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.