Val in Budapest: October 2009

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Pics week 7

Sunday's 10k race.....

I found it enjoyable that the international registration table (yep, that's us) was next to the problem-shooting table.

Giant inflatable coke bottles and moonbounces???

Proudly representing our respective colleges before the race.

Sweaty and SO happy afterwards!!!

Pics week 7

So the view from the top was a bit foggy, but if you look reallllllly closely maybe you can see the dome of the Parliament building. Up so high!

The coffee at the café in Svab-hegy was presented so deliciously that I had to take a picture.

Johna, Meg, Allie, and I all bundled up in the hills that evening.

Pics week 7

My fake tattoo: "I do my own stunts."

Buying tickets for the train operated by children. Precious!

Tower at the top of János-hegy. The only word I could read on the inscriptions was "kiraly," which means king, so I'm guessing this building had something to do with royalty.

Snow???!!!

Inside the tower.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Update week 7 con't

Alright. I'm back. So picking up with Wednesday...

It was, of course, a full day with class all morning and then again in the afternoon, so by the evening, I was bursting to get out into the city to do ANYTHING non-academic. Lucky for me, there was a Chinese Festival in town! One of my roommate's lovely friends (that's you, Avery :) had free tickets to see a show at one of the more upscale theaters in Budapest. I'm telling you, this was one of the most spectacular shows I've ever seen. I think my jaw dropped to the floor at least 30 times throughout the night. Not only were there acrobatics but several performances involved dances and elaborate costumes, as well as ancient Chinese instruments and songs. None of us could stop talking about the show for the rest of the night, it was just that good.

Thursday was cold and rainy again, but Megan and I decided to do our 6 mile run anyways. It turned out to be great running weather, and it was definitely good to clear the head before studying for the exam.

After finishing the exam on Friday, 8 of us left in the afternoon for our adventure in the great outdoors. Yep, it was all backpacking, hunting rabbits, and fighting off bears for us. Just kidding. More like staying in what most closely resembles a hostel on a rather large campground in the Buda hills (yes, that's still considered in Budapest). Getting there was quite the adventure because a) we didn't really know where we were going, b) there was a bomb scare in the area we were headed, so the bus we needed to take wasn't running as far as we needed it to go, c) it was pitch black by 6pm, d) it was also freezing cold and rainy, e) we seemed to be in an area inhabited by speakers of extremely limited english, and the list continues. Luckily, we met a woman on one of the buses who recognized that we were not hungarian and probably didn't know what was going on with bomb threat, so she offered to show us the way (as we were traveling in the same direction as her flat). This woman was actually a blessing from heaven with a capital B. She even recommended some good things for us to see and do while we were in this area, and we ended up going to one of the cafés she pointed out the next day (and the cake was just as good as she said it would be!). Friday night was filled with super intense bonding time that included nutella, rub-on tattoos, and massage trains. Is there any better way to spend the night in a sketchy hostel that looks like a scene from a horror movie? No way.

Saturday morning we all pretty much slept in and then boarded the "Children's Train" (it's operated by children to carry on a tradition started during the soviet occupation of Hungary) to the base of Janos-hegy, the highest point in Budapest. After enjoying the hilly walk up to the summit, we all breathed in the glorious fresh air while taking in the view of the city we've grown to love so very much. Though it was super foggy, we found the dome of the parliament building. It's hard to explain, but there's something so cool about being able to identify your geographical location in a foreign country. I don't know.

After getting semi-lost walking back to the town, some of us headed back home while others went to the café for a couple of hours (woops) that I told you about earlier.

And then, it was a night of intense hydration in preparation for our race the next day! Sunday morning came, along with the sunshine and no-wind conditions. Perfect running weather. The race itself was an incredible experience. As I was running, I kept telling myself to memorize the image of running along Andrassy Ut towards Hero's Square with cheering hungarians lining the streets. Quite unforgettable. We all finished within our goal times..I wanted to finish the 6-mile loop in less than 50 minutes, and I made it! Everyone got a medal, a t-shirt, an apple, and a goody bag. Free stuff is the best. Needless to say, my tired legs begged me to chill out for the rest of the day, and I decided to listen.

So, wow. I'm tired just writing about it. I keep thinking that some weekend is going to fall into the "average weekend" category, but I keep proving myself wrong :)

Hope you enjoy the pictures. I'll get them up soon. Love you all!

Jó észekat,

Valeri

Week 7 Update

Jó napot kivanok!

Has another week really already gone by?? Time passes freakishly fast here! Indeed, the countdown to fall break (which starts this Friday) has begun, and I can still remember very vividly the thought of fall break being a distant worry as I sat by the pool under the lazy August sun. And now it's almost here! I'm really looking forward to the break, as I'll be seeing some pretty cool things with some pretty cool people. Friday morning, I fly out of Budapest to meet my second cousin in Latvia. I believe the plan is to travel around the city of Riga and to check out the Baltics. Ya know, just another weekend out in the country...oh wait and by the Baltic Sea. I still find it hard to grasp the concept that all of these cultural and geographical wonders are within travelable distance! Love it. I leave Latvia on Tuesday to come back home to Budapest for a two-day recovery period before leaving for Poland on Friday. Three other girls from my program and I will enjoy the sites of Krakow, as well as a 6-hour guided tour of Auschwitz. ...Just to give you a preview of updates to come...

