Christmas is in schools in Hungary. It's a thing. And not just Christmas presents/trees/Santa. Oh no. JESUS. Jesus is schools goes against everything I ever learned about being a teacher. About a month or so ago, I was told that I had to prepare a song/chant/dance/play for my class. Since I have 2 classes, I asked Claire to take over my 1st grade Christmas show while I concentrated on the 3rd graders. I chose a play about reindeer. It's cute, it's Christmasy, it's innocent. We spent all of our English lessons for a week practicing. Singing songs, dancing, and acting. Tunde (my co-teacher) was really worried about their pitch and synchronization and everything. I was just happy they memorized their lines. I've mentioned this in a previous blog, but it's relevant to this blog too. On ... read more

Did I get your attention with the title? (I almost wrote "have I got your attention"...British English is killing me.) Darcy and I went to Wien this weekend to see the Christmas markets! And the adjective for Wien is Wiener. So that word was everywhere. Curse my immaturity. But not really. Teehee. After school on Friday we went to what is definitely the sketchiest train station in Budapest, got on our train, had to kick two guys out of our seats, and went to Vienna. WITH NO PROBLEMS. AGAIN. WE'RE SO GOOD AT THIS NOW. The train ride was less than 3 hours. And cheap. Basically I need to go Vienna always. We also bought 48 hour transportation passes. Spoiler alert: We didn't get checked once the whole weekend. Saved us a lot of stress though. ... read more

When I got on the train to leave Toulon, it was night. We had assigned seats. There was an old Chinese man sleeping in mine. I didn't bother. The train ride was dark and uneventful. I got to Paris and got a cab. The cab driver was super nice and talkative because he was practicing his English. When he dropped me off, he asked if I was married. I couchsurfed the first night because I didn't want to pay for a place to stay from 11:30 pm to 7:00 am. No thanks. Before you all freak out, here's how it works. I put out a request on the website that I'm looking for a place to crash. I can seek out people and send them personal requests and/or people respond to my request. The people who ... read more

Welcome to the first of a three-part series about my fall break. First of all, how cool is it that I can go to a new country for fall break?? And on the weekends? My life, ladies and gentlemen. SO. On Saturday morning, I woke up and packed for my flight later that day. I left my house earlier than planned because there was nothing to do, and I was antsy. I mean, France. C'mon. I had to buy new phone minutes because I'm responsible and stuff, and then I took a million forms of transportation to get to France. Tram to the Metro to the Bus to the Plane. I sat in the airport FOREVER. Here's the thing I've learned about European airports. In America, what do you see in airports? FOOD. EVERYWHERE. McDonalds, Panda ... read more

Darcy and I suck at traveling together. We always get these great ideas and then we assume that the person who has the idea knows what's going on. This is why we missed our bus to Serbia, and had an interesting time getting to Debrecen this weekend. Background: Debrecen is the second biggest city in Hungary. It's also home to a really big university. It's near the Romanian border, about a 3 hour train ride from Budapest. A few people from CETP live in/near Debrecen, so Darcy and I decided to visit them. It sounds easy. Go to the train station. Buy a ticket to Debrecen. Get on the train. Get off at Debrecen. On the way home repeat but for Budapest. Then you have to remember that it's Darcy and me doing this, so naturally ... read more