Blogs from Pest, Budapest, Central Hungary, Hungary, Europe - page 4

1. I have an apartment! Well, I might. Apparently it's being cleaned today and hopefully I get to move in tomorrow. I'll update when it actually happens. But supposedly it's on the Buda side near a huge square, which makes a pretty easy commute to work. 2. I'm teaching first grade plus second grade music and PE. Again, supposedly. The schedule is STILL not finalized. 3. There are really cool fruits and vegetables in Hungary. I don't remember the names of them, but one is like a small oval plum that's super sweet, and the other is indescribable but tastes like a mix between cauliflower and cabbage in that it's sweet but has a nice little spice at the end. SO GOOD. Shopkeepers are nice and let me, Tiffany, and Daniel try them for free. 4. ... read more

I'm here! I made it! I'm alive, Mom! My flights were super uneventful, so I'll skip over those. We took off, flew a lot, landed, blah blah blah. On the flight to Hungary, I was super nervous about customs, because I have a work permit, but I don't have a visa. I didn't know whether to declare myself here for work or tourism. This was the reality of customs: get in line, give man passport, man stamps passport, get luggage, walk through empty 'nothing to declare' room, you're in Hungary!! I met Hajni with her CETP sign, and went from there. The reality of my trip really only hit me at the end of my second flight as we were flying over all of this beautiful farmland. It was the best. I met up with 3 ... read more

I believe we all agree that I have terrific language skills, but I must admit Hungarian has thrown me for a loop. Yet even with the language barrier ... today I witnessed another example of how we are all the same. At lunch, under a huge umbrella, in 104 degree heat, I witnessed the following, and although I understood only one word of the entire conversation ("gelato") I knew precisely what was going on. Two tables, the first occupied by two couples, the second occupied by the four children of the two couples (lets call them 8-12). Lunch was over and the waiter was cleaning up and asked if anyone wanted desert. As the parents shook their heads "no," the waiter was already rattling off the options, which included GELATO. The ninos, of course, wanted gelato, ... read more

This is so awesome. If you have not read my previous blog entitled "Prague ... A Day With Friends ... And Thinking About Friends," then please go read that blog then come back here. I am jumping ahead in the timeline a bit, but this blog is going to be so much fun I did not want to wait. I believe you, my readers, understand that I am always traveling several days ahead of the blog. Accordingly, I am currently writing as if I am in Prague, when I am, in fact, in Budapest. Everything that happened in the Prague blog really happened, it just happened several days ago (and for the record, there will be two more Prague blogs) ... but for the sake of getting this blog out, I am jumping ahead in the ... read more

Sometimes things get in the way of other things. Which is probably the closest thing you'll hear in any of my blogs that approaches wise. The relevance of this is that this blog has laid barren for months on end and not really due to me not travelling and more to do with me not writing or being good at keeping travelling habits when I am working or at home. So lets talk about Home or should I say my New home, Budapest, which has plenty of amusing foiballs to discover and chuckle over. I arrived in the bleak mid winter to Budapest, snow hung on the trees and every surface not vertically aligned was layered in white. It was pretty and the vast supply of Christmas chocolates on Gabor's breakfast bar were still being slowly ... read more