Magyar News, 1999. szeptember-2000. augusztus (10. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2000-02-01 / 6. szám

MARY KATONA SCHOLARSHIP ESSAY By Alexandra Matolcsy While I am only seventeen years old, I feel I have experienced sit­uations that most of my friends have only heard of on television. Last sum­mer I went on a field trip with the World Federation of Hungarians to Romania. My peers wonder when I tell them how I spent part of my summer in Transylvania, Romania, in a country most of them never heard of, instead on a tropical beach. "Did you see Dracula's castle?" was their usual question. Few of my friends are aware that I have dual citizenship. Besides being American, I am also Hungarian by parent­age. My parents, along with the rest of my family, were bom in Hungary. I have visit­ed my grandparents every year since I was an infant. I love to go there, and it never really bothered me that armed soldiers stood at the airports or that people were accustomed to whispering. My mother told my sister and me to talk in Hungarian instead of English to help us blend iu "Vigyázz! (Be careful) This is not a democracy; this is a communist country," she warned us. So, what does Romania have to do with me being Hungarian? Prior to World War I Transylvania was a part of Hungary. Hungarians have been natives of Transylvania, yet they were stripped of their basic human rights, were forbidden to use their own language and practice their religion. In 1998 I had the opportunity to see for myself the magnifi­cent region and life in Transylvania, the land of my ancestors. Transylvania is poor indeed. Infrastructure is still extremely backward. I will never forget when we were on the bus on our way to Temesvár, a little town in Romania. All of a sudden while driving on the highway, which only consists of one lane, we came to a thirty-foot ditch right in the middle of the road. The bus had to go around it putting us in danger of maybe falling in. The region is so poor that they can't afford and don't have the materials to build a road like Interstate 95. Later we had to stop because a herd of about forty cows decided to cross the so-called high­way. We arrived at the college dorm where we were to spend the night. After a long hot day everyone wanted to wash up and go to sleep. Living in America I am not used to the fact that I can't bathe whenever I want to. My first question was "where is the shower?" By the look of the counselor's expression, I knew that showering was going to be difficult. Hot water was out of the question and even the cold water was barely dripping from the faucet. In the end, I remember, 1 used the sink to wash my hair and get cleaned up. It was time to go to sleep and we were assigned to our rooms. I thought like an American at this point, "well we are in college dormitories so it should be a nice living space." Was 1 wrong! The mattresses on these beds were dirty and mouldy. I had never seen any­thing like this in my entire life. Even homeless shelters had better living condi­tions than these poor college kids here did. When I tell my friends about these experi­ences they can't believe it to be actually true. Well it is, I could have never imag­ined such a different lifestyle. Living in the States, most of us are fortunate to have a nice bed and running hot water, but these kids aren't. When I met students there I was expecting them to be much different from my friends back home. To my surprise they dress just like us in the States; they listen to the same music we do, surf the Internet like I do, fight peer pressure to fit in with other kids. Teenagers know best how diffi­cult it is to fit in. Imagine a country where some of your friends from the neighbor­hood are Romanians who are forbidden by their parents to communicate with the Hungarian kids. You are ostracized, despised by everyone around you, still despite all the difficulties, you as a teenag­er ought to be strong enough to keep your language, and to adhere to your heritage, even when you might suffer terrible conse­quences. Small wonder, they are proud to be Hungarian. In the backward hills of the Carpathian Basin I finally understood what my mother has been teaching me through the years. "Be proud of your heritage, be proud to be a little different, and always be grateful to the United States of America that allows anyone to remain an individ­ual." I am applyingfor the Mary Katona Scholarship. Although I am not an AHHA member, the committee should know me well, since I helped out at all the Hungarian cultural events the organiza­tion held jointly with the other Hungarian clubs at Tomlinson Middle School. I hope you will consider me as a finalist for your scholarship. MARY KATONA SCHOLARSHIP ESSAY By Jessica Lévai Freshman year, I became a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, which is an organisa­tion devoted to the study and recreation of medieval and renaissance daily life. That era has always fascinated me, so when I found the branch of the grroup located here at the College of William and Mary, I joined them. My experience with the Society has led me to meet many wonder­ful,interesting people, and it has also taken me on a journey in discovery of my own Hungarian heritage. All members of the Society are asked to create a persona for themselves. In other words, they must create a character for themselves to play, someone who might have actually lived during the Middle Ages or Renaissance. When one has a persona, the study of history becomes much more personal and enjoyable. When I got to thinking about my per­sona, the first question I asked myself was, “Where in Europe would I have liked to live during the Renaissance?” No sooner had I asked myself this question than the answer presented itself—I would create a persona from Renaissance Hungary. I chose this era after reading a bit about King Mátyás Hunyadi, also known as Matthias Corvinus. During his reign, from 1458 to 1490 AD, Hungary enjoyed tremendous prosperity both financially and culturally. King Mátyás was a true Renaissance Man, and under his rule, the country flourished. It was no doubt a very exciting time to live, full of new ideas and discoveries, and I very much wanted to develop a persona who would have been in the thick of it. Renaissance Hungary is not as often studied as, say France or Germany and I wanted to remedy that for myself. So I went to the library and found all the books I could on Hungarian History, and I keep a notebook on what I find. My studies have also taken me to the internet, where my search for information about music got me in contact with a Hungarian choral group called Cantus Corvinus. I am also a member of the Slavic Interest Group, a collection of people from the Society for Creative Anachronism who study Eastern Europe and share informa­tion on Renaissance Hungary, Poland, Russia, Czech R., Slovakia, and other Slavic nations. They are all wonderful peo­ple (some are of Hungarian descent and, like me, are learning more about their her­itage) and if you want to learn something, they will always help you out. Now, of course, no persona is com­plete without a name. The name I chose had to be one that a lady in Renaissance Hungary would have had. The given name was easy, as Erzsébet is without a doubt my favorite Hungarian name of them all. For my surname, I decided to honor my mother, who was bom in Székesfehérvár, and create a persona who lived in Fehérvár. One of my friends in the Slavic interest Group directed me to a gentleman who is an expert on Hungarian names, and with the help of a book called Régi Magyar Családnevek Szótára: XIV-XVll Század, by Mikes Kázmér, we found Renaissance spellings of the name I wanted. And now, to my friends in the society, I am known as Lady Erzsébet Fejérwáry. By becoming a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and creating a period persona for myself, the study of the history of my Hungarian heritage has become a voyage of personal discovery. Page 5

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