First Week

This week has involved a lot of changes and I am still adjusting to all of them, including life in a city, the language, Hungarian culture, new schedule, new friends, etc. As things progress and I get more comfortable, things are becoming easier. I have now had three days of my language course. I knew coming into this course that Hungarian was a difficult language to learn, but holy cow I underestimated how difficult it was going to be to pronounce some of these words. Here is a bit of Hungarian for ya:

Ashley vagyok. Húsz éves vagyok. Amerikai vagyok és Minnesotában élek. Angolul beszélek és most magyarul tanulok. 

My name is Ashley. I am 20 years old. I am American and live in Minnesota. I speak English and now I'm learning Hungarian.

Some days in the language course can be really long, because we are in class form 9 AM - 3:30 PM, but I am really getting exposed to the language. This week included classes that were slightly different than normal, because we had some other adventures: On the first day of class in the afternoon, some Budapest students who speak English gave us a small tour of the area. It was great to speak to a Budapest student to ask about some of the ins and outs of living in Budapest. Thursday we then visited the BSM/BSME school in the afternoon and had a mini orientation about some of the culture in Hungary. One thing that we are now all trying to do is to start with our thumb when counting numbers on our finger, instead of our pointer finger. We also learned that when bringing flowers to others here, there should be an odd number, because even number is bought for funerals.

Luckily, one of the things that doesn't need a whole lot of adjustment is practicing my faith: Wednesday when we got placed in various language courses, I got placed in the same room as Olivia, one of the girls that I had met Tuesday evening when a bunch of BSM/BSME people grabbed dinner. We started talking and I found out that Olivia's faith was also very important in her life. It is comforting to know that I have some one in my program that I can talk to about faith related things. We ended up making dinner together Wednesday evening: a salad with tomato, cheese, eggplant, and chicken. It was delicious (see image to the right)!

Also, when Olivia and I went to grab food for our Wednesday dinner, we stopped to take a picture of the gorgeous church down the block from me. Turns out this church is Catholic and offers daily mass - I can't explain how excited this made me! I tried going to mass Thursday morning, but I found out mass was only offered MWF at 7:30 AM and 6:00 PM on TR. I did make it to mass Friday morning before my language course though! I didn't understand a word, but the fact that I knew what was happening at each point is one of the best things about attending a Roman Catholic mass elsewhere in the world. I was also able to attend mass in English Saturday evening, which provided a piece of comfort. Olivia and I also found this International Christian Fellowship group that meets Friday evenings (and speaks English) in Budapest. We plan to check it out next Friday and see what it is all about!

This weekend has also been very busy and full of things to do! The language school hosts optional special events throughout the language course to help us get adjusted to the city and meet others in our program. Friday evening was the first one and included a Hungarian meal (goulash) and a cruise along on the Danube river. It was a very enjoyable evening. Then yesterday was a Hungarian National Holiday: St. Stephen's Day. Jane (my roommate), Olivia, some others in my program, and I got up early to see the flag raising ceremony at 8:30 AM at the Parliament building. We then waited in line for two hours to see inside the Parliament building for free. It was worth the wait, because it was absolutely gorgeous in there. We then found lunch and made our way over to the festival happening on the Buda side. The night then finished with fireworks over the river. There were four spots that the city was shooting fireworks from and it was a stunning show.

Goulash Soup!

Today I am off to see more of the festival and have a relaxing day before continuing the long week ahead of learning more Hungarian.

Szia,

Ashley