Weekend, Weekend

One word: hiking.


Saturday: with David, a Hungarian I actually met in St. Petersburg last fall! My roommate and I met David and his friend Feri, and we climbed Gellert Hill. I learned how to say a lot of really simple things in really poor Hungarian, so that was really good. I also buffed up my children's songs repertoire. We reached the Liberty Statue that is at the top of the hill in my Buda picture a few posts ago. A good climb for sure.










Sunday: with several AIESECers (AIESEC: the international student organization I found the internship through); we climbed a hill in Látóhegy and took a cog-wheel train for some reason. It was awesome because I met several really interesting people from all over the world, and it is so nice to have friends in the city!!! I learned a lot about flightless birds in New Zealand and getting to Bulgaria by car... and met a girl who has no brothers/sisters because of China's one child policy (which, of course, I've read so much about but it's different to meet someone it has actually affected!) Anyway everyone knows English really well and I got a lot of questions answered about the city and everything. After this weekend, I am so happy to be here!!! Too much fun :)

Sziasztok ('bye!)
-Emily

Random Thoughts from This Week

1. I found a shorter path to work! I stumbled on a map of my district in the kindergarten office (hooray, since none of my maps have the district on it at all!) and, of course, attempted to memorize it. Instead of turning right outside my hostel and taking an electric bus, a tram, and a trolley bus, I realized I could simply turn left outside my hostel, walk for seven or eight minutes, and take the trolley bus, two stops farther.  It's wonderful. So much faster, although the tram was kind of fun.

2. I gave a man directions! Naturally it was lucky he asked me in English, about one of the two roads I'm familiar with, but still - I gave a man directions! I also had to stifle the desire to ask him if we could talk and be English friends because he seemed to be in a great hurry. It's okay, buddy. I hope you found your address.

3. A Hungarian band played in our basement! No one tells me anything, so today I walked downstairs to find three old men with a double bass, a viola, and a violin playing live Hungarian music. The singer was leading the kids in the cutest folk dances. It was so great! What a classy establishment. Apparently the group comes every two weeks (but this was the last time for the year) and the kids love it. It was awesome.

4. Hungarian cuisine: bread and paprika. So in Russia I loved the mushrooms. In Hungary, they have delicious bread, of which I am eating way too much. Also today for lunch we had chicken paprika soup... so much paprika... so good! Two sides to every coin, though. Yesterday for lunch we had a green soup that made me feel like I was drinking pesto. But man, that bread...

5. Update on Hungarian language progress: I swear the vowels sound different every time I hear them, even with some of the kids' names (poor kids).  Hungarian speakers apparently are much better at hearing crazy vowels than non-native speakers, specifically me. I have been working diligently on saying my room number correctly and on "I don't speak Hungarian", which is unfortunately and perhaps ironically very difficult to say. I can say yes, no, okay, key, thank you, and I can (almost) count to five. And finally, courtesy of working at a kindergarten, I can sing a song about a ball. Haha.

Goodnight, America!
Emily

Bad Day

1.Hungarian, not California
Yeah I know I've been raving about the public transportation here, and it really is as great as it sounds. Not great: getting stopped coming out of the metro to have my pass checked, being asked for ID, and getting told that my ID is invalid and I am getting ticketed and fined. Except the man did not put it that nicely. He pointed at my UNC ID and said "Not Hungarian. California." (Me: Carolina). "Must be Hungarian. Not California." (Me: Carolina). I tried to explain that I hadn't known and that the ticket lady sold me the transport pass using this ID, darn it! "6000 forints," he said. I wouldn't do it again, I really didn't know, this isn't fair... some working up of the tear ducts, a frantic call to my student contact here as he wrote me an orange ticket... "6000 forints or trouble". Awesome, so I gave him the 6000 which was literally every forint in my wallet. Oddly he gave me back the pass (???) so I used it to get home after the opera. It could have been worse - the fine comes out to be about $30 so that isn't breaking the bank anyway. But I'm not going to say it didn't ruin my day, and I haven't been on the metro since.

