Bridge Cities

New Blog

2008-01-29T03:52:00.000+01:00

Curious what I've been up to these days?

Well, my parents (mom especially) liked this blog so much that she felt out of the loop when I got home from Budapest and wasn't blogging publicly any more. So I started up a new one.

A Little Something for Everyone

A little crafting, a little creative writing, a little music, a little religion, and a whole lot of "wow that Jessie girl sure is weird".

Home again, home again.

2007-12-25T21:35:00.001+01:00

I have been back in Oregon for 3 days now. Still not sunk in.

Friday night I went out to gyros with Voula, Mihály, Aaron, Luke, Zeb and Casey, then walked around the West End mall, ending in the food court, eating ice cream out of a carton we'd bought at Match. Later several of the remaining BSM students and Anna met at Szimpla for a drink and hugs and reminiscing. The final goodbyes were the hardest, but the last things people say to eachother can be hilarious and enlightening. As I said goodbye to Bill, I said "We're pretty much the same person when we're drunk, aren't we?" and he replied "I don't know if that's just when we're drunk..." When I said goodbye to Joe I mentioned "Remember that night we kind of cuddled?" to which he said "You know, Jessie, you stole all the blankets that night, but I didn't have the heart to wake you up so I just shivered all night." I was sobbing by the time we left. Mihály walked me home. When I got up too my room I realized that I hadn't finished the goodbye present I'd started for Éva, so I sat and needlepointed drunk, finishing the little square I had started. It was black and said "Szép Napot" in blue with a yellow sun. Szép napot means 'beautiful day'; it's what Éva always said to Sarah and I as we were leaving for school in the morning. I almost missed my minibus to the airport because I went to bed drunk and only allowed myself an hour and a half of sleep. Really, a fantastic idea on my part. This led to a very hurried goodbye to Éva, but I managed to not forget anything there, as far as I know. I need to e-mail her daughter and explain why my departure was so bizarre...

Traveling was fine. There were 4 other BSM students on my flight from Budapest to Frankfurt, and then 2 other Lewis and Clark students on my flight from Frankfurt to Portland.

I abused my body my last 3 days in Budapest, getting no sleep and drinking a whole lot of beer... This caught up to me once I was safely back at Rob's, where I slept for 13 hours (not quite straight through).

It still hasn't hit me that I'm home yet. The striking differences between America and Hungary are little things. Budapest is Westernized enough that the grocery store and the cars and the nicely dressed people don't surprise me... but the toilets and the light switches? Bizarre! I also find myself saying "boscánat" instead of "excuse me" when I bump into someone in a store or on the street.

The time difference has been killing me. I've been trying my hardest not to get grouchy in the afternoon and evening when my body's telling me I should be asleep. Luckily, besides the first night, I've been having no trouble sleeping through the night.

There are people I wish I'd gotten to say goodbye to that I didn't. But coincidence works in funny ways sometimes, so you never know when I'll run into them again.

I thought I'd have more to say about being back. Maybe it'll take me still more time to realize just how acutely the last four months have effected me, besides making me realize that I am not cut out for a career in math, that I can survive in a country where I do not speak the language, and that long distance relationships are very, very hard. We'll have to see how it all pans out, I guess.

Last Day in Budapest

2007-12-21T11:29:00.000+01:00

Grades for the semester:
Introduction to Abstract Algebra - Audit
Graph Theory - C
Number Theory - B+
Intermediate Hungarian - A-

WELL DONE JESSIE, YOU GET A GOLD STAR!

Night before last was Kyle's last night. The usual crew plus one or two more (Me, Voula, Mihaly, Aaron, Luke, Zeb, Casey, Kyle and Mark) had dinner at Voula's, then drank some Egri Bikaver and lots of Dreher. Kyle caught a taxi from Voula's house at 1 am, to go spend the night in the airport. He's in Rome now, followed by.. a bunch of other places. Then he'll be back in Budapest for another semester here. Too bad next semester's BSM-ers won't be nearly as fantastic as this semester's...

Farewell party was yesterday, followed by Christmas market with Voula, Aaron, Casey, Mark and Mihaly, Spirited Away at Mihaly's, beer pong at Marcus', where Mark and I got our asses handed to us, and then finally to Morrison's for one last night of drunken karaoke. Someone requested Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day and it was sad and emotional. I'm going to miss everyone here so much and it still hasn't sunk in that this experience is drawing to a close.

It better sink in soon, there's not much time left. Really. I get picked up by the airport minibus at 4:10 am tomorrow, my flight takes off at 6:40 from Ferihegy, and I land at PDX at noon. Ridiculous.

Today is a day for frantic packing (I did some yesterday, but probably not enough), hanging out with Voula, writing to the future girls who will be living in my apartment, and going out tonight with everyone. So many goodbyes to say.

I probably won't post again until I'm back in the states. I'll keep writing while I'm adjusting, to bring this whole thing full circle.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right. I hope you had the time of your life.

If only those cliche lyrics didn't ring so true...

And I saw that the ringing was coming from your throat

2007-12-16T13:42:00.000+01:00

This time next week I will be back in Oregon.

I've been having mixed feelings about going home. I'll get excited for a little while, then something will happen that makes me remember how much I love everyone here, then I get all sad again. Honestly, I can barely wrap my head around it. Before I left for Budapest I couldn't actually envision leaving. Now that I'm here I can barely think about what being home is going to be like. What am I going to do without a Voula to cuddle with and listen to me moan about boys and a Casey to color and eat Nutella with and a Kristoff to eat raw meat with and an Aaron to be whiny with and a Bruce to be my big brother and a Kyle to talk about scrubs with and a Mihály to talk about poop with and a Pat to do magic tricks for me? I am going to miss my friends here so much. I know I will see Voula again, that's just kind of a duh thing. Plus that would give me an excuse to visit my Boston relatives. I will see Kyle next summer when he drives through Oregon. And Kristoff is going to run the Portland marathon next year, mostly as an excuse to visit me and eat Sushi Takahashi and Voodoo Donuts. Also if I ever go to New York to visit Kate, they both live in Rochester suburbs.

I am going to miss the beer and the music I've listened to here and the delicious food and the walks around the city. The walking. I am not going to get this much walking every day probably for the rest of my life. My shoes are all worn down. I'm considering leaving my Vans in Hungary, they're so worn out. My socks are all full of holes, I only have a couple of intact pairs left.

This last week has gone by so fast. I've started making friends with people I've barely talked to through this whole program and now I only have a week left to hang out with them.

My Hungarian final was on Monday. I'm not sure how I did on the final, but I know that I got an A- in the class, so I'm not complaining.

On Tuesday, Aaron, Voula, Mihály and I went to the Opera. Strauss' Elektra was playing (which, contrary to popular belief, is not based on the Marvel comic book), but it was kind of a re-imagining of the Greek myth. It took place in a bath house, had naked people, and ended with Orestes killing Elektra with a machine gun. Huh.

Friday was my Graph Theory final. The prof stayed and graded them and calculated our final grades, which is possibly the only nice, considerate thing he did the entire semester. Kristoff and I went in together to find out or final grades. He went in before me and came back out, triumphantly saying "C is for Chris Chilas! And also for cookie!". I went in right after him to claim my own C. I got a D on the final, but for completely stupid reasons. The last question was entirely dependent on whether or not we were either well versed in probability theory, or had written down the proof of the lower bound of R(k, k) on our note sheet (not that that makes any sense to anyone). And I am neither well versed in probability theory, and I hadn't written that proof on my note sheet. So that was one question down. But whatever, I got a C in the class and my grades aren't transferring to LC, only the credit is. Hooray!

Friday afternoon I hung out with Haggai and Dan, then went to Voula's for pancakes and applesauce and Grave of the Fireflies, then met up with Haggai again for a long walk around the city in the very, very cold.

Yesterday daytime was full of Hungarian's. Éva planned a farewell lunch for me and Sarah and invited her daughters, Erika and Monika, and Monika's family (husband and two young sons). There was so much food. I started falling asleep after we ate, so I went into my room, took an hour and a half nap, then came back out for more socializing. Went over to Voula's once Erika, Monika, et al had left, hung out with her, Zeb and Luke, then once they'd left I made dinner for Voula and I (reggeli sandwiches and salami). Casey, Jon and Yuan came over pretty soon afterwards with wine, so we played drinking games, drank the (absolutely foul) wine, then metroed over to Morrison's for karaoke, tons of dancing and a couple pints. Our student coordinator, Anna Fóti, had her birthday this last week so we convinced her to come out with us, too. Casey, Jon and I walked back to Buda around 2:30 and I crashed in Voula's bed (she'd headed out a little earlier).

Woke up this morning a little másnapos (hungover), had some tea at Voula's, then came home, showered, ate breakfast, then came over here to California Coffee Company, where I am currently sitting and procrastinating.

Cuzzie Weekend Pictures!

2007-12-10T16:53:00.000+01:00

Me and Voula being cute

Making faces at the pancake place.

All of us at Voula's birthday.

Birthday muffins.

Aaron is distressed. Voula is not.

Totoros I drew on Voula's birthday card.

Imitating Aaron's face.

My cuzzie makes funny faces.

Stacking cocktail animals Casey and I found at Tesco.

Mihály worships Aaron. Even though Aaron is sad.

Cuzzie's getting zesty.

Casey gets zesty (and doesn't like having pictures taken)

Voula squeezing lemons for the baklava.

Bill and George Clooney. They're pals.

Friday's birthday girl by the castle.

Bruce and Casey being cute by the castle

Bill, Kate, Bruce and Joe

Kristoff and Bridget waiting for the talent show to start

Playing games, waiting for the talent show to start.

Kristoff reading poetry.

Sarah showing us all how she makes cookies without a recipe.

Katie reciting a Russian poem.

A couple of very special songs, direct from the PNWD.

Michael Feinberg burping the ABC's. I almost threw up a little.

"Lookin' 'round the room, I can see that you are the most beautiful girl in the... room"

Voula works some flutey magic

Magic Pat! Pat really made Kate's weekend.

Haggai has been teaching swing lessons to BSM-ers all semester and Katie has been one of his students. They used the talent show to exhibit their mad skills. Paul played impromptu piano for them.

Kyle shoulder-pressing Voula

A Long Weekend With a Cuzzie

2007-12-09T21:32:00.000+01:00

In the last couple of weeks I've been taking pictures of my walk to and from school, around Budapest, etc. I put them all in a Picasa album. Maybe you'd like to check them out?

I had my cuzzamalina in town this weekend! Thursday afternoon it took a little less than an hour on public transportation to get to Férihegy to pick Kate up, then together we took public transportation back to Deák where we met up with Mihály, Luke, Aaron, Casey and Voula to go out to dinner for Voula's birthday. We ended up at a trendy pasta bar in downtown Pest. After dinner we metroed back to Voula's for surprise cupcakes Casey and I had made Wednesday afternoon and cheap champagne from Tesco. After the festivities had wound down I walked back home and Kate stayed at Voula and Casey's (Éva wanted to charge Kate 3000 ft/night to stay at our flat, so Casey and Voula volunteered their extra mattress)

Friday I met Casey and Kate at the metro and Kate came to Graph Theory with us. After Graph Theory Kate and I departed College International for the Christmas Market at Vörösmarty tér and the other market near Oktogon, stopping for lunch at a restaurant we nearby that had a Greek/Hungarian lunch buffee for 1100 ft. After lunch we poked around the market a little more, then metroed back to Voula and Casey's where we made BAKLAVA. I now know how to make filo dough successfully! Aaron came over and we made pasta for dinner, then Kate and I left to meet Halcy and others at Heroes Square for a walking tour of Budapest. We walked the length of Andrassy, from Heroes Square to the Buda castle, stopping to buy beer at NonStops along the way and meeting Voula, Aaron and Casey at Opera. There was a group of about 15 of us in the end, at the castle. We stopped at Voula's to use her bathroom, then the group of us, sans Voula, Casey and Aaron, went to Morrison's for singing, dancing, etc. Kate and I walked back to Voula's about 2 and crashed.

In the morning(ish) we ate baklava for breakfast, then walked back to my house where I took a quick shower and my host mama fed us (more) breakfast, then it was off to touristy things! We hit the castle, met up with Kristoff, Bridget, and Kelly for the market, went by Szt Istvan's, got coffee, then met up with Kyle at Heroes Square to go to the Szechenyi baths in city park. The baths were wonderful! This was my first time going, even though I've been here for ages now.

After the baths we grabbed gyros for dinner, then it was to Christina's for the BSM Talent/No-Talent show! Minor crisis when we discovered the boy who was supposed to be bringing the guitar couldn't come, but crisis was averted when Kyle and his roommate went back to their apartment and brought back their (very sketchy) electric guitar. Kristoff read some poetry, I brought my traditional talent show act, Paul played jazz piano, Mark and Kyle sang a Flight of the Conchords song, Katie recited a poem in Russian, Sarah showed us how to make cookies without a recipe, Michael Feinberg burped the alphabet, Katie and Haggai swing danced... it really was a rolicking success!

After the talent show, Me, Kate, Mark, Kyle and Haggai went to Szimpla, a nearby bar, and sat and talked for a while, then Kate and I walked back to Buda.

