Random Photos and Teacher Meeting

Here are some random pictures from around my flat!

This is microwave popcorn with instructions in 12 languages. It's cheesy popcorn and pretty delicious, and yes I know I am such a junk food junkie.

So many languages! and sorry I don't know how to flip this. 

This is a giant evil spider that was outside my window. I am not exaggerating the size, it was probably a half dollar, and now it'd disappeared which worries me...

That splotch is an evil, evil spider.

Raid plug-in to try and kill the evil mosquitos who ate me alive the first night.

Yay for mosquito killing!

These are the lovely flowers I got at the first teachers' meeting. There was lots of Hungarian where I got about one word in 100. Mostly mindenki (everyone) early and angoltanár (English teacher) once they got to introducing me. I just said a few words introducing myself and talking about how I was excited to be in Hungary and work with everyone. Also, that I was trying to learn Hungarian so everyone needed to be patient with me.

virágok (flowers)

These are some pictures around my flat.

Sink and coffee maker!

Toaster oven, hot plate, microwave and fridge.
Also the door into my flat is at the far right. 

This is to the right when coming into the room.
My dining table and TV (which has CNN in English!)

Big windows, my desk and bed.

My flowers in a Mezotur pottery vase.

My bathroom 

Breakfast of coffee and yogurt and cereal at my table!

Around noon I am going to go to lunch with the three teachers who picked me up in Budapest and I am making a list of questions to ask about the school and classes. 

Sziasztok! 

(I think that's the right spelling for goodbye plural. It is also a greeting, so you can start and end a conversation with szia, to one person, and sziasztok to multiple people, and I hope there are multiple people reading this!)

First day in Mezotur

I made it to Mezotur! Niki, Erika and Sándor picked me up in Budapest and Janos (I’m not sure I spelled that right) drove all of us and Emily, to Szolnok where we dropped Emily off and did some shopping. We came back and they showed me where I would be living, it’s an apartment inside the old dormitory. You can watch my video tour for more details.

I was given time to unpack a little and then I got to have dinner with the principal and Niki.  More delicious Hungarian food and some discussion about the school, Hungary and the town.  We had palacsinta, a Hungarian dessert that is a pancake/crepe, it had chocolate sauce and a walnut filling. Finom! (Hungarian for delicious) I’ll have more pictures of the town later when I wander around  by myself.

That evening I unpacked some and tired as I was still didn’t get to bed until late. The bed is pretty comfy and large, it’s the size of  two of my old bed put together. I slept alright but it’s always hard in a new place.

The next morning dawned BRIGHT and early. I have giant windows and the sun is very bright, so I won’t have any trouble waking up in the morning. My windows look out on Petrofi ut, named after a famous Hungarian poet!

Unfortunately, it seems a mosquito or two must have gotten into my room last night as I woke up with about ten bug bites (but I got mosquito repellent stuff when I went shopping today)

I spent a few hours finishing my unpacking and getting everything put away. It is a nice feeling to be able to decide where everything goes etcetera. I then had lunch with Niki where we talked more about the school and my lessons. She generously agreed to take me shopping as I was a bit intimidated by trying to figure out what everything is in Hungarian! I got food and some stuff for the apartment as well as a map of Mezotur and some brochures about Hungary. One of the brochures is in Hungarian and English (and German) so I can try and figure out some new vocabulary.

I also learned to ask for sliced bread at the bakery: Szeletelt kenyér,  and then fele kilo, which is half kilo or 1 pound. The bakery smells amazing and I think I will be visiting it often.

We then went to the school and she showed me the English teacher’s room and my desk as well as getting me the books the teacher from last year left. I’m going to go through them and organize all the information I got during orientation.

Some random thoughts about my apartment:

-Not so sure about not having a separate living room and bedroom but I have plenty of room overall

-It took me a while to figure out how to get hot water in the bath but I successfully figured it out!

