptance in us and the way we make fun of impatience and anger, their aggressiveness becomes powerless and useless.<\/p>\n

\"sri<\/a>

P\u00e1l Vaskuti on a group therapy (Photo: Istv\u00e1n K\u00e1rp\u00e1ti)<\/p><\/div>\n

This of course doesn\u2019t mean tensions wouldn\u2019t rise from time to time. Sometimes our patients have to dig deep into the subconscious during their therapy and this process can bring pain as they have to face their true selves. Other times though things are going surprisingly well and it\u2019s easy to cooperate. It seems as though the kids get scared that it isn\u2019t so hard to do things that caused so much frustration and anger at home. They get scared about how easy it is to shape one\u2019s personality, so they feel the urge to crawl back into their shells and do something stupid, or disobey and do a tantrum. Despite these dynamics, we have great achievements considering our collective work as mentored and mentors. It is hard to go through radical change together.<\/p>\n

The structure of our days is estabilished by now: we wake at 6 AM, do the morning routine (including breakfast), then work from 7AM. We\u2019re painting a local family\u2019s house from the outside, and later, as time permits, we\u2019ll work on other houses. If we wear down the house we live in, we\u2019ll paint that too.<\/p>\n

\"sri<\/a>

Buddhist monk’s lecture on meditation (Photo: Istv\u00e1n K\u00e1rp\u00e1ti)<\/p><\/div>\n

We work until 8:30, after that we have language classes \u2013 German and English \u2013 between 9 and 11. Between 11AM and 1PM, Pali is having therapy with the boys. Lunch at 1PM and then free time from 2 to 6PM when we possibly spend time in mentored-mentor pairs. David (my mentored) and me put our kung-fu lessons to the afternoon instead of the morning and sometimes we manage to get other people into our workout. If somebody decides to stay home, we have table tennis, a net for volleyball, board games, tools to make art, and some learn to play the guitar. It\u2019s not mandatory to stay at home, obviously: we can go swim in the ocean, or we have our favorite pool next town in Hikkaduwa. We can go shopping, and surrounding towns and cities are full of sights to see: there\u2019s a turtle farm, moon stone mine, tsunami memorial museum, lots of stupas (Buddhist places of worship) where one can go to meditate, and many other places to go to. We eat dinner at 7PM and at 21:30PM is bedtime. The life of the community livens up between dinner and bedtime: we play a local board game called \u2018carrom\u2019 (similar to snooker, but instead of balls there are pucks which you have to flick with your fingers) and we\u2019re also fond of poker. Poker is a blood-serious game full of pathos and struggle.<\/p>\n

I have to disprove one myth that got spread at home during our time in Sri Lanka: no, we\u2019re not starving. Hopefully it\u2019s just a misunderstanding. One new mentored and two mentors joined us on the 21st<\/sup>, equipped with several rods of salami, sausages and cheese, and the news that they\u2019ve heard we\u2019re starving. The exact opposite is true since Anik\u00f3, a mentor is a fantastic cook and prepares hot meals for lunch and dinner. She\u2019s making home cooking, without local ingredients. We\u2019re not starving, we\u2019re spoiled.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve mentioned before, the composition of our group has changed. Between the 19th<\/sup> and 21st<\/sup> of June, we\u2019ve split into groups and traveled to different cities. During this time we\u2019ve said good-bye to a mentor, Iv\u00e1n, who was replaced by M\u00e1rk\u00f3, and a new mentored-mentor couple, Domonkos and No\u00e9mi also came. We consist of 7 mentored, 6 mentors and P\u00e1l Vaskuti program leader psychologist. Anik\u00f3, the senior mentor is going home on the 1st<\/sup> of July. Her mentored, Mikl\u00f3s, who originally came for a month, decided to stay two more weeks, which is cause for happiness – also a great feedback. Another mentored who also came for one month also thinking of staying a bit more. This is how we set to work on in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The reckoning with our time and efforts at the end of the first month out of three have gained a lot of good thoughts and observations for us. Sometimes Pali has to draw our attention on how much the kids changed because the beginning of the turn seems so far away \u2013 so much have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1725"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1761,"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions\/1761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chanceprogram.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}