On Sunday morning Kate and I went back to the airport, had coffee, changed her money, bought a pastry and said goodbye. Oh what a wonderful weekend with the cuzzamalina! I took public transportation back to Mihály, Pat and Bruce's, watched the new episode of Scrubs, then it was off to California Coffee Company to conquer Number Theory with Bridget and Kyle.

In happy news, I discovered that Bruce has a Compact Flash drive on his computer... so there are billions of pictures of this weekend! Since this entry is already long, I am going to put them in another entry.

Mikulás!

2007-12-06T10:30:00.000+01:00

In Hungary (and many other places in Europe) Santa (Mikulás, a distortion of Miklos, which is the Hungarian version of Nicholas) doesn't come on Christmas eve. He comes the night of December 5th and leaves little presents in your shoes, and then Christmas eve family presents are exchanged. More on Mikulás here.

Yesterday College International hosted a Mikulas party. It started with food (which we showed up late for and missed out on) and was followed by presentations from different countries. There are (I believe) about 45 countries represented by College International. BSM is not the only program that takes classes in this building, this is also where the McDaniel: Budapest campus is, and there's also some sort of pre-med program. The McDaniel students presented some Christmas carols, a Japanese girl played piano, some of the Israeli students lit a menora and said a Hannukah blessing since it was the second night of Hannukah, the Skandenavian students did a Santa Lucia procession with candles, and two Chinese students performed, one on Bamboo flute and the other some sort of Karaoke.

After the performances there were games, karaoke, movies and Greek dancing. The BSM students got put in charge of the 'Mind Games' room. We were good, nerdy students and played Set, did the Red hat/Black hat logic puzzle and Bill read some minds using math. Casey and I went back to her and Voula's after that, she and I did some Number Theory, and then the three of us watched Love Actually.

This morning I was sitting at the breakfast table and Éva ran out to buy more bread. When she came back she told me that she had run into Mikulás on the street and that he wanted her to let me know that I had been a good girl and that he wanted me to have a foil wrapped chocolate Santa.

Today is the day Kate gets here! And it's Voula's birthday! The 8 of us (Me, Kate, Voula, Casey, Luke, Zeb, Mihály and Aaron) are going out to celebrate after I pick Kate up from the airport. Tomorrow is Halcy's birthday and she's organized a (drunken) walking tour of Budapest to celebrate that. I'm excited for that, since it'll be a good way for Kate to see the city and meet some more of my friends. Saturday night is the talent/no-talent show I've been (sort of) organizing, which cuzzie will also be here for. Talents I've heard might possibly be performed are a guitar duet, a Rubik's cube being solved while Dan stands on one foot and holds his breath, and Kyle shoulder pressing Voula. There will be much more, I'm sure, since we have two guitars and a piano at our disposal.

In school-ey news I have decided that I am going to audit Algebra since I have absolutely no idea what is going on in that class, and haven't for over a month. The material is too abstract, I don't get enough one on one time with the professor, and our schedule was so funny for a while (several missed classes, and several 3 hour long marathon classes to make up for it) it threw me off.

Two problems with deciding to audit:

1.) I will probably only be recieving between 9 and 12 credits for all the work I have done here, leaving me a bit behind on my credit requirements, which means I will have to take 2 classes this summer instead of the one I was expecting.

2.) I was intending on taking Abstract Algebra 2 with one of my favorite professors from LC, Naiomi Cameron, next semester, but since I am having so much trouble with Algebra I don't think I'll be able to take it. I wrote her telling her this, and she wrote back, saying that only 2 of us, myself and Amy, are registered for that class for next semester, and only one other person is considering taking it. If I don't take it, the class might be cancelled altogether. She told me that even though I'm auditing, if I have picked up enough this semester in Algebra 1, that she will let me take Algebra 2 next semester. The problem is that I'm not sure if I've picked up enough... this is something I'll have to figure out...

For now it's time to do a little Number Theory, then go to Abstract. Then more number theory, then braving the long ride on public transportation to the airport. Hooray!!

Note on the absence of pictures: My camera is no longer recognized by my computer when I plug it in. It's a problem with the camera, not the computer. I also have the largest memory card in existence in my camera, so it doesn't fit in anyone else's camera (You know, so I could put it in someone else's camera and plug it in to my computer) besides Aaron's. So I need to get ahold of Aaron's camera and upload some pictures because I took a bunch of my walk to school and my neighborhood and of course, a lot more of my friends.

20 days.

2007-12-02T15:30:00.000+01:00

The count to home is now 20 days. Important dates in the next three weeks (starting Friday, the day before last):

11.30 - Final Graph Theory assignment turned in
12.1 - Putnam
12.3 - Algebra homework due (possibly last assignment?)
12.5 - Number Theory extra credit and homework due
12.6 - Voula's birthday, and cousin Kate comes in from Edinburgh! to stay until Sunday
12.7 - Halcy's birthday
12.8 - BSM talent show (hopefully)
12.10 - Hungarian final exam (I think)
12.13 - Algebra final exam
12.14 - Graph Theory final exam and last day of classes
12.17 - Exam week begins (although the only exam I'll have during this week is Number Theory, I think
12.20 - Farewell party
12.22 - Fly home

The Putnam was, you know, fun... in that really nerdy kind of way. If I get even 1 point on it my name will be immortalized on a plaque on the LC math department wall. And I think I may have even managed that this year? I got a big old donut last year, but who knows, I think I made significant progress to a solution on one of the problems this year.

If this program has made me discover one thing, it is that I am not a math person. I was talking to Voula on Friday about it and realized that this situation is very similar to my relationship to piano. I am passable at piano because I took lessons for 8 years, but I never had the natural talent and I never had the drive to practice enough to make me really good. And this is how I am with math. I am don't have the natural talent to make me a genius, and I don't have the drive or interest to study hard enough to make me good at it. But just like I'll be able to pull a sonatina out of my butt when I sit at a piano years and years after my last lesson and wow people because my fingers still remember the motions, I will sit down with my kids with their AP Calculus homework and freak them out because my brain will still remember the motions.

But in the immediate future there isn't much more math. One more semester at LC and I'll be done with my major (projected classes are Computer Science 1, Complex Analysis, Voting Theory and German Lit in Translation - I was going to take Algebra 2, but since Algebra 1 is kicking my booty so hard I don't think that's going to happen) and that'll be the end of math. I'll need summer term to finish up on credits, so I think I'll just take a studio art class. And then after that?

Maybe I'll work in a craft store and on the side I will do craft projects I can sell and probably write a lot and try to get somewhere with that. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before that writing is something that could actually get me somewhere. Maybe it's because I hate hate HATE writing classes. I was in Creative Nonfiction last semester and hated every minute of it. But then I realize I keep up 4 blogs and a paper journal. And I've never gone more than a couple of months without writing in some form of journal, whether online or on paper.

But who knows where I'll be in a year... honestly, your guess is as good as mine!

Tasty Weekend!

2007-11-25T13:20:00.000+01:00

This weekend was full of delicious food, fantastic people, and exciting experiences. Yay, adjectives!

Wednesday night was not at all good; drinking, personal (boy) problems, and not enough sleep are the three things that sum up the entire experience. I crashed at Bruce's, but didn't get to sleep until 4 and then woke up at 7:30 Thursday morning, unable to get back to sleep.

Aaron had also spent the night there and at 8 the two of us groggily left in search of coffee. We found ourselves at California Coffee Company, a café even more Americanized than our usual haunt, Soho. Usually the coffee is fine (they even sell drip coffee!) but that morning it was cold, disappointing and overpriced. We used their internet, didn't talk much (I was mopey and we were both out of it), and parted ways around 9. On my way home I stopped at grocery stores to pick up supplies for apple crisp: golden delicious apples, butter, brown sugar and oatmeal. I couldn't find oatmeal or brown sugar at the Match I went to first. (The major grocery store chains in Budapest are Match, Tesco, and Spar/Interspar/Kaiser's). I ended up at the Spar in me and Voula's neighborhood, where I found all the ingredients I needed (although the brown sugar was the type that's just white sugar mixed with molasses). I brought my ingredients over to Voula's where I was planning on doing my cooking and she fed me tea and let me cry lots.

I left around noon, went home, took a shower and ate breakfast, grabbed the apple crisp recipe then came back to Voula's where she, Aaron and I were going to make 3 different dishes in Voula's tiny kitchen. We spent the next two hours cooking and bumping into each other. Voula baked squash and mashed it with butter and brown sugar, I made my crisp, and Aaron made the most nuclear, 1950s dish possible. Broccoli casserole that called for canned peas, mayonnaise, canned cream of mushroom soup and shredded cheddar cheese (it was quite tasty, but definitely disgusting to watch him make).

We felt like such good housewives, braving the metro with our hot casserole dishes covered in tinfoil and we got to Kevin and Davids to find it full of people and delicious food. A fantastic time was had by most. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pirogies, rolls, deviled eggs, squash, sweet potatoes, homemade bread, mulled wine, crisp, pumpkin pie; a real feast! The only thing missing was cranberry sauce, which couldn't be found anywhere. After a few hours and lots of food, Me, Voula, Aaron, Kyle, Mark, Amol, and Zeb went back to Voula's to watch Mallrats and hang out.

Class wasn't canceled on Friday, but I usually only have one class on Friday's anyways. Graph theory, at 8 am. But I was a good student, I actually went to class! It was only me and four others (the class has over 20 students in it, but a lot of people decided to make the weekend a long weekend and go traveling and others decided that it just wasn't worth going to graph theory). We got tests back and mine came back with a 73% on it! I have now officially passed a test in Hungary!! It's a Thanksgiving miracle!!!

In the afternoon Kyle and I went shopping at West End because he needed a coat. We found him a nice one, then went to a ritzy café in the mall for overpriced coffee and sat and talked. We parted ways around 5, then I went over to Halcy's to make dinner with her. We made fruit salad (kiwis plums oranges apples bananas yumm), pasta and chicken for dinner for the two of us, Halcy's roommate, Jax, and Bruce, and Bruce brought over two bottles of wine. After dinner we realized how nice something sweet, and it turned out that Halcy and Jax had two bars of baking chocolate... so we melted them with butter and sugar and had impromptu fondue with the leftover bread and fruit salad from dinner and drank red wine while they taught me how to play Euchre (Euchre is like Heroes in BSM; a couple of people got a couple of more into it until everyone was obsessed). They all went out to a bar and I went home since I was still very sleep deprived.

Yesterday was museum day! We ended up skipping the Baudelaire exhibit and only went to the French Erotic Illustrations exhibit and the Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky exhibit. The French Erotic Illustrations exhibit was definitely eye opening. When you hear about "bawdy French books" in historical or period fiction this is exactly what it was in reference to. The exhibit was books in glass cases, open to the most ridiculous illustrations. I will not describe them in detail, but let me say that the French of the 18th century had a fascination with flying phalli.

The Picasso, Klee, Kandinsky exhibit turned out to be much more than that. It was an exhibition of paintings from the Rupf collection, featuring many other artists besides just the headliners. Aaron, Voula and I didn't stay together while we were walking through the exhibit, but ended up choosing the same favorite painting independently. The painting was by Klee, called "Companions Walking" or something similar. I want to show a picture, but we can't find it on the internet anywhere, which is a little strange.

In the evening the three of us invaded Zeb and Luke's where we made sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions, drank some cheap Egri Bikavér that Mihály brought, and watched Kiki's Delivery Service. After the movie I frenchbraided Voula, Aaron and Luke's hair and we finished the wine. Voula, Aaron, Mihály and I took the tram back to the Castle district (Zeb and Luke also live in Buda, but further south than Voula and I). Mihály left us to go to the pancake place to do homework and Voula, Aaron and I walked back to Voula's singing selections from Hedwig and the Angry Inch a little louder than we should have. When we got to Voula's door Aaron realized it was already 10 (he also lives in Buda, but about 45 minutes away by metro and tram since public transport isn't nearly as good in Buda as it is in Pest) so he headed home. I hung out at Voula's with her and Casey and we made hot cocoa/tea and talked about Casey's trip to Dublin this weekend and just chilled for a couple of hours.

Then I walked home. And slept another 10 hours. I think I might officially be caught up on sleep now, maybe. Possibly.

Now I'm in Soho with Voula and Aaron, I've had coffee and carrot cake, and it's time to attempt some homework!

Turkey and French Erotic Art.

2007-11-21T18:34:00.000+01:00

I am now officially finished with midterms. No more tests until finals! (Let's just ignore the fact that finals are less than a month away).

This is a full weekend ahead:

Out to some club tonight for post midterms celebrations.

Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Museum day Saturday! Me, Voula, Aaron, and maybe others are taking a single day to see all the exhibits around the city we've been meaning to see: there's an exhibit on illustrations from French Erotic Art books from the 1800s in the castle gallery, then an exhibit on Baudelaire that Aaron wants to see, and finally an exhibit featuring Picasso, Klee and Kandinsky at the gallery right by Hösök tér.

Sounds like a solid weekend!

Overheard in BSM

2007-11-19T17:40:00.001+01:00

Something you'd never expect to hear from two people working on math homework:

"No, that can't work because fish and bird share a letter!"