2. Please insert PIN
 So the up side to this is that I don't know anyone so no one ever calls me. The down side was any help I could get was inevitably going to be in a language I didn't understand. I took the PIN card out (after some panicking) so I could still set my alarm and get up for work. Marieke (the greatest) told me lots of non-US SIM cards come with a PIN set on it and lock up everytime you turn it off, like I did in the opera. It was a matter of finding the envelope it came in. After moving some furniture I found the envelope and all was set to right. It was a panic at the time, though.

3. No microwave = no hot dinner for Emily
Side note: nothing is ever fully what it seems abroad. I have been calling my landlord, not so affectionately, my "crazy landlord" since he takes up my key everytime I leave the building and threatened to check my room weekly for cleanliness, etc. Sunday night was no exception. The kitchen had a sign on it, saying it was forbidden to enter because some 'foreigners' had left it a mess. Well I had just sat through a 3.5hr opera and was starving, so I entered and found the microwave had been taken away. So what did I do? I put the soup and pasta I had back in the fridge and ate a donut and some pretzels for dinner. A reasonable end to a pretty rough day.
The side note part is that my landlord is actually nice. He takes my key because there's only one for the room and, as of yesterday, I have a roommate, so whoever arrives back to the hostel first can pick up the key downstairs. And the other day when I picked it up, he smiled at my (sad) attempt to say the room number in Hungarian (although I'm very good at saying 'key' since it is close to the Russian) and taught me how to say 324. He had to say it more than once, I'll admit.... horrible language and its horrible vowels. Anyway I could really use a microwave.

Briefly, Sunday was a challenge. Adjusting to living alone in a country where I don't speak the language and a city where I don't know anyone was hard enough, so piling on the unfortunate experiences only added more strain. Fortunately I survived to tell the tale and am in a much better place today. These are probably the times I learn the most about coping with stuff. Anyway I guess if studying/working abroad were easy, everyone would do it.

More later!
Emily

Good Weekend

This past weekend was a success! Saturday morning I dragged myself out of bed around noon (not sure if this was jet-lag or the resumption of normal weekend laziness) and took the 80A bus two stops down Fogarasi út to the metro, got bad coffee and a cherry strudel for $1.50, and caught the 75 bus to Heroes' Square. The Museum of Fine Arts is a beautiful building. They have a good collection of El Grecos (an artist I remember from my art history class) but the exhibition with Klimt was closed, which was sorely disappointing. Awesomely a random youth choir sang in the echoey marble entryway at some point in the afternoon.  Anyway I stayed in that museum forever.

I wandered around City Park and the Castle, ate a spicy kolbasz sausage (the pronunciation of which I completely slaughtered when ordering), and cozied up near the river to write in my journal. The reverse bus stop was found by experimentation (basically I rode going the wrong direction until we starting passing the same numbered buses going in the right direction, got off and crossed the street to catch them.) I'm telling you, the buses come all the time. It's so great.

Sunday I went to the Hungarian National Museum (history, everything I never knew about Hungary); took a wonderful detour after failing to find an Internet cafe, that left me with wonderful pictures and a full impression of the beauty of the city; and saw the opera Otello that evening. Before you ask, yes the opera was sung in Italian and the subtitles were in Hungarian.

My original thoughts: 1. The guidebook says go to the Opera House, so I'll go to the Opera House; 2. I know Othello pretty well; 3. It's only $3, come on.
Reality: 1. No action. The entire second act was Othello singing with Desdemona, without moving at all; the entire third act was Iago singing (evil) to Othello in one place. The music was pretty, but otherwise I watched them stand there. 2. Three and a half hours. THREE AND A HALF HOURS. At least there were three intermissions and the refreshments were delightfully (as always) inexpensive. 3. No point three. I really did enjoy it!

       Hungarian State Opera House (remind anyone else of the Phantom of the Opera??)

View from my seat :)      

A few pictures from my first week!

Buda

  Where I work...                                                           Where I live

                                                                   Vajdahunyad Castle (in the daytime)

Colorful patterned roofs, from the Secessionist Art Movement

Heroes Square (Hősök tere)

Five days in Hungary and...

