Friss és vidám vagyok :) I hope you're all feeling "fresh" and are in good moods too! Unfortunately, my hungarian still ends pretty much after saying 'thank you' and expressing how I'm feeling. Hopefully, I'll have a little more to say by the end of the semester. I definitely still need to work on that pronunciation, though, because instead of ordering a glass of red wine, I order a red city the other day....come on though! Red wine is vörös and city is város. You would confuse them too!
Nevertheless, it's been another delightful week in Budapest. So much to see, so little time. I joined my friends from the international church for Bible study again on Tuesday night and enjoyed another night of great discussion. It's incredible how comfortable I feel with these people after meeting them only 2 or 3 times!
On Wednesday between classes I went hotel hunting for mom..man, the things I do for her, even when I'm an ocean away! :) I'd say the mission was successful, though, because I think I found a reasonably priced place for her to stay that's not too far from most of the main squares in the city. I'm really looking forward to her coming in December and am constantly going over possible activity plans in my head: "So Saturday night we could go here, Sunday we could stop there and visit this building...oh, and I have to take her to see that!!" The bad thing is, sometimes this thought process goes on during class...not good, not good.
We were all pretty intimidated by the prospect of Friday's exam, so a good part of Thursday night was spent studying. But don't worry! We killed to birds with one stone and went to a café we had never been to before and studied there. My delicious ice cream/coffee concoction definitely took the painful edge off of studying.
Friday was a pretty sweet day. After the exam, a bunch of us went to the City Zoo. It's amazing how, no matter where you are in the world, exotic animals can bring people together by bringing out the child in everyone. From the camels, to the leopards, to the polar bear, to the performing sea lions and 3-D under-the sea short film, it was a blast. Afterwards, I went for a lovely evening run (gotta keep up that training for the 10k in 2 weeks!), followed by a night of tennis amongst hungarians. Rach and I had reserved a court earlier in the week for friday night under the lights. I'm not going to lie, it was rough at first. Really rough. But, by the end of the hour, we were getting some decent rallies in. All of the courts are clay, so that's going to take some getting used to as well. But I did buy new tennis shoes a couple of days before, so not even my semi-dislike of clay courts can stop me from playing now. Can't wait to play again next week!
This past weekend, our program sponsored a trip to Eger, a town about a 2-hour train ride outside of Budapest that's known for its wine. We arrived early Saturday afternoon and toured the castle (or what's left of it, as most of it was destroyed during the Turkish invasions), had a mouth-watering late lunch, toured the underground wine cellars, and went out to the wine festival in the evening. Sunday, we took a train to the top of a nearby mountain/extra large hill and hiked down through a national park. It was nice to get some genuinely fresh air after breathing in the city air all week long. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving city life, but sometimes it's just downright unpleasant to get a mouth full of car exhaust while I'm running. It's all part of the experience, though, I suppose.
I have pictures from the end of the week activities and from the weekend in Eger to share with you, as well as a couple of videos. Hope you like them!
Love,
Val
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