Someday I will get more batteries for my camera and take some pictures. Until then you will just get colorful anecdotes.

Oh, what a life!

2007-11-17T14:38:00.000+01:00

WHOA. Sorry I haven't updated in ages.

Highlights of the last couple of weeks:

Failed my number theory midterm quite spectacularly (just like the rest of my class, I'm pretty sure)
Making stew, bread and bougatsa (a Greek dessert that Voula knows how to make from scratch) with Luke, Zeb, Aaron, Mihály, Voula and Kristoff last Friday night, then going to a way-too-cool-for-us hipster club in Pest for mad dancing, then coming back to Zeb and Luke's for bougatsa and sleep.
The Red Line Progressive (similar to the Yellow Line Progressive, without costumes) which started near College International and ended in a nightclub called Tabu in a mall in Buda.
SO MUCH CLASS this last week. Had make-up classes for Number Theory and Abstract Algebra which resulted in 4 8am classes instead of the usual 3, and an Abstract class that lasted until 4 in the afternoon.
Jeans shopping yesterday with Voula. I bought skinny jeans because I am in Europe and I have lost a bunch of weight, so when else am I going to have a chance?

To sum up, my life here lately has been: Class, homework, dancing, and alcohol. Oh, what a life!

I have been here for 3 months now, officially! Time is zooming by! Next week is Thanksgiving, for god's sake! Sarah and another guy from the program, Sam, are organizing a Thanksgiving dinner for Thursday. Sam's taking care of the turkey, Sarah's doing rolls and pies, Kevin is taking care of mashed taters, I'm going to make Gramma J's apple crisp.. I think it's going to be a fantastic time!

When in Slovakia...

2007-11-04T16:04:00.000+01:00

What began as a four-person (myself, Aaron, Luke and Kristof) trip to Zagreb, Croatia ended as just Kristof and I in Bratislava, Slovakia, getting perhaps the most authentic tourist experience possible, short of staying in a home-stay. I should mention that before I got there, my sole knowledge of Bratislava had come from Eurotrip (not a very accurate portrayal)

Our journey started on Thursday night with telephone calls around to see if anyone was still interested in going somewhere this weekend. Croatia had fallen through due to costs and Fraser not being able to make it up to the capital and interest in traveling had waned. The only person from the original group still up for an adventure was Kristof. There were trains to Bratislava leaving Keleti Pályaudvar at 9:50, 11:45, 13:50, 16:15, 16:45 and 19:45, so we agreed to meet at the international ticket office at noon to buy tickets for the 13:50 train.

The next morning I did the last bit of planning for the trip: finding a hostel for the two of us. I don’t have internet at my flat, so I called Mihály to ask him the huge favor of looking up hostels on the internet. A quick Google search yielded several results, so I just wrote down directions and price quotes to the first two. The more promising (read: cheaper) of the results was the Hostel Star, at somewhere in the neighborhood of €12-15.

Kristof and I met at noon as planned and got in line for our tickets. We weren’t sure how much the tickets would cost, but had been told that train fare to Bratislava was pretty darn cheapo. We didn’t realize just how cheapo that was. We got to the front of the line and I asked for a round trip ticket to Bratislava. Since there were two of us standing in front of her, the ticket seller asked us if we wanted a two-person ticket. I was about to say “No” when Kristof said, “Yes”. The line was long, the people working the windows were slow, and it would be easy enough for him to pay me back later so I agreed that yes, we wanted a two-person ticket. And how much was the grand total for two round trip tickets to the capital of Slovakia? 7800 HUF, (about $40).

We were done buying our ticket by 12:40 and our train wasn’t set to leave for over an hour so I asked Kristof if he wanted to find a cup of coffee somewhere, a question I really didn’t need to ask since the boy loves coffee even more than I do. For those of you who think it’s gross that I occasionally enjoy a coffee from Starbucks, you’ll really cringe at where we ended up: the McCafé across the street from the train station. We enjoyed our coffees, talked about David Sedaris (side note: From reading this blog, my dad says I’m going to be the next David Sedaris. Too bad I’m not male, gay or Greek. Or nearly as hilarious), and took advantage of the free WCs. At 13:45 we boarded the train departing Keleti bound for Bratislava en route to Prague. Since the train was originating in Budapest we found a compartment to ourselves, no problem. As we sat in our seats across from eachother talking, a head poked in the door. A head belonging to Rob Hildebrand, another BSM student who was attracted by the American voices (but had no idea they were going to be attached to people he knew) and wanted to say hi instead of studying for the GRE he was traveling to Prague to take. He quickly gathered his things and joined us in our compartment for the duration of our shared time on the train.

When Kristof and I said goodbye to Rob and got off the train it was approximately 16:30 and due to daylight savings time the sun was already set. We followed the directions to Hostel Star Mihály had read to me from the website, buying tickets and taking the 61 bus and getting off at the Slowackcho stop. Too bad once we got off the bus, turned to Beckovska st. and walked approximately 50 meters as the directions told us to, the hostel was nowhere in sight. We wandered the neighborhood for a good half an hour before we finally found the hostel, another bus stop beyond the one we had gotten off at, and on another section of Beckovsa st. The neighborhood was far sketchier than we had expected and the people we found at the hostel were not the young crowd we were expecting from all of the stories of hostels we had heard before. This was not, in fact, a hostel but a hotel, and from the looks of it a fairly seedy one. We had to show our passports to get a room and the clerk was surprised, almost offended, that we had Hungarian visas but no Slovakian visa. He, thankfully, still gave us a key and we got a room for the two of us for the night for 580 Sk (about $27).

We let ourselves into our room, put down our non-valuables, and left in search of dinner and the night’s entertainment (making sure to keep our valuables on our persons due to the sketchy nature of our accommodations). Our hostel was located about as far from city center as possible while still being technically within Bratislava city limits so we weren’t sure where to go. We found a large, ritzy mall nearby that we wandered around in first. The mall featured, not only an ice skating rink, but also a life-sized chessboard, ping-pong tables, a bouncy castle and a small track for big-wheels. We decided not to settle for food court food, but to instead find some more authentic Slovakian cuisine. Let me tell you, we found it.

Down the road from the mall, about three quarters of a mile away, was a restaurant called Sunny. We’d already poked our heads in a few other restaurants/pubs and this seemed the least offensive of them all so we asked for a table for two. The host spoke no English, but asked if we spoke German. “Kleine” (a little), Kristof replied. I asked “Beszel Magyarul?” (Do you speak Hungarian?) “No”. He led us to our table and spoke short sentences to Kristof in German (his Deutch knowledge was limited to what he had learned in high school, and he and I are both currently seniors in college, if that gives an idea). We read the menu (which was all in Slovakian) until a waitress came up to us speaking Hungarian. Hooray! A language we recognized! …but didn’t really understand. I asked her in stilted Hungarian if there was an English menu? No. Her Hungarian was better than mine, but I am almost certain she wasn’t fluent. Next she called over a girl who was another Sunny waitress, on break I’m almost certain. This girl spoke English quite well and was able to take our orders. Kristof asked for a chicken dinner and I asked if they had something with beef. “Biftek?” Ok, sure, whatever you think is good. Then she asked for our drink orders. We both ordered beer and she asked us if we wanted 10 or 12%. “Whaaa?” Yes, that’s right -- 10 or 12% alcohol. In Slovakia that’s something you can choose. We each ordered a pint of 10%.

We sat sipping our ridiculously alcoholic beers, getting quite giggly on a third of a glass each due to our empty stomachs. Then the food arrived. Fries for me, ok. Chicken for Kristof, sure. Two salads and a plate of toast… ok, not sure who ordered the toast. And then a dish was placed in front of me. In the center of it was a pile of raw, not-quite-ground beef with what appeared to be a raw egg cracked on top of it. Surrounding the lump of everything-you’re-not-supposed-to-eat-raw were piles of ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, whole cloves of garlic, and sliced raw onions.

We stared at the monstrosity before me, unsure of what to do next. We giggled, not sure whether I was supposed to mix it up and send it back to be cooked, a sort of make-your-own meat loaf, or if I should just send it back. Before I had a chance to make up my mind a woman who saw my incredulous expression from several tables away rushed up to our table, patted me on the back, and went to work on my plate. She expertly mixed the beef and egg with the surrounding ingredients, taking larger amounts of mustard and ketchup with my fork and knife, mixing them with the beef and smaller amounts of salt and pepper, and then adding more mustard until the glop was some sort of consistency she was pleased with. “Ok,” we thought, “this is when she takes the plate back to the kitchen and they cook this mixture and bring me back meatloaf.”

No.

She picked up one of the pieces of toast, spread a thick layer of meat-goo on the bread and handed it to me and then did the same for Kristof. We panicked. Unsure of what else to do, we each took a bite. Egeségedre.

Together we finished the “oh crap we’re not supposed to be eating this” dish, and sat talking while we worked on the rest of our meals. I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the meal once my beer was gone. When I returned there was a full beer in its place. “Kristof… is that another beer?” Kristof explained, giggling apologetically, that the German speaking waiter had come up while I was gone and said “Zwei?” Kristof had half nodded, acknowledging that he understood a word in German, and the waiter had returned minutes later with zwei more 10% pints. Oh lord.

Once we had finished our meal and our beers we decided we had had enough excitement for one night and that we didn’t really need to do more exploring before we went back to the hotel and to sleep. We paid the bill, walked back to the hotel, talked for a while, giggled more about what we had put in our stomachs at Sunny, braved the corridors with old men in boxer shorts to go to the bathroom to brush our teeth, and then finally went to sleep before midnight.

The beds weren’t the most comfortable, but we both slept fine, and woke up around 8:00 am. We were supposed to be out by 10, but ended up packed up and ready to go by 9-ish. There was a restaurant attached to the hotel, so after we checked out we wandered down to the (virtually deserted) restaurant. A hostess seated us and we ordered coffees then took a look at the menu, which thankfully was complete with pictures.

After breakfast we bought bus tickets from the hotel clerk and took the bus back to the train station to find out when the trains would be going to Budapest. 11:45, 12:44, 15:45 and 19:45. We decided to go for the 19:45 train, since it would still get us back to Budapest before the metro curfew, acquired a free map from tourist information, then set out to explore. The time was about 11:30 am.

We spent the day aimlessly wandering around Bratislava, stopping around 14:00 for lunch in a café where the staff thankfully spoke English (no biftek repeats). We saw the castle, bought a few souvenirs, discovered that the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is actually in Bratislava (which I’m sure says something about the city itself), witnessed lots and lots of tourists, took pictures and had quite a fantastic, relaxing day. I became very glad it was just the two of us, since we had no plan or agenda. The more people, the harder it becomes to make spur of the moment decisions like, “let’s go here for lunch,” “my stomach doesn’t feel so good, I think the biftek is catching up with me… let’s go into that hotel and use the bathroom”, or “well I think the biftek is mostly out of my system, but let’s aimlessly wander in the direction of a drugstore for some ‘happy belly’ drugs” (side note: we found no open drugstores, thus no happy belly drugs, so I settled on a remedy Éva would have approved of: dark chocolate).

After the sun went down we sat in a park eating yogurt and cookies
and talking, then did more wandering. We eventually found our way back to a recognizable area of town where we took advantage of another upscale hotel’s bathroom, then worked our way back up north to the train station. We got there with a little less than an hour to spare, wandered the train station in search of ways to spend my left over Slovak currency, ate grapefruit and waited for our train.

The train back to Budapest was entirely uneventful. We didn’t get a cabin this time and instead sat in general second-class seating. We listened to music, Kristof wrote postcards, I drew pictures and then we settled down to reading (Malcom X for Kristof, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for me). We got back to Budapest at almost exactly 22:30, boarded the M2, hugged goodbye and thanked eachother for the fantastic adventure, then parted ways when he got off 4 stops before me.

Kristof on the train

Rob on the train. The three of us were sitting talking after the train got going when we heard some American voices yelling "Omigaw! It was cah-RAZY! Omigaw, like, omigaw!". Rob turned to us and told us that he wouldn't have investigated those American voices.

Welcome to Bratislava!

Mommy, you raised me good, you would barely let me eat raw cookie dough and you overcooked my steaks my whole life... so why did I eat this?

The view from our hotel window. Remember the view from BJ's in Prague?

Kristof looking kind of sketchy in our sketchy room.

No wonder we got lost trying to find the hotel.

Cows in tophats on a billboard

Dried up fountain in the palace garden.

Who knew it was in Bratislava? (Glad to see that Slovakians love Douglas Adams, too)

Kristof and I in front of the Restaurant at the End of the Galaxy (Universe)

The windows on the left were painted with a Van Gogh theme. The building on the right was a huge, beautiful church.

Empty back-street in Bratislava.

The view of the other side of the Danube from the castle wall. In the distance to the right you can barely make out windmills.

I tried to take a picture of me and Kristof with Bratislava behind us, but I had the zoom on, and then my camera ran out of batteries, so this is the best we've got.

Now it's Sunday. This morning my flat got invaded by Éva's son in law, nephew, nephew's wife and 5 little boys. It was a very noisy, tiring morning.

