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
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