Cultural insight in Szentes
On the January project day of the 1st group – on the occasion of the current “Hungarian Culture’s Day” this week – culture became the focus of some parts of our activities. This time, the drama session helped to ward off the morning sleepiness. The still somewhat sleepy team was challenged by some tasks, such as image reproduction with only limited instructions. The activities were not only about focusing on each other, but also highlighted the sources of our own senses and experiences, we learned how difficult it can be if one of these is not available.
We spent the rest of the morning in the City Library, where Zoltán Vágvölgyi informed the young people about the library’s IT search system and the Szentes e-library. We got an insight into the slices of Hungarian culture that pertain to our microenvironment: we selected the defining local Hungarian cuisines of our city, as they make up the specific cultural heritage that connects us to our homeland as a whole. After the presentation and information about the system, we selected four local Hungarian speciatities, about which the young people tried to gather as much information as possible using the e-library. After completing the task, they introduced each other what they had learned about the Szentes-paprika, germ pasta, the Széchenyi Park and the bricks of Szentes.
Returning to the community house, after lunch we interrupted our cultural adventure with a do-it-yourself task and assembled the new seating furniture for our house. The girls also proved to be good at screwing, and the group quickly turned chairs out of spare parts.
At the end of the day, the members of the group got a taste of another slice of Hungarian culture. The ethnographer Dorottya Kékegyi, our volunteer, provided a taste of the folk costumes of the Carpathian Basin, presenting a number of outfits. And since folk dance is also a part of our culture -moreover, UNESCO has declared the csardás dance as part of the intellectual cultural heritage- some basic steps were learned, which even those who had never danced before performed with surprising skill. All in all, we spent a colorful, versatile and information-rich day together. – Mentor Sándor Kovács