Halloween, BSM style!

2007-10-28T12:43:00.001+01:00

Last night a group of people held a progressive Halloween party, called the Yellow Line Progressive (since all the people hosting lived along the Yellow Line). Since it was a bunch of math majors, you KNOW there were some terribly nerdy costumes.

Dan and Joe went as a bijection. I think it was my favorite math costume. Hello my name is F(U), Hello my name is U.

Towers of Hanoi drawn on Bruce's back, by yours truly.

The traveling salesman problem on Bill's back, also my handy-work. (I am so proud of this, and I got requests for a couple more)

All the math jokes! From left to right:
Me, a contradiction (a walking contradiction!)
P vs NP (they were carrying around dart guns and fighting a lot)
A compact set (get it? she's closed and bounded!)
A bijection

The Pacific Northwest Crew.
Brookings, OR
Corvallis, OR
Seattle
Seattle
Seattle

The metro passes with the metro conductor. Faaantastic. Not only did we have four girls as metro passes, we also had the Red Line, the Yellow Line, Oktogon, Kodály Körönd (both metro stops on the Yellow Line) and 2 metro inspectors.

After 6 stops we ended up at Morrison's, a karaoke bar right by the Opera that plays lots and lots of American pop.

We got a lot of strange looks on our way between the stops on the progressive, since Halloween isn't really celebrated over here...

Prague: sort of near Berlin

2007-10-23T12:21:00.000+02:00

I am home from Prague! I am (currently) at Soho, since there may or may not be riots going on in Pest today, including on Andrassy útca, which is the street the boys live off of.

Prague was a wonderful adventure! After my last post we walked to Old Town Square, stopping by the mall so I could buy batteries. We wandered a lot, poking our heads into the St Nicholas church, watching the astronomical clock strike noon, and braving the frightening tourist zoo of the Charles Bridge. We got lunch (and hot apple grog!) at a café across the bridge, then made our way slowly back to BJ's. There were beautiful scarves on sale all over Prague (they sell similar ones in Budapest, truth be told) that were 90% cashmere, 10% silk for less than $20, so I bought one during our wanderings. It was very, very cold outside and I had left my regular scarf back in Budapest, so it was a necessary purchase.

Once we got back to BJ's we laid low for a while. Tom made connections with a friend who was also in Prague, Pat fell asleep, and Voula and I took a walk to Flora, a nearby mall, to buy sweet Euro tights (we'd been talking about buying tights since we got to Budapest, but the opportunity finally presented itself this time). Voula got a pair of argyle knee-highs and a pair of plain green opaque tights, and I got one pair of opaque black tights and one pair of red tights with black polka dots. Hooray!

The two of us walked back to BJ's with our new purchases in tow, then went with Mihály, Barry and Pat to U Sadu, a pub that BJ had recommended. Beef is impossible to find for a reasonable price in Budapest as far as I have seen, but this pub had rumpsteak (hee hee... rump) for pretty cheap so I got a steak and two pints of their cheapest beer on tap (woo!). We walked back to BJ's, then hung out and watched EuroTrip. Around the end of the movie I got a message from Tom on facebook; he'd been trying to call but none of us had been answering our phones. Mine was out of minutes and BJ's phone, that he'd left with Voula, was on vibrate in the other room. This was his only way of getting back into the apartment, since the doorbell didn't work. Luckily he had internet where he was, otherwise he would have had to spend the night there.

We slept late the next morning, later than we'd wanted to, then got an even later start. We made a delicious breakfast of fruit and yogurt, then finally made it out of the apartment by noon-ish. That day we went to the National Museum, then the Prague Castle. The National Museum was amazing. The coolest part was the zoology exhibit, by far. SO MANY STUFFED ANIMALS! The castle was also quite cool. St. Vitus' is gorgeous and huge, and not quite as decadent as St. Istvans. Still, it's easy to see why Martin Luther had a s**t fit.

Me and Voula left the boys there and went back to BJ's to clean up before he got home. The boys joined us a little after BJ got home and then the whole group of us went to another pub in the area for dinner and so we could treat BJ to a couple beers to thank him for letting us stay in his flat. And I got rumpsteak again (it was just too delicious!). Because BJ was home that night, Barry, Tom and Pat stayed at a hostel and Voula and Mihály and I stayed on the living room floor of BJ's.

We met up with the others in the morning, did a little more sightseeing, went to the grocery story for lunchy stuff, got lost trying to find the train station, but made the 11:35 am train out of Prague to Budapest. We couldn't find a compartment all together this time, so Voula and I went into one compartment and the boys went further down the train. It was an uneventful journey and it we made it back by 6:30-ish pm.

I got home that night around 10 and my host mother was already asleep. I left her a note on the table that said "Jessica itt, Jessica ott... Jessica a hazban!" (Jessie here, Jessie there... Jessie is at home!) and then went to bed.

"The Ugly Church", a landmark always mentioned in BJ's directions.

"The Baby Tower". That is a TV tower. Covered with crawling babies. They were put there as some sort of temporary modern art thing, but when they were removed people complained... so now they're a permanent fixture. What the hell, Prague.

The Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square. We got there just as it was about to strike noon, completely by accident. It was one of the most anticlimactic things I have ever seen. When we got there the crowd in front of the clock was enormous. As soon as it started to chime people got bored and the crowd dispersed.

St Nicholas Church is the other big fixture in Old Town Square. As soon as I saw it, I was hit by a wave of déjà vu. I told the group that I was 95% sure I had sung in that church.

We went inside the church and that 95% confidence became 100%.

See? I'm fourth from the left in the second row and Micaela is beside me. Aw, little Jessie and Micaela!

Math graffiti. Tee hee. I don't understand this right now, but I will once I've taken complex next semester.

Getting tipsy in U Sadu, a pub in BJ's neighborhood.

Mihály eating breakfast in BJ's kitchen.

Rainbow over Prague.

A view of the walk from the National Museum down to Old Town Square.

Me and Voula by the Prague castle.

Storm brewing over the city.

St. Vitus Cathedral by the Prague Castle.

Absolutely amazing stained glass inside St. Vitus'.

Silver tomb of I-don't-know-who in St. Vitus'.

The view from BJ's window.

A better picture of the National Museum.

The McDonald's we sat in at 6:30 am Saturday morning in 4˚C weather.

Statue by the National Museum.

Same statue, bizarro style. (In the Lucerna mall)

Absinthe for sale in the grocery store.

Me and Voula listening to music on the train home.

I've got to go to the bathroom and wash the BURN SAUCE off my face!

2007-10-20T09:27:00.000+02:00

Holy crap, I made it out of Hungary!

It is 9:28 am local time in Prague, Czech Republic. Heck yes.

We (Voula, Mihály, Tom, Barry, Pat and myself) left Keleti at 7:45 pm last night. Around midnight we all fell asleep. About two hours later we were informed that we were in a first class compartment and had to move down the train to second class. We arrived in Prague at 6 am this morning. The train ride itself was fun, low-key, long, and full of sleep.

We had a contact in Prague. Voula's dad is a physics professor at Wheaton Mass and one of his ex students, BJ, lives here and offered his flat for a few of us to stay in while he's out of town for the weekend at the World Rugby Cup in Paris. But he had told us to come by after 7. We didn't know how long it would take us to walk to his flat, but we didn't want to arrive early so we went to McDonalds to kill some time. I had approximately $50 in Czech crowns leftover from the HVCC tour 5 years ago, part of which financed our breakfast. The McDonalds itself was 24 hour, but the dining room was not so we had to eat outside. The temperature outside was 4˚C and it was still dark out at 6:30.

We walked to BJ's as the sun came up. And arrived at his flat around 7:30. He let us in and gave us juice and coffee and lunchmeat and cheese. It was a fantastic welcome, to say the least.

We plan on spending this morning sightseeing etc, grabbing lunch, then coming back for a low-key afternoon. Tomorrow will be more sightseeing, and maybe meeting up with the other BSM group that's in Prague this weekend.

But the most important thing I must do this weekend, before I do anything else, is to buy batteries. My camera is out of juice and I have a feeling my faithful blog readers would crap themselves if I didn't post pictures of my fantastic adventure in Praha-ville!

Also: I got my Graph Theory midterm back with a 49% on it. But the prof is going to curve it, so that will hopefully be a passing grade when all is said and done. Because really, I haven't heard of anyone that got over a B on it, and the average score seemed to be in the D-F range. Yeah Graph Theory!

Hear the charms, did you know that the wind when it blows, it is older than Rome and our joy and our sorrow.

2007-10-15T09:54:00.001+02:00

Oh jeezy, it's already October 18th. I left 2 months from this last Monday, and I leave here 2 months from next Monday. How has time gone so fast??

Purse retrieval on Friday was successful, but sort of scary. The US Embassy is like a heavily guarded secret club. I got lost trying to find it, and once I did I had to figure out how to get in I finally found the guard and as soon as I said "Hi!" he said "Oh, you are American! Let me see your passport." As soon as he'd seen that, I was let in the magical gates. And then had to go through security. It was like airport security with a walk through metal detector and a bag x-ray. Except instead of confiscating my non-existent Swiss Army knife, they confiscated all my electronic devices. My laptop, my phone, my iPod, all traded for a number so I could retrieve them when I got out. They accidentally missed my camera, so that came into the embassy with me. Oops, strike 1 for US Embassy security.

I got through security with a significantly lighter backpack, and was told to take a number from the machine on my left. The room past security was like the DMV, with windows and an electronic "now serving #__" sign on the wall. The difference was that it was completely deserted. No one was sitting in the waiting room and each window was empty and closed. The sign on the wall said that they were serving the number before mine, but there was no one else around to be seen. It was quite eerie. I noticed a sign pointing a short hallway that said there were more teller windows that way. Then the electronic sign changed to my number. I followed the arrow down the short hallway and found a window with a woman behind it. I told her who I was and showed her my passport. And then she pulled out my purse! Yay! I met her at security and she gave it to me there, I got my electronics back, and I left the creepy US Embassy.

I did some shopping after the embassy, then that night had a fun, quiet evening with friends. Mihály made a scramble and Zeb and Luke got caught up on Heroes on Pat's computer.

Saturday I got up fantastically late. I was sleep deprived and it felt amazing. I was planning on just finding a place to work on homework for the day, but then I got a call from Mihály saying that he, Voula, Pat and Casey were going to Szt Istvan's Bascilica, and wouldn't I like to join? Well I've been there before but yes, yes I would. The last time I went to Szt Istvan's there was a service in progress, so I didn't get to see the whole sanctuary. This time there was no service, so not only did I get to see the entirety of the sanctuary, but I also got to see the mummified hand of Szt Istvan himself. How cool is that??

After wandering around the inside of the basilica a little more, we paid the 400 forint to go to the top. Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day. It was a little chilly out, but perfectly clear. We were looking out over the city from the top of Szt Istvan's when someone pointed out the large expanse of green that is Városliget, City Park. We had nothing better to do with our day besides homework and the weather was beautiful... so going to City Park sounded like a wonderful idea!

We walked to the Bájcsy Zsilinsky metro stop and took the Yellow line to Hösök tere (Heroes Square) and goofed off there for a little while, then walked to City Park which is right next door.

Inside of the Basilica, a view I couldn't get before.

SZT ISTVAN'S DISEMBODIED HAND. HOLY CRAP.

Goofing off at Hösök tere

The end of a very delicious, enormous cotton candy we bought from a vendor in City Park and split three ways.

Saturday evening we went to Soho Coffee and did a little homework, then took the metro to Chelsey's for vegetarian Hungarian food. She made a dish similar to ratatouille and Sarah made a cheese spread, the recipe for which she got from Éva. For dessert, Tom made cookies and Sarah made plum cake. Then Zeb and his roommate got tipsy and climbed on things around the apartment and Chelsey, Amol and I were good academics and talked politics, religion and books.

Sunday morning I got up late, went over to Voula's, dyed my hair purple, was quite surprised when the end result was black instead of purple, then did homework for the rest of the day at Voula's, and then at Mihály's.

The new hair!

Now comes the funny thing: I started composing this blog entry on Monday and just now I've gotten enough time to sit down and finish it. Really. Math and life got in the way with a vengeance. Monday and Tuesday I was finishing my Number Theory homework and studying for my Wednesday Graph Theory test, and Wednesday I was getting my butt handed to me by the afore mentioned test (luckily everyone I've talked to agrees that the test was ridiculous).

There now needs to be some post-purse-loss updating. Because I wasn't sure how long it would take for my new debit card to make it to my mom's so she could send it to me, I called the bank on Monday to request them to wire me money. It was going to cost $35, but it was totally worth it. I needed money for rent and various other expenses, and I didn't want to keep borrowing money from BSM. They told me it would take about two days for the money to reach me here, so on Wednesday afternoon I went to the mall with Bruce et al to stop thinking about how terribly the Graph Theory test had gone and while there went to the post office to check on the status of the wire.

SHOT DOWN. I couldn't retrieve my money because my name on the wire didn't match the name on my passport (the wire just had my first and last name on it, while my passport has my first name, middle name and my second middle initial). In Hungary middle names are used for official business, I guess. So I had to go back to the boys', call the bank, get them to change the name on the wire, and try again.

