Language School

Tuesday I rested in the morning, then walked around a bit and finally met up with Jon, Joseph and Min-Soon on Margaret Island. I think I'll have to visit again when it gets warmer and the trees stop looking so bare. It was a very overcast day, which didn't help much. The sun did make an appearance when we were at the north point of the island. The sunlight coming through the clouds and reflecting across the Danube was beautiful while it lasted at least. That evening I went to Bryan's host family's home to watch the inauguration. I was the only person who made it, but talking to Bryan was nice. I'm going to enjoy this semester surrounded by fellow mathematicians.

Wednesday the language school started. There are roughly thirty students enrolled in the language program, all of us are BSM students. We're split into three groups, my group has 12 people in it. We had one teacher for the first two days, but I think we have three teachers total, who rotate around. Today we had two different ones. All three seem very good teachers.

Wednesday class began at 9:00 and went until 12:30 with a half hour break in the middle. Then a couple of Hungarian students arrived and took us around the city. We first went to the huge indoor market where we ate lunch. I split a fried Hungarian flat bread known as Lángos with sour cream and cheese on it with Nora. Bryan got blood sausage, and both Nora and I tried a little bit of it. It was alright, but I prefer regular sausage. After we'd finished eating, our guides took us outside the Opera House, and we voted to walk back to school, rather than take a tram, despite the fact that by this point it was raining. Not too hard, but by the end of the walk most of us were quite damp.

I love the architecture in Budapest. Some of the buildings have beautiful carvings on them. And they'll be right next to buildings that are completely different architecturally. The contrast just makes it more interesting. We got back to the school around three in the afternoon, and our guide offered to take those interested pub-hopping sometime when the weather was better. Some members of the group seemed inordinately excited at this proposition. Others of us were somewhat interested, but a little bit dubious. We went back to class, and finished the day around 4:30.

After class a group of us went to Nora and Amy's apartment for dinner. We played cards, then ate. It was nice to see the inside of another apartment. It was fairly large (Hungarians really like really high ceilings, incidentally. Except on metros). At least both bedrooms were quite large, but there wasn't really anything resembling a living room. Just a tiled kitchen/dining area. Dinner consisted of ravioli, bread and omelettes which, due to the lack of non-stick coating and despite Mat's best efforts, turned out to be rather more like scrambled eggs with lots of stuff mixed in. After dinner Bryan, Bethany, Nora and I walked around the city together, particularly along the Danube. It was raining, but we had umbrellas by this time. Budapest is a very beautiful city. It's particularly neat to stand on the Elizabeth bridge and look out and see the lights of the chain bridge off in the misty, rainy distance. The citadel is also lit up rather spectacularly, as is the Mathias church and fishermen's basilica.

I don't think I'll be lacking for exercise this semester.

Thursday we had class from 9:00 until 1:15, again with one half hour break partway in between. Then Anna appeared to walk us to the international college, where we ate lunch in the cafeteria in the basement of the school. Convenient as the cafeteria is, I rather doubt I'll be eating there frequently. We were issued our magnetic cards to get into the school itself and got some more important phone numbers, signed the fire contract, and other administrative details. The head of the Babilon Language School came to give us a cultural discourse, which was entertaining. He commented that it was a fairly Hungarian phenomenon to have a Scottish man lecturing American students about Hungarian customs. After that, the Hungarian head of the BSM program gave us a basic overview of the program.

By then it was about five o'clock. It had been a rather busy past few days, and I opted to go back to the apartment and recuperate, work on homework, and attempt to catch up on this, rather than do anything more interesting.

I am very, very, glad that I am taking the language program. Hungarian is a fascinating language. In some ways it's frustrating because the language teachers are trying to teach us what we'll be needing, while at the same time trying to cover grammar fundamentals, so we're sort of getting a slightly disorganized mix of grammar, vocabulary and sentences which would be good to memorize until we can get enough grammar and vocabulary to understand them completely. The full days of learning Hungarian are intense, but it's working. Already we're able to start to pick out some words from advertisements, or understand polite greeting questions between two people. Actually, it's somewhat amusing how excited we get when we pick out a word we understand. Metro stations are good places to practice trying to dissect vocabulary and grammar.

The suffix system of Hungarian is so completely different from both French and English, and it's interesting just trying to pull words apart. While it's somewhat annoying to have to spend time doing homework as opposed to exploring, translating dialogues is rather fun, if quite a bit humbling since I have to use the dictionary to look up just about every other word or more.