The National Gallop

So I've been terrible about blogging and I was going to make up for it by posting a backlog but well I'm lazy. The most interesting thing I did was my trip last weekend to Budapest. I met up with Kristen at the train station (Keleti is cool by the way) and we headed to the hostel to drop our stuff off. We grabbed gyros which have become my new fast food love here in Hungary at a little shop a couple streets down. The people were very kind and spoke enough English I ended up using that instead of the little Hungarian I know. (Does anyone else have that problem? I know enough to have a very basic conversation in certain situations but if they speak English I cop out and just switch to my native language.) We then met up with Molly and Laura and got beers at a bar that Laura knew. We got carded walking in because the bouncer heard us speaking English, it was a bit annoying but I'm sure it's typical in the city which gets a lot of tourists. The bar decor was eclectic to say the least, and I wouldn't advise anyone who is afraid of bunnies to go there. The main room has a tree with rabbit figures strung around it, and there were some Lewis Carroll -esque drawings above one of the bars. I want to go back when I'm less exhausted so I can enjoy it more. 

Our beds in the 12 person room, pre-loud obnoxious people. 

 The above picture is in the cheap 12 person room we thought would be fine (though we noticed when we first dropped our stuff off the other occupants were probably male from the clothes), well we thought wrong. We got back at 2:30am and everything was quiet. About an hour or so later people came back, flipped the overhead lights on (I was on the top bunk about 3 feet from the light) and started talking, loudly. Anyone who knows me knows that if I woke up from it, the volume level and movement had to be ridiculous. This continued for a long time and eventually Kristen got frustrated and went down to get us a double room.

Our new room.

We got to the new room at quarter to 6:00am (the sun was actually coming up already) and managed to grab a few hours of sleep before we had to get up again. In the morning we wandered down to Heroes Square where the National Gallop was being held. We met up with Molly, Laura, and Sue and later in the afternoon Annie and Tom joined us. Wandering through the stalls and seeing the horse races was a fun time. It was hot and sunny and we probably should have drank more liquid but it was a nice slice of Hungary. Here are some pictures of the area and the National Gallop.

These people on stilts were hilarious! I was a little jealous, stilt walking is fun :)

Laura became our tour guide, she went to Central European University for the last two years so she can not only tell us the history of some building but also the best dessert places. We had cake and ate at a Hummus bar, which had really good falafel. 

Delicious cake that was 300ft (~1.50$)

I plan to try and read this by the end of the school year, hopefully.

Budapest-Keleti train station.

Sunday we had breakfast at the hostel and headed out to McDonald's to get free wi-fi, after checking train times and getting tickets using the write-it-down-and-show-it method we headed back to a different McDonald's to get back on wi-fi. I was tired (this was when I started getting my cold I think) and Kristen had a bad sunburn so we were feeling lazy. Wi-fi and air conditioning is nothing to sneeze at and we had fun looking for more places to visit on future trips.

This week has been busier, I am trying to get all the extra hours I am working sorted. I have 2 conversation groups with students, 1 grammar review, 2 private students, 1 adult conversation group and a business English group. I will also be taking Italian lessons from my contact teacher after school hours. The extra stuff will be good to give me something to do but it's going to mean a lot more lesson planning. I think that's the worst thing about being a first year teacher. I have the ability to google and find lessons and such but I don't have the experience to know what works, what doesn't, etc. I am going to try this weekend to start typing up and organizing all the notes and possible plans or activities I have. That way if/when I teach next year I will have notes to go through and hopefully make my life easier.

Sziasztok

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.