I tried again this morning, in the tiny mall/shopping center by my house. This time there was another problem. When you go to collect money from Western Union you have to fill out a form stating your address, your pre-chosen code word, your MTCN number, your place of residence in Hungary, and how much money you're expecting. I wrote 700 USD on the form. But in Hungary, they draw their 7s with a horizontal line going through them. A 7 without a horizontal line is interpreted as a 1. But I drew my 7 the American way. So this time instead of my name not matching, my expected amount and the actual amount didn't match. Luckily a quick phone call fixed it, but the woman behind the counter drew me a large Hungarian seven, and a one afterwards, to show me what I should have written versus what I did write.

BUT I GOT MY MONEY AFTER ALL! Score 1 for Jessie, 0 for Western Union!

After class today (with money in pocket) I bought a ticket to Prague; I'm going to Prague this weekend! We get a long weekend in honor of the Proclamation of the Republic. Voula, Mihály, Pat, Barry and I are taking the 7:45 pm train to Prague, to arrive at 6 am. It's going to be quite a night, I must say. Dubrovnik was just going to be too expensive... but Fraser and I might meet up in Zagreb (Croatia's capital) the weekend after next. Yay!

Next Stop: US Embassy

2007-10-11T20:32:00.001+02:00

On Sunday I did a terribly stupid thing. Two, actually. I am pretty sure, and Kristoff agrees, that the second was my karmic punishment for the first. The worst thing is that I wasn't even aware of that punishment until the next morning.

Mistake #1: I was craving fries. I was feeling lazy and didn't want to make dinner. So I decided the best solution to both of these separate issues was a trip to Burger King. The biggest Burger King in the world, in fact. Housed in Oktogon Square, it features 4 stories, free wireless internet, and a plethora of Americana. Truly a horrifying sight to behold. I got fries (yay!), a Coke Light (Diet Coke, European style) and my first ever Whopper. Gross.

Mistake #2: I left my damn purse at Burger King.

I'm not going to try to justify mistake #2.

Monday morning as I was packing my things into my backpack for school, I noticed that my purse was strangely absent from its usual place in my backpack. I started panicking. I called Mihály, woke him up, and had him check his apartment for my missing black Dickies bag, waking Bruce up in the process. My bag was nowhere to be found. And I knew exactly where I had last seen it.

Luckily the only important thing in my purse was my wallet. Everything else, my iPod, camera, laptop, homework, schoolbooks; it was back at in boys' apartment. The only important thing in my wallet besides some sentimental things (a note from Rob, some concert tickets), was my debit card. I got that canceled as soon as I realized it was at large. Besides the hassle of replacing all the things that had been in my wallet (student ID card, driver's license, social security card, etc) plus the purse and wallet themselves, I wasn't too stressed about losing my purse. Losing my backpack would have been a crisis of much greater magnitude.

I called mom on Tuesday to let her know, then called the bank to arrange for them to send a new debit card to her address. Okay, so it's going to take 7 to 10 business days for the card to arrive, but my credit union can wire me money to a Western Union location so I can pay my rent, and BSM can loan me money for food. Whatever.

On Wednesday afternoon (yesterday) the following e-mail arrived in my inbox:

From: Mom
Subject: Your Purse
To: Jessie Brainerd

Good News Honey!
Your purse has been turned in (intact, with cash, debit card, everything) to the U.S. Embassy in Budapest. I got a call this morning from a representative there-- they traced me through your driver's license. You can pick it up in the Consular Section between 1 & 4 pm during the week. You may also be able to call the Credit Union and reactivate your debit card. Isn't it wonderful that it was found by honest people!

Love, Mama

YAY! Someone awesome found my purse! I can't reactivate my debit card for security purposes (I found that out the hard way the last time I thought I had lost my debit card for good: when my wallet fell out of my pocket on a bus in Vancouver, B.C.), but hooray! I don't have to replace my purse, the awesome hand-made Bender for President button pinned to it, the sushi wallet mom got me for Christmas last year, the sentimental crud, or my laundry card, student ID, copy card, social security card, and driver's license. Let's see, it's already too late now on Wednesday, there's Abstract Algebra class and Graph Theory homework Thursday afternoon, so Friday is when I'll have to pick it up. Cool. Perfect. Totally doable.

I got home last night and Éva tried to tell me something in Hungarian that I couldn't catch. So she called her daughter and her daughter relayed the following message to me: The US embassy had called for me today, they wanted to let me know that someone had turned in my purse. I told her yes, I knew, that I could pick it up between 1 and 4 in the afternoon. She said that apparently it had been found at Burger King. Yes, I knew that too, I was stupid and left it there by accident. I thanked her for relaying the message, and asked her if she could explain the situation to her mother, since I hadn't known how to tell Éva that I'd lost my purse in broken Hungarian and hand-gestures.

This morning I got up at 7:30 and was sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast with Éva when the phone rang. I was expecting a call from Rob, so I expected it was him when she handed the phone to me. No, it was the US embassy. To tell me that apparently my purse had been found in a Burger King and turned into the US embassy. I thanked them and told them that my mother had gotten ahold of me and already informed me.

When I realized my purse was missing I assumed it was gone forever and I came to terms with that. It had been a stupid mistake on my part that led to its disappearance. I thought it was a stupid mistake I could maybe pretend hadn't happened. Not anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm overjoyed my purse is safe and intact.

I just wish that didn't entail having to be reminded again and again that I left my purse, full of all my identification and means of getting money, in the largest Burger King in the world, in one of the most bustle-ey areas of Budapest.

A little while after I got off the phone with the US Embassy, I got a text message from Anna Fóti, the BSM student coordinator: Hi, I have good news for you! Please come to my office! Anna, BSM.

Oh no. The Embassy got to her, too. I was going to get the good news. Again.

As soon as I got to school just after 10 am this morning I went to her office. Before she had a chance to say anything I said, somewhat exasperatedly, "I know, someone found my purse and returned it to the US Embassy, I can pick it up between 1 and 4". Anna got all sad because she had wanted to be the first person to tell me the news. Sorry Anna :(.

Oh well, I got my purse back. And they've exhausted all my contacts, I'm fairly certain. Unless they call the number titled "Darling" in my wallet, and let Rob know that my purse is waiting for me at the US Embassy.

I'll stop complaining about my good fortune now.

In un-purse related news, we had another group dinner party last night! Zeb and Luke made dough for lángos, Aaron deep fried it in small pancakes, and Voula, Casey and I made rice pudding. And Mihály and Haggai just hung out, looking pretty. The lángos turned out amazingly. We covered it in sour cream, cheese, chopped raw garlic and ate it still hot. Lángos from street vendors is filling, but sort of makes you feel like crap after you've finished it. This just made us feel fantastically full. And the rice pudding was delicious, too.

I'm hoping to make it to Croatia the weekend after next to visit Fraser before he makes his way back to Canadaland. The options we've been able to come up with to get me there are my taking the train to Zagreb and then catching a cheap flight from Zagreb to Dubrovnik, or taking the train directly to Dubrovnik. The cheapest flight I could find from Budapest to Dubrovnik was over $500. I'm going to go to Keleti pu. (the train station right by College International) tomorrow on my way to the US Embassy and check out fares. It'll be a long train ride, no matter what, so if it's cheaper to go straight to Dubrovnik, that's what I'll probably end up doing.

A kicsit kutya!

2007-10-06T17:40:00.000+02:00

This week went by really, really fast. Math is hard, school is challenging, I haven't been getting enough sleep. You know, usual school stuff. The night before last was Friday night, which meant it was definitely time to relax. Voula offered to cook dinner for Mihály, Zeb, Aaron and I, lentil soup, and Zeb and Mihály made lemon poppyseed cake. Really, quite a delicious dinner. After dinner, we sat down to watch a couple of episodes of Heroes, which is basically the crack cocaine of BSM. We started watching at 9:30 pm. At 3:00 am, 9 episodes later, we finally decided it was probably about time to go to sleep. Yeah. (I'd already seen all of those 9 episodes, so after the first 2, I fell asleep on the floor). As we were trying to fall asleep we heard a high pitched crying /yelping noise. We didn't know/care what it was, so Aaron decided that it was the Monkey Parade and we fell asleep in good spirits.

At 5:00 am I was woken by the doorbell ringing. I woke up Voula, who was sleeping next to me (Mihály on my other side and Aaron on the floor). Then I fell back to sleep and didn't wake up again until 9:00 am. When I woke up, I was alone in the bed and Aaron was still asleep on the floor. I could hear Voula and Mihály talking in the dining room so I came out to join them. And there was a puppy. A very tiny mutt puppy with brown fur and tufts on his chin. When the bell had rung at 5 am it had been a woman who lived on the 6th floor of Voula's apartment complex who had found the puppy abandoned and hadn't been able to take it in herself since she had a pitbull who would've bitten puppy in half. She asked if we could watch the puppy for just a couple hours so she could get some sleep, then deal with it. She said she'd be back around 11 am and would take the puppy then.

Puppy was cute. But puppy was still definitely a puppy. Tearing wallpaper off the wall in small chunks and trying to eat it, peeing on the rug, biting our feet. We spent the morning keeping track of him, making sure he was behaving and not eating things he shouldn't be (like wallpaper) and cleaning puppy pee out of the carpets. Mihály made us all eggs and toast for breakfast and the four of us sat on Voula's balcony drinking earl grey and eating out breakfasts while keeping an eye on pup. After breakfast puppy fell asleep on Aaron's foot and continued to sleep when we brought him inside. We watched more Heroes. About 3 episodes, in fact. After puppy woke up we played tug-o-war with one of my socks, then exiled him to the balcony so the next time he peed it wouldn't soil the rug.

11 o'clock came and went with no sign of the woman who had brought by the puppy. At 1 we finally heard a knock on the door. She was back... and tried to get Voula to watch puppy for one more day. No. No no no. She took puppy away, to the shelter or something, and left us to watch Heroes in peace. Bye bye, pup, I will miss you :(

I briefly went home around 2, just to change my shirt and eat the breakfast Éva had left out for me. Then it was off to Soho to do homework and drink Americanos with Mihály, Voula and Aaron. At dinner time we walked along the Buda side of the Danube to Margít hid (the Margít island bridge) and caught the tram to Eva's, cause she was having an open invitation burrito party. Homemade tortillas, corn, kidney beans, cheese, homemade salsa... DELICIOUS. These dinner parties tend to happen, hosted by someone or another, every weekend or two, and they're always wonderful. So far we've had an Indian food night, a Mexican night, the classy sandwich party, and burritos. Next weekend is vegetarian Hungarian food and I can't wait...

After dinner me and Voula went back to hers, and were joined about an hour later by Aaron, who told us that Mihály was too tired to come. And then we watched more Heroes. Until 4 am. And then we slept. Until 11 am. And then we ate a small breakfast and made tea... then 2 more episodes of Heroes and the whole season was complete! Now we can get our lives back!

Now! For the completing of my homework, the telephoning of my parents, the purchasing and consuming of cookies, the acquiring of dinner, and the talking to of my sweetie.

And then starts the beginning of another week.

An adventure in Szentendre and Skanzen.

2007-10-02T11:20:00.000+02:00

WOW This is a lot of pictures I am posting today. Sorry Mama, this is going to take you a little while to load.

Casey decided she wanted to travel this weekend and the closest, easiest places to travel are the suburbs, reachable by the HÉV train (a commuter train that's affiliated with Budapest's public transport system, BKV). She and Voula decided they were going to Szentendre, a small, touristy town famous for its museums about a 40 minute train ride away using the HÉV, and invited the usual crowd of us to come. Our adventure started when Mihály called me at 10 on Saturday morning to tell me we were meeting at the HÉV train at Batthyány tér at 10:30. I hadn't even really gotten out of bed yet so I was a little late. It didn't matter; Casey, Voula, Mihály and Aaron were all there already, they'd bought my ticket already (only 500 ft round trip!) and we made the 11 o'clock train, no problem.

The train ride was relatively short and pleasant. The commuter train doesn't come with any real amenities, but it was only a 40 minute ride, so it didn't matter.

Szentendre is a pretty town, made even prettier by what a gorgeous day it was.

The Danube? We've got one of those in Budapest, too! I was struck by how similar the Danube looked to the Willamette on this stretch of river.

Something that comes part and parcel with tourist attractions is really weird souvenirs. Like unauthorized nesting Shrek dolls.

We wandered into this church because the back door was open and we heard music coming out of it. We followed this stairway up (decorated with these weird boyscout murals) and found ourselves in a balcony overlooking a private wedding rehearsal. We were asked to leave... oops.

We picked up lunch in Szentendre, then took a (really really cheap) bus to Skanzen, an outdoor living history museum about 3 km away. It featured different villages set up to demonstrate different eras in Hungarian history. These paths went through the whole museum and you could pay to take a horse drawn carriage ride through the whole thing.

A kitchen in a dirt-floored, thatch roofed cottage.

The mill.

Sheep on the farm. There were lots of other animals; horses, goats, chickens, donkeys, cows AND KITTENS.

There were several churches, but this is the only one I went into.

