To Ur, with Love: The Very First Memoir of an English Teacher Abroad

by Gary Lukatch

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 075966918X
• ISBN13: 9780759669185
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: 1st Book Library
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.6" x 11.1"

Customer Reviews

Review by Author

What an incredible, amazing, thought-provoking, vomit-inducing, happy, really nifty book. I laughed, I cried, I bought another copy. Of course, it is my book. Yep, I am the button-busting proud author of To Úr With Love. Don't know what the title means? Remember the 1960s Sidney Poitier movie about a teacher in the "difficult area" of London? To Sir With Love? Well, "Sir" in Hungarian is "Úr." Got it? Good.So, my book is about another teacher, albeit this time in the wilds of Budapest, Hungary. John Kovacs finally realizes corporate America isn't all it's cracked up to be, so hedecides to chuck his boring, conformist, grey-suited life and start over. He figures, what the hell? He's lived one life, mostly for other people: parents, teachers, bosses, wife,colleagues. This time it'll be for him, the life he should have led the first time around. But it'll be better now, because he's had some experience and he knows more about what he wants. And he is Damned Well determined to find it!!I had a ball writing this book. My first year teaching English as a foreign language in Budapest, Hungary, exceeded even my wildest expectations. The people, the adventures, the excitement, travels, parties, food, music, sights and sounds -- they're all there in John Kovacs' memoir. Included along the way are such things as:* John realizes why he will never take up scuba diving or parasailing* John finds his future in a serendipitous encounter with Atlantic Monthly* John comes to grips with mortgage banking management and arm-wrestles it to the ground* John runs head-on into TEFL school and bounces off the whiteboard with a severe headache* John arrives in Budapest - friendless, studentless, homeless, jobless, and happy as a Guinness junkie in Dublin* John finds out why America and England are "two great nations divided by a common language"* John meets all of the Bruce and Sheila Australian ex-pats in Hungary* John travels to "Dracula's Castle," has a Sacher Torte, floats in the Dead Sea and goes to an Irish-Cuban bar * John discovers learning Hungarian is exactly like learning Klingon!These are just a few of the adventures that await our hero as he divests himself of his old life and puts together his new life. Bigger, better, happier. His monthly income drops 90 percent, but his happiness quotient rises 278 percent. He figures he got the best of the deal. Read this book. All of you long-suffering coporate drones out there, there's hope for you yet. If John can do it, so can you. In the immortal words of every Irishman for whom someone buys a pint of Guinness: "Whale Oil Beef Hooked!"

Editorial Review

Not many men get to celebrate their mid-life crisis by having a parasailing scuba diver drop into their convertible while driving down a Los Angeles freeway. When this unlikely event happens to John Kovacs, he knows it's time to get out. John figures he's paid his dues after 25 years in the mortgage lending business, so he starts making plans to leave it all behind and move to the hot spots of Europe. Fun, travel and adventure await. The only problem is, he's still too young to retire, so he has to have some sort of income to support himself while he's having all this fun. What to do?John finds his fate in a magazine ad for English teachers. In one fateful week, he signs up for a TEFL school (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and faces his own personal Waterloo in the unforgiving cauldron of the mortgage lending business. He handles this final confrontation with as much aplomb as he did the hitchhiking scuba diver and, Perry Ellis tie flung carelessly into the wind, he aims his BMW down WilshireBoulevard for the last time. The future beckons!Of course, Murphy is still chuckling at John as he finds out TEFL school in San Francisco isn't quite what he expected. In fact, his month-long intensive course almost finishes him before he even gets a good start. But he muddles through, figuring if he can speak English he can teach it. He graduates and heads for the wilds of Europe. A chance remark steers his course away from his initial planned destinations of Barcelona, Rome or Athens, and he approaches the Central European capital of Budapest, Hungary, with trepidation and uncertainty. His high-school Spanish won't be of much help here! Mid-life crisis, career change, doubts and confusion, job re-training, personal upheaval, moving halfway around the world, trying to rent an apartment and buy vegetables when one can't speak the language. Will a middle-aged man's dreams turn out to be nightmares instead? Will he be able to travel to exotic climes while supporting himself as a freelance English teacher? Will he ever learn how to order a beer in Hungarian? Theadventures and attempts at making a new life challenge John Kovacs more than any corporate political infighting he's ever had to deal with in his previously normal life. But he's nothing if not persistent, and his endeavors to adjust to life in a foreign country have every indication of working out for the best. Ya think?