My Apartment & Weekly Recap

Nothing super exciting happened this week, so here are some highlights:

• I did my first escape room and escaped with 25 minutes to spare! I think this one was bit to easy for 5 math majors (and the few hints given to us probably weren't needed), but we all still really enjoyed it!
• Sunday I enjoyed a lovely morning on the hills on the Buda side. I also stopped at a cafe for lunch and had a yummy, but strange peanut butter egg pepper sandwich (see picture to left).
• I attended my first salsa class through my program this week! Our program offers a few PE classes as part of our tuition, so I thought since I have time, I would take the salsa class. Boy was that a right choice. Even though it was just the basic steps, I highly enjoyed it and am looking forward for the next class :)
• I am going to be volunteering at a refugee program here in Budapest. This program is new-ish, so they are really allowing us BSM/BSME students to step in and do whatever sort-of programing we want to do. Maddie, a girl in my program, and I plan to start a math tutoring session on Mondays to help students with homework and to teach some fun math lessons. For those that didn't hear about it on the news, there was a large refugee crisis here last March where Hungary ended up closing their borders to refugees traveling through to other countries. I am learning a little bit about the crisis and the referendum that they are voting on in October in my Hungarian + culture class, an optional culture course offered by BSM/BSME. It is very interesting and very sad. Maybe I'll talk more about this later. Otherwise, those interested in knowing more should either a) google it or b) message me.
• I started visiting Hungarian schools on Wednesday. One thing that I learned that was surprise was that group work isn't typical in Hungarian classrooms. Group work is huge in the states, so I'm curious to know more on why they don't do as much of it here.
• This weekend is the chocolate/sweets festival, so Olivia and I plan to hit that up at some point. :)

Living Accommodations:

• Below are some pictures from  my apartment. These apartments were set up by the program and previous BSM/BSME students have lived here, so all the necessities were included.  I live with two other BSM students, Jane and Shuchi. Jane is from Australia, so we have been enjoying comparing things the different foods that we both grew up with, but the other has never heard of (like what is fairy bread?!) and other different cultural aspects of our lives. Shuchi is from India, but goes to Brown University, so she also brings in another perspective to our cultural conversations. Late last week, Jane, Shuchi, and I found ourselves in the kitchen discussing the differences between the culture on our college campuses. It was a very interesting conversation. It has been a nice experience living with these two so far. We also live in a really convenient location - we are a 10 minute walk to school at max and have public transit stops on both sides of us. 

My Kitchen

• Our kitchen is small, but since the three of us don't cook at the same time, it works. We wish we had a bigger fridge though, or at least a fridge with a larger freezer. We are just glad we have a small freezer to store some small items in, although there is sadly no room for ice cream. Also lighting the gas oven is quite scary and since we have no idea what the temperature is, we don't really use it.

My Bathroom

• Notice that there is no shower curtain in our bathroom. Our landlord said he was going to get us one, but he has yet to deliver it, so here the three of us are waiting and meanwhile are using towels to wipe up all the water on the floor after our showers. Also, the toilet isn't pictured because it is in a separate little room.

My Bedroom

• This is my bedroom. It is quite large, but very dark. Notice that my bed is on the floor. My two roommates have their beds slightly off the ground, but I don't for some unknown reason. My mattress is also not really a mattress but couch cushions or something, so it's not very comfortable. Also notice the drying rack, unfortunately  dryers are not really a thing in Hungary, but luckily these drying racks were provided for us!

That is all I got for you this week! I've been trying to find more things to do, because I have a lot more time on my hands then I am use to. It was also hard this week to see all the club emails about involvement (our annual club fair at CSB/SJU for students to learn about all the different clubs/organizations on campus) and not be able to be there. However, one good thing that came out of all the email was I sent a screenshot of one with a comment to my ex-co-RA, Hannah Kosel, and we ended up having a spontaneous short skype session. It was very nice - I had missed hearing all her beautiful insight on things. :)

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Szia,

Ashley Wilson