Hand decorated ginger bread cookies for sale. I bought a cookie too, but it wasn't fancy so it was only 60 ft as opposed to 180.

While the museum was interesting (albeit a little underwhelming), the museum playground was awesome.

Aaron on the climbing net.

Casey playing on the structures

Voula being all... upside down... and stuff.

Mihály trying to get on top of that bar so he could walk on it. He managed it after a few tries.

These scarecrows were all over the place, in different manners of dress.

The interior of the water mill

We found stilts! A very helpful man was in charge of the wooden toys area of the museum. There were homemade wooden yo-yos, bats and balls, and most importantly, STILTS.

Mihály had used stilts before so he was pretty darn good at it.

Voula was a beginner, but she picked it up quickly.

"Why hell there, abnormally tall man, how are you today?"
"I couldn't be better, Mihály!"

The boys being bored/boring on the HÉV home. But as Mihály said, "When you're cool, everything bores you."

Now for some non-Szentendre/Skanzen pictures:

The sweet, expensive euro jeans I got at H&M. Whatever, they were totally worth whatever I paid for them.

The neighborhood College International is in is flooded with cipö bolts... including some really cheap Chinese import places. This pair was around 1400 ft. I mean, they're not the most comfortable ever, but $7??

Oh yeah, and that's me... in case you forgot.

"Gotta love that exchange rate!" -Eurotrip

2007-09-29T21:28:00.000+02:00

Cover charge for the Deja Vu Club in Buda: 300 ft (~$1.50)
3 .5 liter Sopronis (Hungarian beers): 1050 ft (~$5.25)
1 modorokrémes palascinta (Nutella crèpe): 165 ft (~$0.85)

That's right, I spent less than $10 last night. And what did I do? Went to the Deja Vu with Leslie, Kristoff and Kelly to see the band Panic Radio. The band was lots of fun and very high energy, even though it was early enough in the night that only a couple of people were really into it. The beer was cheap and tasty, so I drank more than I probably should have and ended up quite happy. After the second band came on, we decided to book and took the tram back to Batthyany (the metro stop right by my house) and went to what has been lovingly dubbed "The Pancake Place", a 24 hour place that sells cheap cheap crèpes, Nagyi Palacsinta. The four of us hung out there for what could have been 20 minutes or it could have been an hour; I'm not sure, I wasn't exactly in the clearest of mindsets. I walked home from there, watched an episode of Futurama on my computer, then passed out. An absolutely fabulous night, indeed!

Yesterday also included a fieldtrip to a very Americanized mall at the end of the red Metro line because I needed blue jeans (I found an absolutely fantastic pair at H&M that was only slightly out of my price range), and then a trip to IKEA because Aaron needed a blanket. This was my first trip to IKEA ever... and here it was, in Hungarian. Definitely an experience to be had.

The next post will be complete with pictures, detailing today's day trip to Szentendre. But for now, I must venture home!

It was a spectacle... I... I mean a miracle

2007-09-24T13:09:00.000+02:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the miraculous story of Jessie's disappearing week.

Last Friday (9/15) I had a lovely evening. I met up with friends, they made cookies, we went out to the Pink Cadillac, an American type pizza parlor, and I drew tattoos for 2 or 3 people. The friends were plentiful, the cookies were chocolate chip, the pizza had bacon and corn on it and the tattoos were fantastic (pictures of Voula's and Chris' provided for your enjoyment). A few of us planned to meet up the next morning to visit a winery town 2 and a half hours away by train called Eger.

The next morning dawned quite nicely (as usual) I felt a little funny; my head was a little foggy and my skin felt prickly, but Sarah felt my forehead and declared me fine, so I decided to tough it out. I told Éva I was going to Eger and she packed me a lunch and gave me a 1000 ft bill and asked me to pick her up a bottle of Egribor (Eger wine). We met at the Keleti metro stop at 9 to take a 10 o'clock train from Keleti. Or so we thought. This trip had been the brainchild of Eva, but when I called her to double check our meeting place, she told me she'd been up with a high fever the night before and that she wouldn't be coming with us. So it ended up being me, Voula, Mihály, Amol, Barry, Mandy, Mad.

It turned out that the train was more expensive than we thought it would be (still not that expensive... the round trip was less than $30) and was leaving an hour later than we thought it would be. As we stood around trying to decide if we still wanted to go, I started feeling worse and worse. We decided we were definitely going to go, so I bought my ticket (despite feeling worse and worse with every passing minute). There was no where to sit down in the train station, so we went across the street to McDonalds and sat in their cafe and I got tea and put on Voula's sweatshirt to combat the chills I was starting to suffer. I felt a little better after that, but I started considering refunding my ticket. No. I was going to Eger and nothing was going to stop me.

The train trip was lovely and pleasant. Our train stopped in several small country towns on the way; it was refreshing to see a landscape that wasn't Budapest for the first time in a month. I spent most of the train trip reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being and sleeping. I took lots of pictures of the countryside, and felt generally better. Then we finally arrived in Eger and as soon as I stood up I started feeling poor again. I almost considered taking the next train home but decided that now that I was here I should enjoy myself. We went to lunch first and I had no appetite so I sat in the cafe with them with a ginger ale and took an Ibuprofen Mandy had. Once that hit my system I started feeling much better but I was still feeling generally bad and gross.

We spent the day wandering around, me feeling like poo but trying not to bring everyone else down, and exploring the town and the castle. It was quite beautiful and I wish I'd been able to enjoy it more. All I wanted to do this entire day was lay down and sleep under lots of blankets and drink lots and lots of water. I spent the entire day looking at my watch, counting down until it was time to take the train home. My chills got worse while we were waiting in the train station for our train home. I sat there in my sweater, Voula's sweatshirt, gloves and my scarf, shivering, while everyone else sat in the pleasant 65-ish degree weather.

The train ride home was not nearly as pleasant as the ride there; I was shivering violently for much of the trip. I finished my book, napped and spent the rest of the time laying there feeling miserable.

As soon as I got home, with chills, a throbbing headache and general feeling of crappyness, I called Rob and cried for a good while. Then I fell asleep. For 12 hours. When I woke up, Éva was very luckily home. I told her I was sick and she bustled off to find her mercury armpit thermometer, then hustled me back into my bedroom. I'm not sure what my fever was at that point, but by the end of the day it had been up to over 102˚F and then back down to just over 100. I spent that day in bed, eating small things, drinking lots of tea, with my head and feet covered in cold cloths. "This isn't so bad," I thought to myself, "for my first fever in something like 7 years." But then that night the diarrhea started.

Warning: I talk about poop and my emotions quite honestly a lot from here on out. If you don't want to read about poop, scroll down to where I say "No more poop and emotions."

The next morning, Monday, I was awoken by stomach cramps and more diarrhea. I almost didn't bother telling Éva, because I didn't know how to tell her. But then I thought "Maybe this is important... I'll look it up in the dictionary." Hasmenés. I heard that word a lot for the next couple days. I got put back in bed and given charcoal. And more charcoal. And more. Charcoal tablets. First caplets, then solid mini briquettes the size of regular pills. And dark chocolate. All supposed remedies of diarrhea that seemed to have no effect. The second day of being sick in bed was far less fun than the first day. I spent the whole day pooping. Plus my fever was still going relatively strong (not quite as strong by the end of the day). She told me she would take me to the doctor the next day. I got scared, then, at the thought of being so sick in a foreign country, and what if there was really something wrong with me? This whole time I was also stressing about my classes, that were far harder than I ever could have imagined back in the states. I started hoping that maybe there was something relatively serious (but not life threatening) wrong with me, so I could have a reason to go home without being a coward.

When I woke up Tuesday there was still diarrhea, but less, and my temperature was miraculously normal. I started thinking about going back to school and the thought was quite nice. Missing class on the second week of school is no way to start the semester, I have to say. We decided the doctor wouldn't be necessary. I even got out of the house! Éva walked with me across the street to buy crackers and a phone card. Then she checked my temperature again just before I went to bed and it had crept back up to the 100˚ range. She gave me Rubophen (Tylenol) and told me there would definitely be doctor tomorrow.

Wednesday morning I woke up early with a 101˚ fever, which I think was just due to dehydration. Éva didn't think so. She put me in a freezing bath at 6 in the morning to bring down my relatively lowgrade fever. I was not pleased. I was also not pleased at being naked in front of my host mother; I don't care if she used to be a nurse (she was, for 35 years). At 8 we went to the doctor. It was honestly one of the most frightening experiences of my life. Éva told me the doctor spoke English, but the only English she said to me was "do you have a headache?", "do you have any medical allergies?" and "take two tablets in the morning and two in the evening". I was prescribed medication. I wasn't told what they were or even what they treated. On top of that, Éva tried to break in the door while I was using the bathroom in the waiting room to check to see if I had more diarrhea, and pulled down my pants for me while I was on the examining table in the doctor's office. I know she used to be a nurse and I know she was worried about me... but this was getting a little out of hand.

I came home from the doctor and once Éva had left for the day (she spends most of her afternoons at her daughter's house with her grandsons) I called Rob and cried more. Then I slept for the afternoon and called my parents in the evening, crying more. Through Rob, I found out what was wrong with me; the medicine I was prescribed is used to treat traveler's diarrhea. This was confirmed later when I spoke with Éva's (English speaking) daughter on the phone, who relayed from Éva that the doctor thought I had an infection in my belly. Good to know, 5 hours later. Once I got home from the doctor's I was feeling much better physically (though sort of in shambles emotionally). I asked Éva if I could go to school tomorrow and she said no, no, definitely not. I asked her if I could at least go to the Internet Café tomorrow and she said maybe. This gave me a glimmer of hope, since I had had very little contact with the outside world besides phone calls to my parents and Rob since I had gotten sick. She came in later and told me (roughly) "Ok, you and I will go to the Internet Café for one hour tomorrow for breakfast". That was the last straw. I'm 21 years old, I am fully capable of taking care of myself, and when I signed up to live with a host family I did not sign up to be 12 years old again. I called Anna, the student coordinator, to intervene. With Anna's finagling, I was granted permission to go to school the next day as long as I didn't have a fever when I woke up and Sarah accompanied me to school. YES.

To assure that I wouldn't have a fever, the night before I set my alarm for an hour before I was getting up so I could take a Rubophen and drink half a Nalgene of water to guarantee a normal temperature. It did the trick.

My recovery has been going well. My appetite began to return on Friday, the diarrhea is slowly going away, my fever is all gone and my antibiotics have been used up. I've almost finished playing catch-up in the classes I missed and have decided to drop Combinatorics 2 for my own sanity. I realized that hoping I had appendicitis so I could go home early was not a good sign at all, and my workload was probably too much.

NO MORE POOP AND EMOTIONS.

I spent this weekend with friends, doing lots and lots of homework. I spent most of Saturday working on Graph Theory in the internet cafe with Voula, then Saturday night I had dinner with Sarah, Éva and Éva's daughter, Erika (I've met her other daughter, Monika, before, but this is the first time Sarah or I had met Erika), then worked on more homework. Sunday I went over to the boys' in the afternoon and hung out there working on more Abstract. Last night Mad and Bok Choy had a "classy sandwich party" at their apartment, since they have a sandwich press (they decided that sandwich presses make classy sandwiches). I wore my little black dress and heels, (most everyone else dressed up too) and ate a peanut butter, nutella and banana sandwich, and a garlic, lettuce, tomato, trappista and onion sandwich. Delicious times were had by all!

And I know that the foam on the breaking waves is as white as household bleach.

2007-09-13T10:15:00.000+02:00

As of the day after tomorrow, I will have been vacated from the United States for a month. A MONTH. It feels like I can't have been here that long, but I feel like I already know the city so well that I must have been here for months.

I've had three days of class now, and have experienced at least one class period of every class I'm planning on taking. I now provide you with a detailed account of my first impressions of these classes.

Introduction to Abstract Algebra: This class is only going to meet for two hours and fifteen minutes a week. This sounds short, but it's pretty usual*. The difference between this class and others is that this one doesn't have scheduled "office time" for us to ask questions. So far all we've really done is go over set notation, which I learned back in Discrete. That's okay, a review is always good. The prof of this class is Jewish, so we have today off because it's Rosh Hashanah. I'll know more about this class once we meet again, since we really didn't cover any new material on the first day of class.

Number Theory: This class has met twice now and I'm still not quite sure what's going on. More review of Discrete here, proving the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic was the big activity of yesterday morning's class. That seems to be how most of these classes are going, honestly. I'm guessing there'll be this one or two day review of what I learned in Discrete or whatever, and then things will pick up after that. There are two sections of Number Theory being taught here, at the same time, with identical syllabi. (Blogger doesn't like the word "syllabi". It says it's misspelled. No. It just looks funny, Blogger.) Of the two professors teaching it, one is a well known, well loved man named Csaba Szábo. The other professor is "That Other Guy", in a matter of speaking. On the first day of class, everyone went to Csaba's classroom, and no one went into "That Other Guy"'s classroom. There were about 20 of us sitting there when Csaba and a dejected looking TOG came into the room and said that half of us had to go with TOG into his room because there were enough of us to have two sections of the course. (If there had been 15 or less of us, they would have condensed it into one section). A few of us felt so sorry for TOG that we joined him, all the while being assured by Csaba and TOG that we could always switch classes later. Despite being sort of shy and not nearly as dynamic as Csaba, TOG seems like a nice professor, who writes notes on the board and knows his stuff. (His handwriting is illegible, but I think I'll be able to decipher it fully in another week).

