hungarian field trips; budding friendships

I've now gone to a whole week of Hungarian school. Okay, not really, I've been to three english classes, a math class and a homeroom, as well as two all day outings. It feels like a lot. I don't know what you've been told but waking up at 7:45 is hard. (I honestly don't know how I'll ever wake up an hour earlier back home, but we'll deal with that later I suppose.)

Yesterday I got to see kids my age hear about 9/11 for maybe the first time, or maybe they'd heard of it but didn't know much. When we were first at the school before leaving to go into the city their teacher asked them if anyone knew anything special about the date (this was translated to me) and obviously I knew and I'm not a hundred percent sure how the discussion went from there but their teacher told them a lot about it and they asked some questions. It was really interesting to get bits and pieces translated and to see how non americans view it. One question that was asked that I had also kind of been wondering from their perspective was: What makes this tragic event so different/special? Why were they talking about it? To the best of my understanding the teacher answered that it was because the United States is (one of/ the?) most powerful countries in the world and nothing like this had really happened there before. I was impressed they were even talking about and think they may have done a better job of honoring the day then some of my previous teachers.

On to the fun stuff. Well, first on to a museum, then on to the fun stuff. First the whole class got onto a bus (making it rather crowded) into the city. Getting off at Ferenciek ter we took a short walk to this seemingly non-descript museum. It was a poetry museum dedicated to the hungarian poet petofi sandor. There was a woman who talked for a long time all about him in Hungarian and I'm not going to pretend I was interested in that. My foot fell asleep during the talk but I managed to stay awake. After her long speel we walked into the next room(s) where there were some interactive activities. Then after those finally we were on to something exciting.

A scavenger hunt! The class was spilt into teams and everyone given around 7 things in the area to find and take their picture with. My team was Borka, Bori, Dori, Dodo, Eszter, and of course myself. First we had to find this library and take our picture with it and the fountain in front of it. (Warning: the rest of this paragraph is all about teenage girls taking pictures and that's about it.) We took a couple nice pictures and then did some sillier poses by the fountain. Then we were off to find Raday Utca (which I knew where was, also for all you non Hungarians Utca means street). We posed in front of the street sign and asked this guy to take our picture - which he did but he didn't get the sign in the picture so we had to ask another person. Next was the great market where we had to ask multiple people to take our picture because they were all turning out blurry, in the end we got some cute ones. And on to find the Budapest Music Center we were. (Side note: finding things in Budapest is so much easier when you have Hungarians who can ask other Hungarians where things are.) The last thing we found was this huge building called the whale the looks pretty cool from the outside but we didn't go in. Then we tried to look for something called old parliament or something like that but no one knew what it was or where so we gave up. Since we had at least looked for all the things on the list we started walking to a school the final meeting place. At first we were confused about why we were meeting at the school but then we were told it was designed by the same person who designed Radnoti (the school I'm with) and that made more sense.  From there we were dismissed.

Now a bit more on developing friendships and such. Throughout these past days (a whole school week!) I've been getting to know the class better, names and everything else in my memory has improved. I have a pass to get in the building. I can go by myself and know what stops on the metro and bus to get off. And as generally as possible I know what I'm doing. The names I know: Borka, Bori, Dori, Dodo, Chi Minh (boy was I wrong with that spelling before), Eszter, Vera, Maty (I don't know spelling but I know how to say it), Szofi, Anita, both Dannys, Peter, and maybe some others but not off the top of my head. I think it's safe to say I've gotten to know Borka and Bori the best. Borka is the best translator I could ask for and as a super bonus we have quite a bit in common. We both like youtube (especially Miranda Sings), we like American Horror Story, One Direction, horror movies in general, being silly and laughing a lot. A lot of what I just said describes Bori a lot as well except she likes horror less but watches it anyway with Borka, which just shows how sweet she is. Everyone else has been lovely also I just don't know well enough to describe thoughtfully.

Today we played board games and went to some caves. I'm not sure exactly why there were two days in a row of field trips but I'm also not complaining. This morning I woke up confused and worried (this is what waking up before 8 am does to me), I wasn't sure what time it was or when I had to leave and had a little panic but ended up making it to school in plenty of time. Once I got to school a bunch of the girls were preparing Bori's birthday present (It was her birthday today - HAPPY BIRTHDAY BORI!). They had all gotten her a little something or written a card and someone had printed out pictures from yesterday that looked super cute and we all chose together which one to put in the frame. Then we all played games for a while before we left for the caves. I played this game with picture cards and some little pieces of paper (which I'm not going to explain all the rules because its pointless but was really fun) and I ended up winning -which was exciting. Then we started to play scrabble (they agreed to try to play in English because they're all the nicest people ever) but then it got hard and confusing with the Hungarian alphabet and spelling in English so we quit. It was pretty much time to go by then so we walked out to the bus stop.

After being packed into a couple of buses like sardines we were finally at the caves. Hanging around outside chatting a bit and then finally we were ready to go in. It was cold in the caves and listening to someone talk in Hungarian about rocks was okay I guess but looking around at the actual rocks themselves were pretty cool. A ways later there was a memorial and a wreath to commemorate someone (a caver perhaps?) who'd died in the cave - kinda freaky/sad, kinda cool. We kept moving on and again someone was trying to convince Borka to teach me Hungarian swears. After that they told me a story where they had met some people who only wanted to know the Hungarian word for penis and then would shout it all the time. Which of course started the penis game (which if you don't know what is how did you get through middle school first of all but second of all is basically where you start saying it really quiet and then you have to be louder than the person before you and eventually its really loud) and so it ended up a bunch of Hungarian highschoolers yelling penis. I just laughed. Pretty quickly after that we were out of the caves back into the warm(er) air. We sat around again and I learned a hungarian (not sure if its really a hungarian game but I'd never played it before so I'm assuming it is) game with two teams and a coin. Basically the team with the coin passes it around so the other team isn't sure who had is and then puts their hands face down on the table and the other team has to figure out which hand it's in. Very fun, or at least passes the time, but kinda hard to do well. That wrapped up our time together because right after we got back on the bus into the city where I left to go home and a few went back to the school.

A bit of online courses and then the Bovens were in our apartment! The Bovens (Greg and Ruth) if you don't know used to go to our church (Ruth was one of our pastors) but now are at La Grave but currently in Budapest with us! Unfortunately all the school I've been going to has made me slightly behind in my classes (how ironic) and I couldn't go to dinner with them, but I was brought home starbucks and pizza by my favorite (only) parents. What an end to a great week.