1. BUSI 403 (aka Operations Management) has forever ruined flying for me. 
Not that flying was ever that great to begin with, and JFK has its problems anyway, but I did not ask for the added stress of hearing my professor's voice in my head while waiting in a 300-person security line an hour before my flight. "THIS IS A CAPACITY ISSUE!" I kept yelling inside my head. As if in response, a woman came down the queue, which trailed between check-in counters to the end of the terminal lobby, checking passports. Helpful? No, because the most time is consumed getting checked by security personnel. "ADDING RESOURCES TO A NON-BOTTLENECK WILL NOT INCREASE SYSTEM CAPACITY!!"

2. Everyone else must know a shortcut to Terminal A in the Frankfurt airport. 
 Last time I thought I just accidentally went the long way (I mean, what airport funnels passengers through an elevator and three flights of stairs/another elevator to reach its busiest terminal?) but this time I very carefully followed signage and went the exact same strange route. What's more bizarre is there are never more than six or seven people going the same way... yet my next flight had familiar faces and it seems no one else nearly misses their plane or even rushes for that matter! I only made it because some nice golf-cart-driving airport guy noticed me hustling and drove me to my gate, commenting that I was one of the last for that flight. Everyone else was already on the plane. Hence the shortcut idea.

3.  It's a really good thing I got an unlimited public transport pass.
Here's how I learned my commute to Babaház: Get on the bus outside Tesco, get off when you see the ice cream hut. Get on the yellow tram, get off when you see McDonald's. Get on the 77 bus, get off when you see the fruit stand. I thought it'd be a good idea to try out before my first day, so I took the bus outside Tesco, got off when I saw ice cream, took the tram to McDonald's, took the 77, and got off at a fruit stand. The wrong fruit stand, because I walked to where the kindergarten should be and it wasn't there.
No problem - I got back on the 77 and went one more stop. Got off. No kindergarten.
Problem - I got back on the 77 and rode and rode until I saw another fruit stand. I had just started to text my university student contact to ask for the address - not that where I live is on any of my maps of Budapest but it seemed relevant to ask. Anyway I got off and found the kindergarten. Hooray! This wouldn't be the last time I've had to try, try again to find my way on the public transport.

 4. That being said, it really is excellent public transportation.
During peak times in the day, the buses and trams come every ten minutes or less. They really do. The metro (the oldest in Europe!) also comes really frequently and can get you almost anywhere. There are bus lines and tram lines and electric bus wires everywhere; it's a very intricate and saturated system. The buses stop at every stop, which is really helpful when you don't know where you're getting off until you're there. Interestingly they don't check tickets or passes on the buses out where I live; you just get on and are supposed to have one. I asked one of the other teachers how often they got on and checked and she said never!

5. Hungarian prices are unbelievable.
 I went to see Otello at the Opera House tonight for less than $3. That is notably 1/3 of the price I paid for my McDonald's hamburger meal on Thursday, which included the spicy dijon mustard they put on it for some ridiculous reason.
(Yes I do continue to measure how much I'm paying against what I paid for my hamburger last Thursday!)
When I stop at the Tesco next door to my hostel for bottled water and bread and snacks, I rarely pay more than $4. Strudel and (albeit really bad) coffee at the metro yesterday? $1.50. Most museum prices, which I have to pay in full because I'm not the right kind of English, are around $7.
...Although, it's amazing how quickly one can adapt and get persnickety about these things. My landlord is charging me 1500ft for Internet use. "Hmph! The nerve!" I remember thinking. That's the upper end of the most frequent prices seen for everyday goods and some menu items, and it amounts to around 8 US dollars. For $5 I could have gotten a much better seat at the opera (and then I would have had an unobstructed view of the Hungarian subtitles, not helpful) but why pay $5 when you can pay $3? I also get mad when the museum women won't give me a student discount off the $7 entrance fee since I'm not from the EU. What can I say, it's a tough city here.