students are here: new best friends

It's been a crazy and joyous 24 hours. All of the students have arrived safely and are now at the dorm for the evening.

First things first, late last night we went to the airport to pick up two students, Aby and Lauren, flying separately for miscellaneous reasons. We got there around 7:15 and had to wait for an extra hour because of visa issues (yay). Then we went with Aby for a pizza dinner before my dad went back to the airport for Lauren who flew in around midnight.

This morning was an early one (out of the house by 8 am!) when we were heading back the the airport. We got there and they arrived pretty quickly all together which was handy. Loaded quickly into airport vans and off to the dorms we were. Pretty true to the promise we were made a week ago the dorm rooms were for the most part done with construction (clean is a bit iffy but we'll take what we can get). A quick briefing of information by my dad and the three of us Boumans were going to change money for the students.

 About seven hours after arriving at their new homes the students were thrown an informal welcome party by a couple Hungarian students and one professor. A special surprise was being shown and taught traditional Hungarian dances. Three students had on costumes to match their dancing. After being shown one full dance and a bit of another it was our turn to join the fun. They taught us a dance called The Path of the Devil. After the party wound down we started to prepare for the traditional hike up Gellert Hill.

The hike up the hill was not surprisingly harder than anticipated but the view was very much worth it as the sun was setting casting a gorgeous light on the city. Hanging out at the top for quite a while - partly catching our breath and partly in awe of the view. After a fair few photos we were on our way back down and towards pizza.

A delicious meal and delightful conversation later everyone was ready to head back and finally get some sleep. Now it is safe to say that any worry I'd been having about not liking the students as much as the 2011 group (a hard group to follow up) or the students not liking me (us) were pointless because they are all lovely. Many laughs throughout the day indicate a great semester ahead of us.