RBT & BSME Blog

Rose Bud Thorn

For those that don't know what RBT is: Rose is a highlight from the week, Bud is what you are looking forward to or a God moment from the week, and Thorn is a low from the week. 

• Rose(s): 1. Sunday afternoon Olivia and I joined up with some people from the fellowship group we are in and hiked to Elizabeth Lookout on the western side of Buda. We had a gorgeous hike, nice weather, and an incredible view. 
2. Tuesday morning I got up early to do some studying at a cafe. Upon arrival, I found out this cafe has chai lattes (which seem to be fairly uncommon here in Budapest). It brought a little piece of comfort to the week.   
3. The Budapest Jazz Club has free jazz jam sessions that people can listen to a couple of times a week, so a group of us went Saturday evening and Wednesday evening. The club has a really enjoyable environment, and the group of us had two wonderful evenings. 

• Bud(s): 1. Olivia and I bought our tickets to Rome! So while everyone in the US is enjoying a large Thanksgiving meal and all the Black Friday deals, Olivia and I will be living large (as large as broke college students can live) in Italy.
  2. I got an email from the church that has English mass about the weekends the choir will be singing this semester - not only am I excited to sing with the choir, I'm also very grateful that I am being given the opportunity to do so. 

• Thorn(s): 1. Tuesday I realized how strong of a desire I have to feel a part of a community here in Budapest. I feel the community within the fellowship group on Fridays, but that feeling only comes once a week. I spent a good amount of time reflecting on this on Tuesday and continue to do so. This realization though did allow for an excellent conversation with a friend studying in Chile this semester, so this thorn definitely turned into a rose.
  2. Our practicum visit this week was not impressive. The teacher took the fun out of Pascals triangle by basically telling the students all the patterns instead of letting the students search for them. It was difficult and boring to watch.

View from Elizabeth Lookout

BSME Blog Post - Community

BSME has a blog that they encourage students currently in the program to post on. Since I had been thinking a lot about communities this week, I decided to write a post about community on the BSME blog. You can read it here: 

https://bsmeblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/22/community/

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

First Week of Class

Can't miss that first day of school picture!

I have officially finished the first week of class. I can tell that I am going to love some of my classes and others were not the type of class I was expecting from this program. First, the strange thing about my program is that the first two weeks are a 'shopping period'. This means that we are able to sit in on any classes that we want to in order to decide what classes we want to register for. Registration then happens Sept. 22. Since there are only four BSME courses offered and I have to pick three, I don't have that many to choose from, so this 'shopping period' is not as necessary for us as it is for BSM students, who have many classes to choose from.

Because I don't have a lot to choose from, I've decided I will be taking the following:
1. Practicum: We will visit various schools in Hungary in this course to observe the Hungarian way of teaching and discuss the difference between the American and Hungarian education system.

2. Concept Building through Games and Manipulatives: In this course we discuss how to build math concepts in our classrooms based on games and activities. The thing that I highly enjoy about this class is that we also discuss how we would expect our students to answer and how we, as the teacher, would respond to these answers. It is a very interesting course and I'm starting to note some of the differences between the Hungarian and American way of teaching. For example, in Hungary, there is a larger focus on letting students figure out the solution on there own and guiding them in a way that doesn't let them know if they are right or not. Hence the teacher asks a lot of questions and seems to give less positive reinforcement.

3. Problem Solving in Secondary School Mathematics: This course is deceiving because most of math problems are problems I would never be able to use in a middle school or high school math classroom. I'm a little frustrated with this course because there tends to be a larger focus on the math than on the education. I came here to learn about math education, not just more math. The other course offered through BSME is also very similar to this class. After sitting in on both this one and the other one, I realized the format for each class seems the same. This also provides frustration because I don't understand why they are basically offering two of the same classes.

4. Introduction to Hungarian Culture: This course we will discuss Hungarian culture with a focus on history, politics, literature and art. During the first class, we took time to get to know each other and the cultures we each come from. I have feeling this course is going to be very interesting and highly enjoyable.

5. Then because I can for no additional cost, I am also taking a salsa dance class and possibly doing an internship at a local refugee program. I am attending an informational session on Monday about the internship and I am excited to learn more about their program.