Combinatorics 2: I think I'm definitely going to like this course. Of all the classes I've seen this week, I think this is the only one I've learned something new in. We started talking about hypergraphs, which we're going to be learning about in Graph Theory later on. This is also the only class I've been assigned homework in. The professor is going to be assigning one or two problems and extra credit problems a day, then collecting them every few weeks. The extra problem he assigned on Tuesday definitely had me thinking: There are 70 students. For any two students A and B, how many languages must there be so that A knows a language that B does not? Should be a fun class.

Graph Theory: More Discrete review here. And a packed class. Half of the people from my language class are in this class. The prof's kind of confusing, but his accent's pretty easy to understand. I might end up auditing this class, so who knows. The prof kind of freaked us out when he told us we really didn't need the textbook, that we'd only be using about 15% of it for class, but he was trying to require us to buy it just because it was a "good book to have on our shelves for later". Whatevers. I'll probably end up buying it anyways, just because I have a feeling it will help me.

Intermediate Hungarian: There are two sections of this class being taught, one on Monday afternoons and one on Tuesday afternoons. The one on Monday is taught by Erika, the woman who taught my intro class at Babilon, and Tuesday's is taught by her son, Ádám. I decided to try taking Tuesday's class, for a change of pace.. and I'm not sure that was a change of pace I really needed. The class seemed too informal, not enough emphasis being placed on learning, just on doing. Does that make sense? Probably not. I'm going to check out Erika's class on Monday and see how that goes. That might be the class I end up in, but that would mean buying another textbook (Ádám wasn't going to require us to buy the book). We'll see on that one.

Yesterday after classes got out Mihály, Voula and I walked up to the Citadel. We crossed the bridge you can see in the picture and then walked up the stairs that zigzag their way up that hill. The Citadel is up by that statue you can see just left of center. The walk was quite wonderful, and much quicker than I would have expected. It would have been even more wonderful had I been wearing sneakers, not my DMs. We spent about 15 minutes walking around up there, enjoying the view and lamenting the fact that none of us had brought a camera, then walked back down and went back to Mihály's. We'll go back, I'll bring my camera and I will post all kinds of pictures, just you wait!

Today I came to school, but I'm not sure why, since I didn't have class. I wanted to use the internet and buy books, but no one's online at noon my time (it's three in the morning PST, for god's sake!) and the office that's selling the books isn't open today. Well... poo. I guess I'll just sit here updating my blog for a couple hours. And then... who knows what the rest of the day will bring? Who am I kidding, I'll probably end up at Mihály and Bruce's until nine or so, then go home and go to bed. Maybe somewhere in there I'll go to a café and sit and read the Unbearable Lightness of Being for a while (I just started on Sunday and I'm over halfway through... what a fantastic book so far!), make a formal copy of the Combinatorics problems I've done so far, and fill out my temporary residence permit form. And I should call my dad once 5 or 6 pm rolls around. And of course I will talk to Rob!

*A quick explanation of the classes here: classes tend to start at 15 minutes after the hour and go until the next hour, get a 15 minute break, then end at the next hour. So they are in a 2 hour block, but we are only in class for an hour and a half of it. Classes tend to meet twice a week, and the second 45 minute period on second day there is "office time" instead of instruction where students can ask questions.

Scotty never met a bike that he didn't want to ride.

2007-09-09T20:40:00.000+02:00

Last night we went back to the castle. When you go at night it doesn't cost anything to go up on the wall.

Today we (me, Chelsey, Mad and Charlie) took the HÉV train into a previously unseen part of Buda to try to go to the Buda caves (sorry, I can't seem to find a link right now). But then Charlie made 3 wrong turns on the way there, then we decided we were hungry. So instead we got pizza, got croissants, then took the HÉV train back into the city and went to St. Istvan's Basilica.

Some kitties we saw while in search of food in the Buda suburbs. They're kissing!!

Me, Mad, and our GINORMOUS chocolate croissants. YUM.

They have one of those Cow Art exhibitions going on in downtown Pest right now, near Deák tér. This is the RubiCow. It made me think of Rob. I actually think the World Rubik's Cube competition is going on now or soon right here in Budapest. I lied. It's next month.

St. Istvan's Basilica. We climbed to the top of that center dome for the low price of 500ft. Absolutely worth it. And if I hadn't been so freaked out of the height and the high speed winds, it would have been even cooler.

The dome stairs looking down from around the middle. After this point they became a true spiral staircase.

The view from the top. Amazing.

Charlie, Mad, Me and Chelsey at the top. A nice tourist man offered to take our picture. A wind gust picked up just as he took the picture and my hat almost flew off my head. I jerked awkwardly to keep it on my head and it's a wonder the picture turned out so nicely!

Candles in St. Istvan's.

The sanctuary.

A little girl I saw rollerblading in the square in front of St. Istvan's. Eeee!

This morning when I got up I saw my host mother for the first time in DAYS. I was sleeping in almost every day of the 4 day weekend (I'd gotten pretty severely sleep deprived during the language school) and Éva would always be gone by the time I woke up, off to pick grapes or babysit her grandson, Zoli. If you then consider that while I make it home before midnight every night, she tends to be a-bed by then, you will see how it is possible I haven't seen her much in the last couple of days. I sadly do not have the hopping social life she imagines (as she put it, "Jessica itt, Jessica ott!" which means "Jessica here, Jessica there!")(I would also like to amend that the name Jessie does not seem to exist in Hungary, so I've stopped correcting the Hungarian women who call me Jessica). No, I just hang out at the same apartment with the same friends nearly every day... Not that there's anything wrong with that! I like my friends! And I like their wireless internet a whole lot, too!

Tonight, we hung out at the boy's apartment and Voula, Casey and Mihály made macaroni and cheese. Tomorrow morning classes start.. I'm a little nervous. I only have one class tomorrow; Abstract Algebra. I don't even know what to expect, but almost everyone I've talked to who's already taken it say that they love it. Plus Eva's in the class, so I'll have a friend there!

I would also like to state that Blogger is annoying me right now and it took me about 4 hours to write that last blog post because the formatting wasn't turning out how I wanted it to be.

Miért az aquariumban vagy?

2007-09-08T15:25:00.000+02:00

Our last activity of the language school was a skit based around the theme "An American Student in Budapest". Ours was the tragic tale of one man's search for Absinthe and dental floss. (Sorry mom, I know this video is going to be a pain for you to view, but I think it's really just one more reason you should probably ditch dial-up)

Wednesday night was celebration time: a group of us went out to Indian food at a place called Karma Sutra. The waiters spoke English, they agreed to serve us all csap víz (tap water) which is not as common as you'd think, and I paid around 3000 ft for my whole dinner, which is about $15 American. And that was for a dish with meat in it (chicken tikka masala, yumm), a side order of naan, and tip. And this place was pretty schmancy, so I was definitely felt like I got my money's worth. The trippy part of the evening came when I heard something familiar coming out of the restaurant's speakers... and realized it was Sympathique by Pink Martini. Several of us went back over to Voula's after dinner to watch 10 Things I Hate About You.

On Thursday, Voula, her roommate and I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! We accidentally used their landlady's cookie making supplies that she's brought back from the states. We gave her cookies and I wrote down my recipe for her, so hopefully that evens out my karma. They turned out really good, even though we didn't have any vanilla.

These were the crappy Indonesian batteries I bought. Do not buy them. Buy a brand you know and trust. I spent way too much just so I could get Energizers. So batteries are expensive in Hungary. I think that means you should send me batteries, because my battery charger broke when I plugged it into my adapter.

Today we went to the Buda castle, which is right next to my apartment. Lots of touristy stuff, lots of people around (there's some sort of wine festival going on there this weekend).

The Fisherman's Bastion, from near the castle.

A view of the Parliament building from the castle wall

Mad, Eva and I in front of a carved wall.

When I saw the Fisherman's Bastion today I realized that I'd been there before. It was such an intense wave of "whoa" (yes, a wave of whoa) and nostalgia for HVCC. We came here on the Eastern Europe tour with chamber choir. See? (note the little Jessie and Micaela in the front row!!)

We went into a marzipan shop. These were the little animals that were for sale.

Mad, Eva and I each bought one marzipan chocolate. Eva got one that was layered chocolate, marzipan and hazelnut. Mad's was vanilla marzipan dipped in chocolate. Mine was a sour cherry in cognac surrounded by marzipan and dipped in chocolate. Oh, the decadence!

We went exploring and found parts of the castle grounds that weren't well kept and weren't full of tourists.

Mad sitting by the staircase that we hoped would take us on an adventure, but actually just took us up to the main street full of tourists.

From the middle of the staircase, looking back down.

As we left I took this picture of the Fisherman's bastion with the Parliament building in the background. I love Budapest!

Tonight we're going to dinner at a friend's house who is making Mexican food. I'm hoping for enchiladas.

And math starts the day after tomorrow! Hooray! What we actually came here for! That day, September 10th, is also Rob's birthday. 2 weeks ago I sent him a package from Hungary which has arrived in Vancouver, he just has to pick it up from the post office... I won't let him open it until Monday, though!

One final thing is that I've figured out my schedule! I've decided that I'm going to try taking Combinatorics 2 along with Abstract 1, Number Theory, Graph Theory and Intermediate Hungarian. If I can pull that off, I won't have to take a summer class and can graduate on time. And that would be pretty fantastic.
My schedule:

Celebration! It's the last day of Hungarian Language Class!

2007-09-05T08:52:00.000+02:00

I had a conversation with my host mother this morning! In Hungarian! She said something about class this week. "Iskola ma, de nem iskola holnap. És hétfö iskola mathematika!" (Translation: school today, but no school tomorrow. And math school on Monday!) HECK YES I'M LEARNING HUNGARIAN! Despite how pointless language class has been...

But today is the last day of language class! And we have BSM orientation on Friday, so we'll get to meet all the people in the program who didn't take the language school. We'll learn when the classes are being offered, so.. which classes we can actually take.

I am now leaning towards these classes:

Graph Theory
Intro to Abstract Algebra
Number Theory
(Maybe) Conjecture and Proof
Intermediate Hungarian

Woop!

Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

2007-09-02T17:42:00.000+02:00

Last night a couple of boys from the program hosted an absinthe party. No green fairies sighted, but a nice headache this morning. We researched absinthe before we left and discovered that it really has no hallucinogenic properties to speak of... but the forbidden will always fascinate us, so the green we did drink!

I'm finding more and more that Budapest has become like a giant residential college campus. Some people live in central Pest, which is like Platt-Howard: the most desirable, the most centrally located to everything. Buda is like Copeland, close to everything, but far enough away and confusing enough that people rarely come visit. There are others who live further away, like they live in upper Forest. Having their own fun and venturing to other dorms instead of expecting people to come visit them. And we all go zooming around the city on the metro and become better and better friends. It's like freshman year all over again!

Now I'm off to go to a supposed communist pizza parlor in the Buda hills with some friends.

Also a reminder to myself: do not get knockoff batteries from Indonesia. You will have wasted 500 ft just for your camera display to say "change the batteries" before shutting itself off.

Reminders and reverberations

2007-08-31T17:30:00.000+02:00

Everyone here is so ready for Hungarian class to be over and to start what we came here for: MATH. The language course isn't particularly well organized, so classes leave us feeling frustrated, antsy and annoyed that Hungarian has more suffixes than PDX has coffee shops. Today we had a scavenger hunt, with the questions written by another one of the 4 classes. (The A group wrote questions for the B group, the B group wrote questions for the C group etc). The questions were supposed to be tricky, but not impossible, and all the answers were to be found on the city block that the language school is on. The question I had to answer was supposed to go something like "What model is the 23,830,013th numbered shoe in the store with the yellow-orange butterfly?" but was worded "What model is the 23,830,013th numbered shoe in the orange yellow butterfly store?" Which tripped me up because in Hungarian, the word for butterfly is the same word as prostitute, so I kept looking at the escort agency around the corner. I found the answer to my question right before the time was up, and my group still came in last. Somorú! (Sad)

Luckily there are only 3 days left of the language school, then it's geek-out time! Not like everyone in the program hasn't been geeking out already... Mihály and Voula spent their free time today working on a proof, Bruce studies for the GRE every day, and I have seen more geeky math t-shirts here than you could shake a protractor at. My favorite? One that made fun of the old Antidrug commercials from the early 00s that says Integrals: My Antiderivative. The close second is the one with an i crossed out that says "Keepin' It Real"

I finally got paid for my last month of work today, which means that tomorrow I can venture to my first Hungarian mall and find the Vodafone store that Misi (pronounced Mee-shee, one of the Michaels on our program) told me about. He said that he got a SIM card there for just over 1500 ft, which means it was about 8 dollars. I've heard them going for as much 4000 ft, so I'm hoping this place is as cheap as Misi said. Tonight I'm treating myself to sort of expensive (still less than $10, I'm sure) Indian food at a restaurant called Kama Sutra that one of Voula's friends recommended to her. But you know what? Whatever, it's payday!