- Church bells going off for 4ish minutes at certain hours are going to take some getting used to

- The pottery in my room is gorgeous and I really need to get down to the pottery museum here

- I am going to be cooking on a hot plate and in a toaster oven so that should be interesting but I’m excited to make dinner tonight :D

- My TV gets ~ 20 channels but several are repeats, I get CNN in English though!!

- I have a DVD player in the TV but I can’t get it to open right now… I’ll work on it later

- Wi-fi in my flat is an excellent connection!

- tap water here is not great but I did an experiment to see how good my 'filter as you drink' water bottle is

Tap water on the left, filtered water on the right. Go technology!

Ok the flat tour video is taking way too long to upload, I'm not sure what I can do about it but I will hopefully have it up later.

Short Post While I Procrastinate Packing

More classes today; more exhaustion today. I am pretty much over jet lag but I never sleep as well in a new place and I won't be at the hostel long enough for it to feel like 'home.'

After classes we headed to Hősök Tere (Hero's square, sorry the Hungarian is in a different font. I have yet to figure out how to make the vowel with a double accent on my Mac, it's on the list) where Hajni explained some of the history behind the monument (that doesn't sound like a grand enough word for it, but it's all I have). I won't go into it now because there is no way I will do it justice, but if you like history read about the square and what it represents. I have to admit, one of the big draws for coming to Hungary was just how many years it's been around in some form or another. The historical background I need to catch up on is overwhelming but at the same time I'm fascinated by it.

I feel like I need to work on my transitions but you know what? Only friends are reading this so I am not terribly worried about my narrative voice, although I do need to recapture my Power of the Pen skills. Random topic changes are my downfall, at least everyone who knows me realizes that is just how my brain works.

Anyways, we ate at this restaurant -> www.bagolyvar.com and the food was amazing. I commented on the carved wooden owl decoration and one of the helpers, Jon, explained that bagoly is the Magyar word for owl and vár is the Magyar word for castle. So the name of the restaurant is basically the Owl Castle. We all got soup and I had the paprikás csirke (I am pretty sure I got that right). The meal was delicious and we even got dessert so it was a lovely farewell dinner for the program.

At dinner many of us new teachers got our first taste of pálinka, a Hungarian fruit brandy. Don't believe the Hungarians when they say you just taste the fruit, I could tell the first drink was pear but mostly it just burned, so after the first taste I just did it like a shot. It definitely has a kick and most Hungarians will tell you it's good for you because it kills germs! For the next drink we got málna (raspberry) and I actually just sipped it while eating my dessert. Jenna and Skye were across the table from me and made the best faces ever when trying the pálinka!

So that was our final night as a group in Budapest though I have a feeling all of us will be back at some point to see more of the city. Tomorrow morning we have to have moved out of our rooms and brought our bags down to the lobby by 9am. Our contact teachers come in for an info session with Hajni and Maria at 10am and then we all get together at noon before we scatter to the wind and our new cities/towns/villages. It is going to be strange to say goodbye to the group (for now) but I am excited to meet the teachers from my school and then get to see Mezőtur, my school and my apartment.

Jó éjszakát!

Friday

Yeah, my title isn't too creative but my brain is a little busy with teaching and Hungarian right now.

Today was like the other two days of class, except our first class went long so we were in class straight for about 3ish hours. It wasn't terrible because the classes were interesting but at the same time, that long in class and everything starts to blur together.

I wasn't feeling too great in the middle of the last class and so I didn't try and go to the bookstore Maria told us about. I'm disappointed but I didn't want to end up getting sick on the tram and I'm glad the people who went made it on time! (The store closed at 7 amd we got out of class around ten after 6) I thought bad thoughts towards the lunch we had but the stomach medicine I took worked so I ended up grabbing falafel with Kristen and Skye. We also got gelato (I got pistachio and chocolate) and then went to the bar close to our hostel with several of the returning teachers.

It was nice to talk to our 'veterans' about our schools and their schools and Hungary in general. It was a great night and I got to talk to Emily, a returning teacher I had emailed previously who was in a town close to mine, which was nice as I am pretty sure she is the closest CETP teacher to me.