Taking these courses also allows me to have Fridays off, which will be great for the occasional weekend travel plans.

Besides the start of classes, this week has been crazy busy. On Monday, we had our welcome party and academic orientation. We got to meet the professors and the other two BSME students who didn't take the language course. They had these delicious peanut butter brownies, which was surprising, because peanut butter is not a common food in Budapest (and most of Europe I believe).

The school also offered two events for students: a boat cruise Wednesday evening and pizza and games on Thursday. Both were fun and had good food, especially the boat cruise. Through these events I realized how grateful I am for taking the language course, because it gave me the chance to meet many people in BSM and BSME. On the boat cruise, a group of us decided to do an Escape Room Saturday evening and I am so excited. There are a ton here in Budapest and I have been wanting to do one (in general, not necessarily one in Budapest) for some time now. I can't express how anxious I am for tomorrow evening. Additionally, some of us also bought tickets to Les Miserable in October. Tickets were only $5, so although I won't be able to understand what they are saying, the experience is definitely worth it at that price. I also made plans with Molly and Meghan, my two best friends from CSB/SJU, to meet up in Berlin in November. Prior to all of our study abroad trips (Molly is in Ireland & Meghan is in France) we didn't know if there was going to be a weekend that the three of us could meet up somewhere, but when Molly texted us the date of one of the only weekends that she doesn't have a trip with her program, Meghan and I quickly agreed that that was the weekend to go somewhere. We decided on Berlin because it was the cheapest for all of us. I have booked my plane tickets and we are now figuring out where we are going to stay. This weekend trip is going to be so much fun.

So as you can see there are a lot of fun adventures ahead. I will continue to try to update the blog weekly, but can't make any promises as classes pick up.

Szia,
Ashley

Prague (& Week Three)

Well, Monday - Thursday of my third week in Budapest was pretty uneventful. We did a scavenger hunt in our Hungarian class one afternoon where we actually had to go out and use our Hungarian. It wasn't as exciting as scavenger hunts normally are . . . But our class won best photo for our picture of "a cute dog" - it was really Haley using the snapchat dog filter :) Thursday, I graduated from the course and have since hung my certificate in my room. 80 hours of Hungarian language class has officially been completed! Olivia and I went out to celebrate at a local waffle café:

Now on to the more exciting part of the week: Prague!

At the Astronomical Clock

Friday morning six of us took the 7 hour train ride from Budapest to Prague. The train ride actually went by surprisingly fast. Upon arrival in Prague, we checked in at our hotel, found out that they have a complimentary breakfast every morning, and then headed out the door so I could get to mass on time. I recently started a list of all the languages I have attended mass in and I'm looking forward to being able to grow this list. We then ate at a nice restaurant that had very delicious food (Café Louvre). Olivia and I split the home-made potato gnocchi with salmon. 😋 The six of us then enjoyed the evening checking out Old Town, Charles Bridge, and other parts of the city. 

Saturday was a crazy day full of walking and sightseeing. I was so thankful that we had beautiful weather - sunny, but not too hot. Here is what Olivia and I were able to accomplish:

• Enjoyed that complimentary breakfast at the hotel at 7:45 AM
• Went off  to explore Vyšehard, an old castle ruin area and the Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul (pictured below on the left). This was one of my favorite parts of the day - the temperature was perfect, we had time to meander and explore, and there were almost no one else present! We spent about an hour there, but easily could have spent more.

• Walked through the Náplavka Farmer's Market and looked at all the delicious sweets they were selling (but didn't buy any)
• Visited the massive Toy Store my travel buddies had found when I was at mass - they had a slide and were playing classic Disney Channel music. It was perfect. Below is a picture of me with the teddy bear and princess who great people at the front door!

• We shared a quiche with salmon  and spinach before meeting up with our other travel buddies for a free walking tour
• Visited some churches and found out some history about some random buildings and streets. Apparently street names used to indicate to people what types of stores were on each street. For example a street with lots of bakeries would have been called bakery or bread street (or something along those lines).
• Quickly realized that I did not like walking tours and would rather explore on my own
• Saw a church with the walking tour
• Olivia thankfully was okay splitting from the group with me, so we left the group and took many pictures at old town
• Went and saw the Jewish quarters an cemeteries, which was closed since it was Saturday
• Headed up to Prague Castle and saw the gorgeous St. Vitus cathedral. I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of people in the church walking around and taking pictures; it made the space feel less sacred, but the beauty of this church was breath-taking.