And now for an excitingly thorough account of this past week's activities. Monday = rainy, cold, tiring, grocery shopping, and that's pretty much it. Tuesday, however, more than made up for Monday's lack of cultural activity. Rach and I played tennis again and were happy to escape the 150mph winds by playing in the much-anticipated bubble. There was a trade-off involved, though. On the two courts next to us were 4 extremely intense high-school aged boys who were hitting the living daylights out of the ball. The skill-level dichotomy between them and us could not have been more ridiculously distinct. But no wind in exchange for embarrassment? We'll take it. Tuesday night, a couple of us set off on yoga mission #2 and ended up taking a two-hour hot yoga class. I don't really recall much more than being really sweaty, realizing that my body was bending in quite interesting ways, and a man calling out "Kosi" (thanks) every 21 breath cycles. In short, it was an incredible release and left all of us feeling extremely relaxed and limber. Oh how I missed yoga class :( Definitely something to take back up again once I'm home.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to pull a "to be continued" at this point because I'm late for class. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up with Wednesday later on tonight! Until then-

Val

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Pics week 6

Post-opera even at Buda Castle for the sausage and palinka fest!

Enjoying our hungarian sausage/mustard/bread combo.

The makings of the deliciously sweet break "towers" for which I cannot remember the hungarian name.

Jules and I egeseg'ing :)

Pics week 6

Inside the opera house waiting for Madame Butterfly.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Pics week 6

Scenes from our walk on Friday afternoon: St. Istvan's Basilica and Roosevelt Tér

Group shot and Carley, Kelsey, and I at breakfast all before the opera!

Week 6 update (ahh halfway!!)

Jó napot mindenki!

Well, it's official, the weather here has finally stopped exceeding my expectations in becoming more and more like that good old PA weather I love so much a.k.a. cold and rainy :(

But that's not going to stop us from continuing our Budapest adventures!! This past week's activities are definite proof of that. Allow me to provide you with a rundown:

Monday was, well, Monday. Class from 9-1:30 and then again from 3-4:30. Quite long, especially considering the course was Cognitive Neuroinformatics......yeah.....your guess is as good as mine?? In a nutshell, it was mostly about cognitive models based on the connectionist framework. In English (and I still don't think I know after studying it for one intense week), we learned about a different way to think about how the brain works that's based on intricate webs of connections varying in degrees of complexity. Wow, I still don't think that makes sense, but I think that's the best I can do at this point :/ I can show you my notes if you want to know more. ha.

But Monday night definitely made up for that long day in the classroom! It was discount-on-burritos night at our favorite Mexican restaurant Areba!! Megan and I thought it would be fun to get a good run in and end it at the restaurant where we'd meet everyone else. Ya know, a nice, easy, half hour run. Wellllll I don't think I've underestimated a distance so greatly in a long time. It took us almost an hour to get there, and we were by no means takin it slow, mind you. We both (mostly me actually) thought that the restaurant was much closer than it was, which resulted in us stopping after each block saying, "It's gotta be on this block! I think I see it...wait....nope. Next block, next block." This when on for a good 10-15 minutes until we finally made it. Luckily we made it in time to get the discount, and all our frustration melted away like the glorious cheese on our burritos. Heaven :)

Tuesday night was Bible study, and it was, again, another great night with great new friends. The young woman who led the discussion is from Ghana and speaks pretty broken English. And yet again, the language barrier really didn't seem to have an effect on our discussion. Amazing!

Wednesday night included a bit of a wild goose chase. A group of us all slipped into our yoga pants after playing some intense soccer and set out in search of a yoga studio that advertised a free first class! So exciting! Couldn't wait! Great! Couldn't find the place. I went with Meghan to find the second possible place where it could have been, and we came up empty. Luckily, gelato is never far away, so we ended the night and our yoga frustrations (hmm that's really a contradiction of terms) with a stroll along Vaci Utca and funky flavored ice cream.

Thursday night involved mainly running, brownies topped with Nutella (incredible, by the way...you should try it), and studying/freaking out because none of us really knew what we were talking about.

Consequently, post-exam celebration on Friday afternoon was extra vigorous! A bunch of us went on one of the "walks" in our Budapest Guide books and enjoyed some of the sites in Northern Pest, including St. Istvan's Basilica, Parliament, the Hungarian National Bank, and the American Embassy, satobbi, satobbi (which means "etc, etc" in hungarian). And can anyone guess where our walk ended? Big surprise....on Margit Island of course! We played some intense soccer to get out all that pent-up, stale study energy. Afterwards, I went with my friend Eta to services at her temple and met a lot of her new Israeli friends. We went to a dinner afterwards to complete the celebration of the harvest and to prepare for the rainy season to come. It was so beautiful to watch her speak in Hebrew to everyone there...it amazes me that people from all over the world, from completely different cultures, can be united so intimately by one language. It was one of the best experiences I've had here so far.

Saturday was a blast as well. We primed ourselves for an afternoon at the Opera (to see Madame Butterfly) with a delicious breakfast of ham and eggs at an adorable little café on Andrassy Ut. After the show and a brief nap, it was time to head out again. And, man, the day just got classier! We went to a sausage and palinka (Hungarian spirit) festival at Buda Castle. What a great way to end the night....tasty hungarian sausage accompanied by traditional hungarian beverages! Oh but the night didn't end there. After coming home when it started to rain, we had a massive disney movie watching of The Emperor's New Groove. If you've never seen this movie- and I don't care how old you are- you need to. Hilarious.

Sunday was mostly a recovery/rest day with Church, a nap, and a nice evening run up to The Lady. Gloriously awesome weekend. Not much more to say than that.

Hope you're all doing well. Until next week-

Valeri