Work and play

Hey everyone! So I know it's been awhile since I've posted, but that's because my life has been pretty uneventful in the past two wees (excluding this weekend).  I had two final papers due this past Tuesday and Wednesday so I spent most of my time writing those.  At first I was planning on working in the library across from one of my schools but that didn't work out.  It's a really nice place but they don't let you take your backpack in with you, which is kind of annoying if you have notebooks, a laptop, cord, converter, etc.  So I started going to the coffee shop just down the street, which turned out to be the perfect paper writing place!! It's really close, there's no smoking (so my computer won't wreak of smoke like last time I worked at a cafe), the music is not distracting, the coffee is good, and it's really nice to be a regular somewhere, at least for a short time.  It's such a cute place.

So that's what I was doing all last week, except for the evenings when I would give myself a break.  One night I went of a walk across two of the bridges with Leesha, Kyle, and Dan.  It was so nice to spend some time walking around parts of Budapest I normally am not around.  By the way, if you want to become a little more familiar with who I'm here with, go to this blog site.  Leighanne, who's a photographer, did a blog post on all of us, it's pretty sweet.  http://papercranessilverrings.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/all-of-them/ 

So after spending so much time on homework, I decided this weekend would be completely dedicated to doing things on my to do list before I leave.  I started with going to see the first showing of Harry Potter in English Thursday morning.  A bunch of us dresses as characters, and in since I currently have short blonde hair, I decided to be Malfoy. I borrowed black dress clothes from Robert and his white tie and Leighanne's black vest, it was awesome! Surprisingly, there weren't too many people there.  The theatre was hardly half full.  But it was still really awesome.  After the show we rushed back home to start getting ready for American Thanksgiving dinner!!  We all made something and invited a few friends, plus some people visiting from the US, and crowded into our "living room".  There was a lot of food! It was really nice to have a large gathering or people we knew and just hang out.

 

Can you guess who we all are?!

Thanksgiving!!

The next day I was planning on going to see Obuda with some friends,which is the older part of Budapest with ruins, but I slept in and by the time we were ready to head out we decided it would be better to go the next day so we would have more time. So we went to the Christmas Festival instead.  The Christmas Festival is this huge event that happens all over the city at different squares.  People set up a whole bunch of booths and sell all kinds of things.  I think it's all made in Hungary and most of it is hand crafts.  And there's lots of food there too! They have these pastries here called chimney bread, where they wrap/spiral dough around a wooden spool and then cook it over a fire and cover it with cinnamon or chocolate or whatever. They are soo good!! They also have small stages where people will perform folk dancing or songs.  We went to the main square and I saw a bunch of older women dressed in traditional Hungarian clothes performing this duet.  I couldn't tell what they were saying but there was definitely some bantering, going back and forth in groups and insulting the other.  It was amusing even without being fully understandable.

That night I just hung out in my room and we made snowflakes and broke out the Christmas music and then it started snowing!!!!  It was prefect!!  They were huge flakes that stayed on the ground really well!! We still have a little bit on the ground and it's supposed to snow again on Wednesday.

On Saturday I woke up a little earlier and headed out to Obuda with Robert, Tanya, Brandon, Abby, Kyle, and Dan.  We had a guide book that gave us a route to walk so we followed that.  We started with the Roman amphitheatre and it was so amazing!!  The entire base was still there and one raised section with seats, including two cells that were used to hold prisoners or animals.  It was mind blowing to be standing on something that existed around the same time of Christ.  I think it might be one of my favorite places in Budapest. We continued on the tour and saw a few more Roman ruins and other older buildings while trying to stay warm.  At the end we stumbled upon another section of the Christmas Festival.  It was much smaller but there were people doing folk dancing on a stage and a bunch of booths and an ice rink!!

That night a few of us were invited to a Euchre night by a family we met a the church some of us attend.  Their names are Chris and Debby Gibson.  They are missionaries from the US and have been in Budapest for about 7 years.  One of their daughters goes to Calvin.  They had invited us to dinner a few weeks back and then invited us to Euchre as well.  It was so much fun! They had invited a few of their friends so we had a bit of a tournament.  I normally don't like playing Euchre because people get really competitive and I'm not very good, but this was much more chill.  I partnered with a girl named Sarah, who's my age and helping her mom teach grade 3 at an international school.  She had never really played before so we just took it slow and had a good time.  We first played Arielle and Justin (a post-Calvin student now teaching in Budapest) and we spent the first hour just talking and eating with our card laying untouched in front of us.  It was so nice to just relax and have fun and meet new people.  Debby had a bunch of oranges with cloves stuck in them all over the house and we each designed our own orange and took them home; they smell soo good! Our room had been having a bit of an odor issues lately but it smells so much better now!

Tonight I finally made it to the Opera House.  I went with all my roommates to see a ballet, it was really cute! The story was about a young girl who was in love with this hansom man but her mother was trying to force her to marry the son of the mayor, who was really awkward. Of course in the end the girl marries her lover and everyone is happy.  The choreography was really neat.  The characters that were supposed to be awkward did a really good job of combining it with their ballet.  And they used streamers a lot, which was very creative.  We didn't have the best seats, we were on the highest balcony on the far left side but if we stood up we could see most of the stage.  We only paid $2.50 for it so that's pretty legit.  After that I went to a chocolate cafe with three of my roommates.  It was really cozy, kind of geared toward couples but there was another group there so it wasn't too awkward.  On the way home we started singing carols, yay Christmas!! 

So this was a pretty awesome weekend!!  Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in a bit and then go on a date with Leesha! I'm pretty excited!