I have to be awake in 7 hours for our last! day of classes so jó éjszakát.

Classes Have Started...

... but just for us CETP teachers. Ha, got you there!

Tuesday night we had the welcome dinner at Dunacorso, a beautiful restaurant on the Danube (Duna in Magyarul, Magyarul is the Hungarian language). I had a goulash (gulyás) that was amazing. It was warm and well seasoned without being spicy.

Lindsey, Me, Kristen and Natalie at Dunacorso

The funny story from that day is slightly painful to remember. I got the gulyás dish and marveled at the delicious aroma and pleasing plating before digging in. I, of course, went straight for the gulyás and had a lovely little moment of 'Hungarian food rocks!'. Unfortunately, I next noticed what I thought was a green bell pepper on top (it's behind the parsley and tomato in the picture below). I happily crunched into it, only to have a five alarm fire spring up in my poor, unsuspecting mouth. Rudely spitting out the pepper, manners fall second to burning tongues, I grabbed a piece of the bread we had been given and tried to sooth my tortured mouth. A whole piece of bread and some of the Hungarian noodles (the round things on the left of the dish in the picture) later, I managed to take the flames down to a slow burn and was able to resume enjoying my meal, but I have definitely learned my lesson about making assumptions with regards to Hungarian peppers!

Gulyás! with an evil hidden pepper

We walked along the river for a bit to take pictures. This picture is random, I just laughed when I saw the name of the pub.

I thought I left Cbus

 We ended up going as a group to a bar area that was kind of like a little park. It was nice but I was too tired to want to drink anything so I just hung out talking for a bit. On the way back I wasn't paying attention while boarding the tram and smacked my knee on the edge of the step. When I got back to the hotel and pulled my pants up I realized I had a chunk out of my leg (through my jeans) luckily it doesn't really hurt and hasn't bruised too badly.

Me proving I am a klutz in any country.

 Wednesday and today (Thursday) were the first two full days of classes. CETP feeds us breakfast in the mornings (bread, butter, jam, fruit, coffee!, yogurt, etc). We then have culture class (which was actually practical suggestions the first day) at 10 am with the entire group of teachers. Next we split off and my group, the high school teachers, goes to the Teaching Tips class with Maria Santha. Maria (Maa-ria, like Maria in English but the a is longer/more open and the accent is on the first syllable like it is for every Hungarian word) is a wonderful teacher and I am taking a lot of notes in her classes. She is also the teacher for the morning culture class, and is helping us learn to navigate cultural differences and be aware of our Hungarian neighbors traditions. My group goes for lunch afer this and I have eaten in the cafeteria in our hostel both days. The food is pretty good and relatively cheap.

Thursday's lunch = 980 ft

Today I ordered the menü, which Maria had explained is the restaurant (or in this case cafeteria's special meal of the day type thing). It was a rice and pork? dish, I only put the question mark because I don't remember not because it was mystery meat. Also included was a cream of broccoli soup with these little round, almost crouton like additions that I wish there had been more of!

We had extra time between lunch and our next class so Bobby, Kellie and I headed down to the Spar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_(retailer)) which is a grocery store, to grab snacks. In Hungary you have to grab a basket when you go into the grocery store and you must put everything you are purchasing into it. No wandering around snagging snacks and just carrying them to the check out. Also, everyone brings bags or baskets to the store to put their purchases in after checking out because you have to buy bags in Hungary.

Pumpkin seeds, chocolate and dried mango to munch on.

After lunch my group has Hungarian lessons with a different teacher for an hour. The language teacher is nice but she speaks very quickly and I am sometimes afraid to speak up and ask her to repeat. I need to get better at that because I cannot expect my students to be brave when I am not. I am starting to get it a little. My roommate Kristen and I noticed that when we listen to Hungarian speakers it's becoming easier to hear the sounds and less like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon.

At five we all come back together into one big group for our "CETP practical suggestions" class that goes over a variety of things about Hungary, work, the bank, the store, etc. These classes are helpful and it was much better today because we were in an air conditioned room instead of the hot auditorium. It's just too easy to zone out when you are tired in a warm room.