My Budapesties.

2007-08-27T18:52:00.001+02:00

Here are some pictures of my friends here. This isn't all of them, but it's a good cross section. (For a better view click on the picture, it'll open a larger version of the picture).

This is Eva. She goes to Scripps, but she's more of a Mudd-type. Plus she's UU, so that = awesome.

This is Michael. Better known as Mihály.

This is Bruce. He's a frat boy, so I was prejudiced against him at first... but now he's one of my best friends here, so who knows.

I give you... Voula (left) and Mad. Voula lives about 15 minutes from me in Buda and goes to school in Wellesley. Mad goes to school at Wesleyan. Don't get them confused.

This is Zeb! That's short for Zebediah, but he goes by Zebadeus (Zeb-a-day-oosh) in Hungarian class.

This is Pat. He does magic tricks!

My name spelled phonetically in Hungarian is Dzsesszi.

2007-08-24T18:16:00.000+02:00

There was a storm last night! As I was walking home from the Metro at 11 something at night I was surrounded by huge bolts of lightning and thunder. By the time I made it to my door it had started to rain. It was still in the upper 80s Fahrenheit. It reminded me of Florida, but the rain wasn't quite as biblical. These nighttime summer storms seem fairly common here, since there have been maybe 3 in the past week since I got here. Oh holy bajeez, I've already been here over a week!

Since the language school started (on Tuesday) I've been spending most of my free time with friends I've met through the program. There's five of us who have been hanging out a fair bit; me and Voula, who both live in Buda (the west side of the Danube), and Bruce and Michael (now dubbed Mihály: mee-hi), who share an apartment by the Opera in Pest. We're all in the language class together, since all of our last names are at the beginning of the alphabet. After class we end up hanging out in Pest, sometimes missing one, sometimes joined by others. I'm glad I've been making friends so easily here!

I've gotten used to using public transport here, and I'm finding that public transport in a big city is way more convenient than a car, except when I want to get home from Pest after 11 (that's when the metros stop running). The metros come every 5-10 minutes, or less, and the busses come fairly regularly, but are often a little behind schedule. Besides a few funny situations IN the metro stations themselves, riding them has been pretty uneventful.

Funny metro experience 1:
Yesterday Sarah and I were on our way to language school. We had gotten off the metro at Astoria and were on our way up the (ridiculously long) escalators. A 30-something man caught sight of me as he was going down and I was going up and after a funny look he started yelling at me very heatedly in Hungarian. He yelled his entire way down and when he'd reached the bottom, he stood at the foot of the escalators and yelled up the escalators at me until I was out of sight. Sarah caught the word "blue" so we think it might have had something to do with my hair.

Funny metro experience 2:
The payphones have been the cheapest, most convenient way to keep in touch with Rob since I got here, since you just need a T-com phone card. You put the card in the slot on the phone, then dial the country code and the number, and then are only charged 9 ft/minute to talk to the US. I called him quickly this afternoon from the Deák station and while I was standing there at the phone a young-ish man (maybe a year or two older than me) situated himself about 10 feet away from me with a camera, crouched down, and started video taping me talking on the phone. I gave him an inquisitive look and he just smiled, gave a half wave, taped for a few more seconds, then got up and left.

Again, besides those two experiences, public transportation has been quite uneventful.

And now... it's the weekend! I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow. Tonight I'm going to hang out with Voula, Eva (a UU from Boston) and Mihály... and probably others, since Bruce said he'd call if anything came up. I'm at my usual internet cafe right now, and once I leave here I'm going to go down to the grocery store and grab some bread and a tomato and eat that with the cheese I have in my backpack over at Voula's before heading over to Pest.

But before I go... THERE ARE PICTURES!!

Air show by the Danube St. Stephen's day weekend. There's a little plane around the middle of the photo... it was doing tricks and practicing for the big race on the holiday itself. Sponsored by Red Bull. Thank you, America for all you have done for Budapest. That big impressive building in the background is the parliament building

Budapest <3s Critical Mass!

My Internet Cafe

The Courtyard in my apartment building. All the apartment complexes have private courtyards, even the complex my language school is in.

Fireworks on St. Stephen's day. This was far and away the most impressive fireworks display I have ever seen!

I plan on taking more pictures tonight and this weekend, and I'll try to be regular about posting them!

Its Insanity!!

2007-08-21T17:52:00.000+02:00

Since I last updated, my life in Budapest has dissolved into insanity!

I am currently sitting in my usual internet café, (but using one of their computers instead of my beloved ibook), so typing is slow thanks to a very funny keyboard layout. (The z and the y key are switched and I cant seem to figure out how to make an apostrophe...).

The last several days have been spent exploring the city, learning my way around the metro, finding the cheap spots for icecream and food, figuring out how to call a cell phone from a payphone, and meeting all the other people who are here for the language school.

Yesterday was St. Stephens day, although the holiday was celebrated all weekend. Music in the streets, the most impressive fireworks display Ive ever seen, and my first taste of Hungarian beer (Dreher, which runs about 50 cents for a half a liter, is the Hungarian equivilent of Budweiser, but much better).

Because of my lack of laptop and this keyboard, I will have to cut things short.. but believe me, there will be a longer post soon, complete with pictures!

Sziaztok Budapestbòl! (A gramatically incorrect hello from Budapest!)

2007-08-17T18:43:00.000+02:00

SZIAZTOK!! I'm in Budapest!

I got in to BUD about 12:30 yesterday afternoon and was met by Noamy (please excuse my awful Hungarian spelling!) and my flat-mate, Sarah, a Junior from Harvey Mudd. I was disappointed at first, since I thought that because I had a flat-mate, the two of us just had a flat together, not the host-family I'd requested. This disappointment was silly! Turns out the two of us are living in a beautiful flat in the Castle District in Pest (District I, very schmancy!). We live with a host-mother who has hosted girls from our program for several years now. Her name is Éva and she's a little older than my mama. She has two older daughters, who we have yet to meet, and two grandsons. Since her daughters are out of town at the moment (until Tuesday) she brought in one of their friends, Esther, to translate for her. She speaks very little English (but she understands more than she can speak), which is perfect, since one of the things I was really looking forward to on this trip was learning Hungarian, and so far I'm already picking things up from communicating with Éva.

I was so sleep deprived and jet-lagged by the time I got to bed last night (at 20:30 local time) that I slept until 11:30. 13 HOURS. That is ridiculous. I set some kind of record for myself.

When I finally got up I was met by Sarah, who'd been up since 8-ish. Éva had left breakfast for us: butter, cheese and a salami type meat on bread. We hung around the flat for a few hours, talking and figuring out how to compose a note to Éva (who wasn't home) to tell her we were exploring Budapest and would be back by 18:00.

We left around 2 and walked down to the Metro stop by our house, which is about a 20 minute walk from our house. We also could have taken the 16 bus down to Deák square, but we felt like doing more exploring, since the 16 bus stops right across the street from our flat. We took the metro to Deák square, which seems to be the tourist central of Budapest. Most of the signs were in Hungarian and English, there were McDonalds, Burger King, and Subway, and so many damn touristy booths. It was sort of disgusting.

The Red Line Metro after Deák square is closed until the 19th for construction, so we took the M2 bus (which is replacing the Red Line while it's under construction) to Keleti square, and walked from there to College International at Bethlen Gabor tér. There were locked gates all around the school and we couldn't figure out how to get in, so we decided it was about time we headed back home. On our way home we stopped at a huge grocery store to poke around and see what was available. The building is two stories and in the second story there are several smaller shops and a druggery. I've decided I would rather not spend much money here until I understand the exact value of a forint. (I paid 200 Ft for a bottle of Coke today, which is about $1.05... but that was in Deák square, so they probably charged more than other places would).

When we got back to our flat, Éva was home and cooking dinner. While we had been out all day she had gone to her garden, which is in district III, and picked peaches, apples, plums and grapes. She explained to us, while speaking slowly and using lots of gestures, that when her husband was alive, he would bring her roses when he came back from the garden. She made us ham and mushroom pizza for dinner.

After dinner Sarah and I walked down to the Internet Cafe which is just down the hill from our flat. It's an "American Coffeeshop" where you can get American style drinks and free wireless. Very awesome and handy! I've gotten a decaf Americano two nights in a row, just because I miss the taste of coffee. But I do believe now is a good time to temporarily wean myself off caffeine, what with my schedule so messed up. I got a caffeine headache around 18:00 tonight, which is about when I'd be drinking my morning coffee in Portland (9:00 am).

This weekend is a holiday weekend (St. Stephen's day is on Monday, the 20th) and then the language class starts on Tuesday. It sounds like some other people from our program want to meet up on the weekend sometime, plus there is lots of exploring to do... this should be a good weekend! There will be lots of pictures and stories soon, I am sure of it!

Also, if you feel the desire to comment on my entries, you can click the link at the bottom of the entry that says "X Comments".

In Transit

2007-08-16T09:22:00.000+02:00

I am currently sitting in the München airport using ridiculously overpriced wireless. Seriously, I paid €8 for an hour of wireless. Just enough to check my e-mail, call Mom, Dad and Rob with Skype, and update this sucker.

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind. I moved out of my house on Saturday, spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in Corvallis, packing and taking of errands and doctor's appointments, spent last night in Vancouver at Rob's, and left early this morning. Saying goodbye to Mom and Rob in the airport was long and tearful; it still hasn't sunk in that I'm not really going to see anyone I know for the next 4 months.

I've been vegetarian since mid-April. I know that being a vegetarian in Eastern Europe is virtually impossible, so I've resolved myself to the fact that I will not be a vegetarian during my stay in Budapest. Still, until finding vegetarian options is absolutely impossible, I will continue to avoid all things meaty. Luckily there are enough international travelers on Lufthansa that there seem to always be non-meat dishes available. But who would have thought it would be harder to eat veggie in the Denver airport than cruising at 3000 ft?

My flight leaves München at 11:05 AM local time (it's currently 9:36). I arrive in Budapest at 12:20 PM (same time zone) and that is when this whole experience really starts.

6 days - Goodbye Portland!

2007-08-10T01:10:00.001+02:00

I leave in 6 days. I'm still not packed (a job for tonight and tomorrow), I still haven't quit my job (tomorrow), and it still hasn't fully sunken in that I'm going to be in another country for four months starting a week from yesterday.

Last night was sort of my "farewell to Portland" outing. Rob, Devon, Devon's boyfriend Matt and I went downtown for cheap night at Sushi Takahashi. Devon and I filled ourselves with cheap cheap sushi, the boys got noodles, and we wrote messages on the unopened chopsticks in the cup at the table. After dinner we walked to Powell's, where I bought my host family a photo book of Portland and myself a book for the plane. After Powell's we walked to VooDoo Donuts. We ate our Donuts standing on the street outside. I hadn't even planned on hitting all three of my favorite downtown PDX locations, so it was a happy surprise that I found myself full of sushi and donuts on the sidewalk on 3rd street, just south of Burnside.

The last two important places to hit before I leave are Burgerville and American Dream, which can be done once I get to Corvallis. (Well... Burgerville will take a drive to Albany, but it's definitely worth it).

I've given up on seeing everyone I want to see before I leave. There's too many people and not enough time and August seriously snuck up on me. So if I said I'd see you before I leave and I don't... I'm sorry! I wish I could have!

So tomorrow (Friday) is my last day at my job at the IT helpdesk (until Spring semester, that is) and Saturday I move out of my house and temporarily back to Corvallis. Rob's in California from today until Sunday night, so he'll join me in Corvallis Monday morning. On Tuesday evening, he, Mom and I will drive back up to Vancouver where we'll spend the night at his house and drive to the airport in the morning.

Yes, this is really happening!

9 days

2007-08-06T19:01:00.000+02:00

I leave for Budapest in 9 days. I'm barely packed, I know absolutely no Hungarian, and I haven't quit my job yet. Oh, I also haven't done any math in about 3 months.

The program I'm going with, Budapest Semesters in Mathematics, is a math intensive program in the original stomping ground of pure math. I have said math (or some variation) 4 times so far in this post. You're just going to have to deal because I'm going to be talking about math. A lot. I'm going to be taking more and harder math than I ever have before. Three 300-400 level classes in one semester, taught by profs who speak English (though not necessarily well). INTENSE.

These are the math classes I'm leaning towards:
Introduction to Abstract Algebra
Conjecture and Proof
Mathematics of Fractals
Elementary Problem Solving
Graph Theory
Number Theory

I'll have to choose 3 of those... which will probably end up being a pretty difficult decision. Although taking 4 math classes wouldn't be unheard of, from what I've gleaned from the website and the BSM facebook group. I'm also going to take one non-math class. That one's a tie between Hungarian Art and Culture, Historical Aspects of Mathematics, and Film Analysis - Great Masters of European Films.

I made flash cards this morning to help me get around my first couple of days in Budapest. I mean, the language course I'm taking pre-program doesn't start until 5 days after I get there, so I'm going to be pretty helpless for the first week... but I can at least try not to be an ugly American by attempting the language, right?