November Update

For the past few weeks I have been continuing to take guitar lessons, play basketball, and to travel to see my friends. My basketball team has had two matches so far. We lost our first match, but last Monday when we played our second match we creamed the other team, which was highly satisfying. In order for me to be able to play basketball competitively in Hungary, I was required to have my basketball coach in Canada confirm that I had not played professional basketball. If the head of Hungarian basketball had just watched me play then he would have known from my lack of skill that there was no way I had ever played professionally, but all the paperwork sorted itself out and I get to play in all the matches.

I am starting to enjoy my guitar lessons more and more. I don't make my poor teacher's ears bleed when I play anymore, so I think I am headed in the right direction.

Last weekend I went to Budapest to visit my friend Irene who is an exchange student from the U.S. When I arrived in Budapest I found out that Irene had newly developed the flu, so we took the weekend pretty slowly. On Saturday we went to Irene's host brother's graduation ceremony which was deathly boring. In Hungary, when someone graduates from High School, they don't get a diploma, they get a school pin which they wear on their jackets. The pin says the name of the school and the graduation year. At the ceremony, everyone gets all dressed up and is presented to the audience, pinned, and then they all rush backstage to change into their white poofy dresses and tuxedos for the traditional partner dance. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the dancing part of the evening, everything else was very highly unorganized. All in all, the ceremony lasted 5 hours.
While it was painful to have to sit through the graduation ceremony, I was happy to see Irene and was ecstatic to be able to talk to Irene at a normal pace in "real" English instead of Hungarian English. My host dad's English is better than my Hungarian, so when something really important needs to be discussed we always end up speaking English. Because of this, I have had to change the way I speak in order for Béla to understand me. I now say things like "I very like that" or "I come home 9:30". My goal for the end of the year is to be able to put together perfect Hungarian sentences and perfectly terrible English sentences. Maybe I won't even be able to speak English by the time I come home. That would be kind of cool...

Today I have a meeting with a zookeeper at the Nyíregyháza Zoo to see if there is any volunteer work I can do. I told my Rotary Club that I was bored and asked if they could please come up with some volunteer opportunites for me, and working at the Zoo was one of their suggestions. There were many other volunteer opportunities, such as working at the animal shelter or in the hospital, but I have yet to look into these options. I am also looking into taking traditional Hungarian dance lessons, piano lessons or a drawing class. I recently took up Karate, but I am not completely sold on the class, so I am trying to find other things to do with my time.

This weekend, my friend Alexandra, who is another Rotary exchange student from Canada, is coming to visit me. Alex lives in Debrecen, which is a big city not far from me. I have been to visit Alex numerous times, but she hasn't been to Nyíregyháza yet, so she is finally going to come this weekend. On Friday I am going to the theatre, then Saturday morning Alex will arrive and we are going to a Rotary event. The event was described to me as a pig killing, but I don't really know what that means. I have been assured, though, that I will not have to witness the killing of the pig, I just get to eat it. I'm sure I will have lots of interesting photos to share on Monday.

You likey my moustache?

There seems to be a moustache theme going on with me lately. Not too sure what that's all about.... I love this picture, so I thought I would share it with you.

Budapest

Last week was Autumn school break in Hungary, and my host parents decided to take me to Budapest for the first time. I was unforgivable touristy all week and therefore have some cool pictures to show you all. As I'm sure you are aware, Budapest is the capital of Hungary and the city is home to close to 2 million people. The city of Budapest is split into two parts by the Danube river: Buda and Pest. On the Buda side of the Danube you will find the Buda castle where the Kings and Queens of Hungary used to live. The castle has now been turned into the Hungarian National Gallery. Buda also houses the famous Mátyás Church, where all royal ceremonies were held. Unfortunately, Mátyás Church was under renovation when I was visiting so I didn't get to see the apparently elaborate interior, but outside the church overlooking the Danube and the rest of the city is a big, beautiful wall that the King and Queen would walk along after their wedding ceremony so that all the people of the city could see them and cheer for them. I felt like Repunzel when I stood on the top of the wall.

Connecting Buda and Pest is the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, which was built in 1849 and was the first permanent bridge across the Danube. When it was first built, the Széchenyi Chain Bridge was one of the architectural wonders of the world, and represented the wealth of Budapest. The bridge was designed by Willian Tierney Clark, who also designed the Marlow Bridge which crosses the river Thames in England. The Széchenyi Chain Bridge is a larger but almost identical version of the Marlow Bridge.

The Pest half of the city houses Parliament, Heroes Square (a huge memorial to past kings and famous Hungarians), many museums, and the Opera House. When I visited the Opera House there was a movie being filmed outside the building and I got to see all the actors dressed in their renaissance garb. I was told that the movie wasn't a Hungarian one, so I will have to keep an eye open to see if perhaps it was and American film.

The city of Budapest is still full of beautiful old stone buildings. New buildings that are built these days are required to blend in with the old style of the rest of the buildings in the city, therefore Budapest hasn't lost any of it's charm as the years have gone on.

Budapest has metro, bus and c-train lines which make it very easy to get around the city, so I am excited to go back to the city to see just how lost I can get!

Halloween

Much to my dismay, Halloween is not celebrated in Hungary. However there is another, slightly less fun holiday that is celebrated on November 1st called All Hallows Day. On this day, families take flowers and candles to the graves of loved ones. Although Halloween is not celebrated, I somehow managed to get myself invited to probably the only Halloween costume party in Hungary. One of the girls at my school throws an annual Halloween party and decided to invite me this year. As you can see from the pictures, I used my few resources and turned myself into a French painter by wearing a baret, paint covered jeans, and painting a trashy black mustache on my face. The overall effect was fairly frightening--I looked like some of the boys at my high school!

I was highly impressed by most of the other girls' costumes and Andi, the hostess, had obvioulsy spent a long time preparing food and activities for the evening. We ate lots of junk food, played Twister and watched a scary movie. I was the oldest of all the girls at the party, but I was the first one to leave the living room where the scary movie was playing to go watch a Hungarian soap opera instead.