Once classes are over for the day a group of us head out for dinner. Tonight it was Bobby, Kellie, Kristen, Jenna, Skye and I. We took a tram (where I got checked by Kontroll!) and the metro to get to a different part of the city and then we walked around for a bit.

Captivating architecture on our way to the Parliament building/food.

 We got to see the Parliament building, which has a crazy amount of spires and looks much cooler than the Capitol building (sorry America).

Parliament before we went to dinner.

 The restaurant we ate at had excellent service, cheapish beer and filling food. I had a Dreher beer and chicken breast (csirekemell) stuffed with camembert, apples and nuts. Our waiter was patient with our fumbling Hungarian and even helped us out with some pronunciations and took a picture of us at the end. I'll get the name of the restaurant from Bobby later (they gave us a card) and put it in, incase enquiring minds want to know.

Parliament after we got out of dinner.

The building was beautiful all lit up! The architecture is gorgeous on many of the buildings in both Buda and Pest. Our hostel is in Buda and the Parliament is in Pest. Apparently a good test of whether you are in Buda or Pest (separated East - Buda and West - Pest) is that if it is hilly, it's Buda!

Random communication note: Skype definitely works (thank you Ashley Howard) so if you want to chat we shall find times for that just let me know!

I have to go do homework now, and I thought I was done with that when I graduated in the Spring!


Viszlát!

The First Day + The Morning of the Second

WE HAVE AIR CONDITIONING *This exclamation will make more sense later.

Cincinnati to JFK wasn’t a bad flight but I have to say Cinci really needs to add more outlets and possibly free wi-fi to really have my vote for favorite airport. I got a grilled cheese (yeah, I know) at a deli in JFK and waited in the Starbucks line for a frappacino, which was delicious. The frappacino was also nice because the airport was warm and I had planned for the overly-air conditioned environment I experienced at O’Hare last year.

Note to self: when you have a headache before getting on a transatlantic flight, find Tylenol before boarding.

Other than the headache which was exacerbated by me pulling my bag from the overhead bin straight onto my face, the flight went well. I met up with Bobby and Kellie Kenis, a couple who will be teaching in the Southwest part of Hungary, at the gate at JFK and they were only sitting a few rows behind me.  The in-flight entertainment was excellent. The movies were Unstoppable and Morning Glory, both of which I had been meaning to watch and both of which I enjoyed. We also got episodes of several NBC shows including Community which I think I might look into watching more of. (Why yes, I did just end a sentence with a preposition, don’t be a prescriptivist.)

Baggage claim is always the most stressful part of flying in my humble opinion. We had been warned our luggage might get lost, so every time it wasn’t my bag coming out on the carousel I had a mini-moment of panic even though I had packed my carry-on knowing it might be my only bag for a few days. All of our (Bobbie, Kellie and I’s) luggage got to Budapest and we met up with Mary and Hajni, and then got on a shuttle-bus thing to the hostel.

Three of the CETP teachers who have been teaching for a few years Emily, Franny and Jon, were at the hostel to meet us and get our remaining paperwork sorted. I was originally going to use the unlocked iPhone I had with the Hungarian SIM but I realized it’d be easier to just have the phone the program got for us and use my iPhone on wireless or get a data only plan for it.

My new phone

 My phone number is +36308203921 by the way and incoming calls are free so call me! Once paperwork and phones got sorted we went to our rooms.  I had a little hiccup with the hostel room a/c, as in it wasn’t working. The maintenance man came and fiddled around and then tried to explain in Hungarian what was wrong but all I recognized was the word ‘kaput’ so I had to go downstairs and get one of the program people to translate. Basically, the A/C was burnt out and couldn’t be fixed until the next day, not fun when the weather is in the mid 90s and the humidity is similar to the Georgian summers from my childhood (It ended up not being terrible that evening  and  I went to sleep easily)

More teachers from the program arrived while I was dealing with the A/C and finally showering away the plane stench, including one of my hostel roommates Kristen. She is going to be teaching in Kuseg which is on the Austrian border, so we’ve already made plans to make plans to visit Vienna, the beaches in Croatia and possibly some places in Spain and Italy during the year.