Nový Svět

• Walked down a cute little side street, Nový Svět, and found a really cute café. Unfortunately, they didn't have any food and that is what Olivia and I needed most. We headed back to the main area and found a place to eat.

• Walked by the Strahov Monastery, but didn't pay to see the library inside
• Walked up to the Petrin tower (a mini Eiffel tower) and explored in the park around it
• Saw the Infant Jesus of Prague
• Took many pictures by the Lennon Wall

• Walked across the Charles Bridge
• Stopped by this super cute stationary store, Papelote, that I read about on one of my Pinterest pins. All their stationary is made from environmentally friendly material and is a store any stationary-fanatic would love. Olivia and I each picked up a notebook as a souvenir from the weekend.
• Sat by the river for a while and enjoyed the view
• Grabbed a super yummy salad with goat cheese, rucola, cranberries and walnuts. Since Olivia and I had a large late lunch, we weren’t super hungry for a large dinner and decided to share the salad. I'm pretty sure our waiter hated us for just ordering a salad and splitting it, but whatever.
• Had some ice cream and chocolate covered strawberries
• Met back up with our other travel buddies and headed back to the hotel

We all then enjoyed 5-6 hours of sleep before getting up for our train ride back to Budapest (after first enjoying another wonderful breakfast at the hotel of course).

Currently, I'm writing this on the train with 6 hours to go. We will arrive back in Budapest around 2 this afternoon, allowing us plenty time to prep for the first day of classes tomorrow!

Overall, Prague was a beautiful city and a place I highly recommend others to visit. It blows my mind that three weeks ago I was in the states and this weekend I took a 7 hour train ride to a new country with five others I did not know three weeks ago for less than $150! I can tell this semester is going to be one for the books.

I'm excited for classes to start up tomorrow and to finally figure out how I want to arrange my schedule. I plan to take a salsa dance class just for the heck of it, so I'm really excited for that to start the following week. I'll give an update on classes at the end of the week and hopefully an update on my living accommodations as well. :)

Szia,

Ashley

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Second Week

I have finished another complete week here in Budapest and I can definitely say things are getting easier (I think). I am getting more comfortable with the city and really starting to get to know some of the people in my program.

Most of this week I was in my Hungarian language class. I feel like we have learned a lot in a short period of time, but I still feel really uncomfortable actually using it with Hungarians. Here are a few sentences  in Hungarian for those that are curious to know what I've learned:

Jacob öcsém.
Jacob is my (younger) brother.
Yes the verb is missing from the sentence.

A templomba megyek és a postára megyek.
I am going to the church and I am going to the post office.
Literal translation: The church in I am going and the post office on I am going.

A parkban, ő olvas és setal.
In the park, she reads and walks.

Ebédelek a szendvicset paradicsomval.
I eat a sandwich with tomatoes.

This week also included many fun adventures:

On Tuesday, Olivia, Steffi, and I took a Hungarian folk dance class that our language school was offering. I absolutely loved it! I don't have experience with any types of dance really, so I can't compare it to anything, but the posture for the dance is similar to many of the Latin dances, I guess. After class, we were told that the liberty bridge (which is closed for traffic) was having a swing dancing party. Some of us from class went to check it out, but unfortunately,  it was done by the time we arrived. Instead we enjoyed the scenery on the bridge before heading back to our apartments.

