Day 3/4: Sunday is a Day of Rest and Monday is the Start of Things

After an exhausting Saturday, I made the executive decision of staying at the apartment on Sunday. I spent the day cleaning, finally unpacking all of my suitcases, thinking about how to rearrange furniture, and topped off the day by cooking myself an incredibly extravagant meal of white rice and re-stir-fried vegetables. :P Here is a picture:

I'm not much of a cook at all (i.e. if I successfully boil water, I might as well do some sort of victory dance in celebration), so I was pretty excited that, well, I could make something good enough to fill my stomach. The other exciting thing that happened Sunday night is that my flatmate, Eva, arrived! She's super cool. Her flight got in pretty late, and we chatted a bit when she arrived, so it was past 3 by the time either of us went to bed. And then this morning, we got up at 7 to head to our first day of the intensive Hungarian language program.

Remember the picture I put up yesterday? Well it turns out that that wasn't actually the language school. On our way there, I thought this was the language school:

But that turned out to be a synagogue. And then Eva found the place! Here's a photo:

Nothing glamorous or extravagant, but I think the course was really good. The lesson was pretty well-structured, and it was very engaging. We had class all morning and then at 12:30, they had some Hungarian students give us a tour of the surrounding area.

The three people in the foreground are our tour guides, and in the back
there are BSM students listening closely.

It was hard to hear what they were saying because there were so many of us, and voices don't travel well over car engines and screeching tires, but it was still cool to see all the sights. Among the many things we saw, there was a beautiful white building with a stack of steps leading up to huge pillars and a beautifully carved roof.

I don't recall what the history behind this building was, but I think there are exhibits inside it now. My memory feels a bit overwhelmed right now... between trying to meet people, remember their names, learn a new language, and take in all things Hungarian, it's not surprising that my brain feels like a jumble of free-floating information.

For lunch, we went to this huge market that's inside this building here:

It's two stories of vendors packed in like sardines, and you can get just about anything there. There's a whole section of food you can buy for lunch, a whole section of random merchandise (they sell anything from purses to jewelry to clothing), and the entire bottom floor is like a farmer's market. I had beef stew goulash over pasta for lunch and went downstairs to buy three nectarines (három nektarin in Hungarian, I think).

Part of the BSM crew.

Later, we walked along this street that had been blocked off for pedestrians. It was a bit of a touristy place, I think, but it was nice:

We headed back to the language school for another couple of hours of class, and hung around and chatted with each other before splitting off to return to our apartments. On our way back, Eva and I stopped at this bakery and bought some goodies for later. I'm really excited.

I'm making dinner again tonight. I'm going to make rice (can you see a pattern here?) and mix it with the leftover fried rice from Chinatown Restaurant a couple days ago. I hope it turns out okay. And even if it doesn't, well, at least we'll have dessert to look forward to.

Tonight, I think we're going to try to sort through all the food items in the kitchen and toss out the things that were left here by previous BSM students (some of the stuff expired ages ago...). And then it'll be time to study Hungarian. People told me that Hungarian was a really hard language, but I don't think I fully understood what "hard" meant. Until now, that is. It's the only the first day of this 2.5-week intensive "survival Hungarian" course, and I'm already having trouble remembering everything we learned today. But I think I'll leave this post here. It's been a good day, and meeting people and beginning to learn Hungarian has definitely alleviated some of my feelings of loneliness. And here's a mini-lesson for you: as a casual, informal greeting and farewell (i.e. "Hi" and "Bye"), in Hungarian, you say: Szia!