Bobby, Kellie, Dianna, Sue, Kristen and I decided to venture out mid-afternoon to get food and see the city. We ate at a place with gyros that were delicious once we fumbled through ordering in a mixture of English and reading the Hungarian names. Thank goodness the menu had pictures! The gyro had cabbage and a spicy sauce on it, two things I hadn’t had on a gyro before but it was amazing. Part of my excitement may have been related to the fact I hadn’t eaten much in the last 12 hours, but it was an excellent gyro nonetheless.

After we got food we headed down the main street and towards the river. We said goodbye to Sue who was planning a trip to Ikea, and ended up hiking (there was a paved path which we mostly followed and stairs but it still felt like hiking on little sleep and not an insignificant amount of dehydration) up to the citadel at the top of this hill. 

The Citadel

There were frequent stops to take pictures and/or breathers on the way up but we made it to the top! The breeze at the top was almost as welcome as the gorgeous view of the city, they might actually have been tied.

 I bought a giant bottle of water at the top of the mountain for 500 ft. This picture was actually a little around and down from the top where there was a restaurant and a mini shop.

Giant bottle of water!

I had to take a picture of this sign to commemorate the memory of the first time I paid to use a restroom/water closet in Europe.

Later that day, my sense of time is so messed up I’m not really sure when it was, we (the group from before) and some of the new arrivals went to a restaurant down the hill from the hostel. Natalie, Lindsey(I’m not sure how she spells this) and I shared a bottle of rosé and I got gnocchi with chicken in a red sauce.

Yum

The food was again delicious and I was extremely full afterwards. I stayed awake long enough to go back to the computer lab and check the responses to my “I’m alive” email/facebook statuses. After that was done I went and crashed in our (oh so very hot) room.

I woke up at 6am but I fell back asleep until my alarm went off at 7am. It was only set that early because that was when the maintenance man was supposed to come, he didn’t show up until 11:30ish. I was pretty awake though so I stayed up and bummed around for a bit until Kristen and I decided to go to the market across the river. We got there fine, but it was a bit overwhelming as we were exhausted. Columbus people think North Market except larger, with some little touristy stalls and everyone is speaking Hungarian.

Jet lag and sore muscles from the day before meant we went to a café by the market to eat instead of trying to buy food from the vendors. It was a pretty good breakfast and the coffee was excellent!

Kristen and I decided to head back and stick around the hostel for a while to recharge and write our blog posts.  We got a mini lesson in Hungarian cards (they have different suits etc) and played a short game called Ulti which is like hearts, with the teachers who checked us in yesterday.

Now, I am all caught up and hoping that I can get this from Word on my Mac to my blog without screwing all the formatting etc up.

Almost Ready

I have finally managed to get my bags packed and under the weight limit, let me just say Tetris was never my strong suit! Two large suitcases, a carry on, and then my backpack are what is coming with me to Hungary and I still have so much more to pack for my parents to keep for me. Life would be a lot easier without $150 charges for over weight bags, but as I always whine about filling up my 13 gallon tank, I can't imagine how people cringe when thinking of the fuel it takes to fly across the Atlantic.

I'm definitely going to have to work on getting back into the swing of writing, my Power of the Pen skills are a little rusty. Until then, these posts are going to be a bit underwhelming so cut me some slack for now.

Anywho, I am very ready to head out but the goodbye dinners with friends kind of suck, knowing I won't see them for a year or more, not counting Skype dates. Speaking of Skype I really need to get a good handle on how much data Skype calls use, especially video chats because Internet in Hungary is paid for by megabytes of usage. So all you Americans who pay a basic monthly fee for unlimited internet should be thankful :P Oh and my Skype name is atate43 fyi.

Ta for now the 0 readers I have because I've yet to give people the URL for this.