On Wednesday, our Hungarian class went to the Central Market Hall and bought supplies for a sandwich in Hungarian. We were then required to make this sandwich for our taste-tester. All the other classes did this on Thursday and the class with the best sandwich will be announced today (Monday). Our class made a ginormous sandwich with ham, salami, paprika salami, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and little bit of this super spicy sauce. I would say we are basically all professional sandwich makers now. :)

On Thursday, our class made a visit to the Immigration office to apply for our residence permits. Olivia, Haley (another BSM student), and I were done by 10:30, so we were able to enjoy the rest of our afternoon. We went to Testco at the mall to get some things we needed that couldn't be found in the grocery stories near us. I also got a bar of delicious dark chocolate bar for $1.30. So good and so worth it. We ate lunch at the mall and then headed back to our apartments to drop our stuff off. I then headed over to Olivia's place to study some of my Hungarian. At 4:15, we met up with others at the language school to go on a walking tour of Gellert Hill. Olivia and I absolutely loved being on the Buda side in the Gellert Hill area because of all the nature. We miss being surrounded by the open fresh air and all the grass and trees. Olivia and I plan to go back to the Buda side sometime to check out some cafes and maybe even do some studying in the grass.

 

While on this walking tour, we ran into a bride and groom taking wedding pictures. All the girls were freaking out over how gorgeous her wedding dress was. It was lace on the top with an open back and a fluffy tull-like bottom. We all couldn't help but stare at this couple taking the cutest pictures. Meanwhile, some guys in the AIT program (a study abroad computer science program) where in awe over a drone that someone was flying around the park, so you can see where everyone's priorities were on this walking tour.

Friday evening was also a wonderful afternoon. After a long day of class, Olivia and I checked out this International Christian Fellowship Group. This is a group of international adults who meet up weekly to talk about God. It official starts in two weeks once all the international students get back to Budapest, but Olivia and I still enjoyed speaking with some of the locals that attend the group. We sang a couple of songs, read a couple of bible passages, and prayed together. It was a great way to end the week. I had been told prior to studying abroad that I should make sure to talk to some of the locals. I was really hesitant on how I was going to do this, but Olivia and I realized this was the prefect way to do so. One of the girls name Eszter is in her last year of school, and even though she is from Hungary, she did study in Poland for a semester (or two?). Eszter was super nice and traveled back to the main train station with us just to make sure we got home safely. Eszter brought both Olivia and I a sense of ease and we are looking forward to going back again in two weeks.

Saturday, Haley and I explored the park by  Heroes' Square and enjoyed a lovely pizza and ice cream. I had a cone drizzled in dark chocolate with a small scoop of white chocolate strawberry ice cream and a small scoop of cookies ice cream. So good! A group of us also finalized plans for our trip to Prague next weekend! We plan to travel by train and stay two nights in an Airbnb. It will be a great weekend before classes start. Finally, I went to an English mass Saturday evening. The choir sang this week and after mass was over the lady in front of me said if I was going to be here a while that I should join the choir. So I gave one of the women in the choir my email and plan to join them the next time they sing at mass.

Finally, today a group of us went to Szentendre, a suburb of Budapest. We walked around an open-air museum, so there were little villages that we walked through and looked at all the different types of jobs/ways of life in each little place. We ate some very good gingerbread cookies and had lunch at the "inn" there. Our lunch included this very good cold fruit soup. It sort-of reminded me of a strawberry rhubarb pie filling. We then went into the actual town and had three hours to explore. A group of us went up to the beautiful catholic church on the top of hill and then walked along the river. We got home via a boat cruise on the Danube.

The amphitheater in one of the villages.

Our cold fruit soup!

It was a very fun week, but also a very busy week. I'm off to language class again this morning. We have four days left and then I'll be off to Prague for the weekend!

Szia,

Ashley

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

Getting Settled

I hung up some pictures today in my room to make it feel a little more like home.

Yesterday Jane, one of my roommates, and I did some cleaning of the apartment. While cleaning, we found a really cool record player, but it doesn't work. I also finally had some time to unpack since my parents left early in the morning. Saying goodbye was tough, but I know we will FaceTime plenty.

Today Jane and I adventured out to the Central Market. It is basically a building by the river with a big farmer's market. I bought some sort-of apple strudel pastry on our way out; it was very tasty. We then took a small detour by the river on our way home.

Tonight, some of the individuals in my program might grab dinner together. Then tomorrow my language course begins. I'm really looking forward to this course, because it would be nice to know some Hungarian. Currently I know a few words and am able to get by without knowing anything, but it would be nice to know a few more.

I plan to post pictures from the first weekend in Budapest within the next couple of days as well as an update on the language course and my apartment.

Szia,
Ashley