!Yo Diggity!

I just had a typical run-in with a neighbor. People keep asking me, “So how do you like your place? How are your neighbors?” Well, I really like my place. It is very home-y. I am getting my sea shipment on Friday so I imagine that it’ll feel even more like home in the very near future. Do I know my neighbors? Yes…. Sorta. For example, tonight, I was walking up to the building behind someone on the street. To my surprise, he was going into my building. While he was bobbling for his keys, I whipped out mine – “I got it!” I open the door… he is babbling something in Hungarian and I’m imagining what he is saying. Nope…. No idea. So we are walking up the stairs together and I’m thinking…. Gosh… I hope he doesn’t think I am a stuck up snob because I just completely did not respond to what he was saying. So I turned to him and said, “Do you speak ANY English?” His uncomfortable giggle an grin was a big ‘No” in my mind. Then he said something… I thought I heard, “Magyar’ (which is Hungarian for you that don’t know). I imagine he was asking if I speak Hungarian. But we both laughed and it seemed to be a jovial interaction. It was a pleasant interaction. So yes, I do know my neighbors. hahaha

You know that feeling when you are standing still in one spot with absolutely no inclination to take a step in any direction as you have absolutely no idea where you are… and you have absolutely no idea where to go? I would typically say that I am pretty good at directions and I generally know which GENERAL direction is correct, but this past Sunday I actually experienced that feeling in which I absolutely did not know where on this earth I was. This quite uncomfortable feeling was probably intensified by the fact that there was an old, wrinkled, Hungarian man who was trying very hard to help me and knew absolutely no English except, “beautiful.” Yeah…. Scary.

So I’ve had a pen pal for quite some time now… Valerie, a woman who is the wife of a missionary (Campus Crusade for Christ) here in Budapest. They are from Houston (well – Texas but they lived in Houston for awhile) and a friend of mine gave me their name when he found out I was coming here. So Valerie and I have been writing since about March. She really has been such a breath of fresh air and a HUGE resource for all things Budapest. She is awesome. Did I mention that she’s the mother of 4 and just one cool chick? Well, she is. It is so incredibly nice to know that there are some perfectly sane, completely cool people from the US living not so far from me. Seriously, Valerie has been such a huge help in getting adjusted. I am really looking forward to getting to know her and her family better.

Back to my lost state… I was on my way over to the Buda side of the city, a place I had not yet ventured to, to find the church that Valerie and her family go to. I was following the directions on the map from the website and started on my journey just one-half hour before church would start. Plenty of time, right? Well, the directions were fine… I guess maybe I just was not my own observant self, ‘cause I missed a few signs and found myself in an area of town I was completely unfamiliar with and in which not a soul spoke English. Luckily, Valerie was able to talk me backwards and lead me to the correct bus stop. Shew!! I made it… just an hour and a half later, but I made it!! I was able to catch about the last 7 minutes of the service… but just enough to see that the service is completely in English, no translation and I also met a TON (well… like 4) girls who are about my age and seem very cool. I think this place actually looks the best I’ve seen. Plus Valerie says that the pastor is a really good bible teacher – so I am excited about that. I think this might be a rarity in the churches in Budapest. The only bad thing was that when the pastor met me, first thing he says is: “I need to introduce you to someone.” So…. Well… I believe he was trying to set me up with some single guy in the congregation. He knows absolutely nothing about me but tries to set me up. I wonder if this might be the ONLY single guy in the congregation!?!? Hahaha Don’t know. So anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing the matchmaker pastor in action.

So after the service, Valerie, the 4 beans and I headed back to the Seely household. Valerie cooked a hot, homemade meal and the kids showed me each of their rooms. Tom, Valerie’s husband, was laid out with a bad back, but we got to talk a bit about Tom’s life at XOM – yes, he too worked for mother XOM once upon a time – who hasn’t?!?! So it was a really lovely afternoon. To top it all off, Valerie took me to the grocery store and has now hugely impacted my life: I have salsa!!! Salsa and brownies. Things I may not have found elsewhere! She took me through the store and gave me lots of tips and tricks on what to buy and not to buy… what might be fish heads and what might be olives. You really just never can be sure here!! Haha
Was a really lovely Sunday. I am really excited about this church and actually getting some serious spiritual growth here. God is providing for me guys…. It is really just incredible. I’m so thankful to be here and God just keeps showing me that home IS where the heart is…. well… home is where HE is… and isn’t that comforting?! He is EVERYWHERE!!

Just kidding!! Hahahahahha… This is Alberto. Alberto is another expat here from Portugal. Really cool guy. There was a wine festival over at the castle this weekend so I met up with a few of my co-workers on Saturday evening. Was really a lovely evening! Hungary has lots and lots of really good wine. I say that as if I have any idea what good wine is. But everyone else keeps saying that so I am going to go ahead and say it as well.

The weather was just perfect, cool, dry… very nice. The scene was just brilliant: the castle was all lit up with these little wooden booths everywhere. They were selling grilled cheese kabob’s and these wonderful pastries cooked over an open fire. The festival ended as they fired off some fireworks over the river. I know it sounds amazing… it was!! I still really can’t get over how beautiful it is here and that I actually live here. Awesome.

The ‘gang’ in the castle courtyard:

Simone, Albert’s wife, Brandi, Mike, Alberto & me.

Me in on of the courtyards.

Me and Simone.

They also had a stage on which they were doing some traditional Hungarian dancing all dressed up in the local get-up:

Okay, so I missed the photo op… but this is the stage they WERE on. Notice the mean-lookin’ Hungaian fellow. My Hungarian is certainly improving as I did understand him when he said, “sorry!” haha.

Making friends is getting easier. I feel pretty comfortable talking with anyone who speaks English. It’s most definitely a conversation starter when you can actually just have a conversation. Heehee So Simone and I found some new friends from the UK: Adam(English), Liam(Irish), Rob(Scottish) and Ray(Irish). They are all Engineers for some company here - something to do with Nokia or Texas Instruments… I’m not sure. Here they are demonstrating what they called ‘aggressive cheers’ (some people might call this: stupid. They were just breaking their lovely wine glassed from the festival).

Before ‘aggressive cheers’

During ‘aggressive cheers’

So the game wasn’t so brilliant but they were nice guys. I think we’ll be friends… as long as we don’t talk about politics or President Bush, we’ll be okay. I am just starting to understand the very tip of the iceberg of how other people view America. Will expand on this later…. Too big of a topic to write about now.

Friday was an interesting day to say the very least. Crazy at work as usual. Lots on the schedule. First odd thing of the day was when I got out of my first meeting I had an e-mail which read, ‘Luke is in jail.’ Wow, okay… so I call Christie immediately and apparently Luke WAS in fact in jail. Not for anything he had really done wrong… one of those crazy circumstances where he got pulled over for a tail-light being out or something and he had a warrant out for his arrest from an unpaid parking ticket. I really can’t believe our tax dollars paid for my innocent friend to be cuffed and taken to jail. Sheesh. LUKE - pay your tickets buddy!!

Next odd occurance… I’m sitting there working away and I get an I’m from someone down the hall… ‘Someone just fell from the scaffolding on the construction site!!’ Whoa. We are moving into the building next door that is being built at the begining of next year. The construction workers over there are often quite a spectacle for us. They have no sense of safety on the construction sites over here. They do not wear the proper equipment and I’ve even seen worker in speedos over there. I am completely NOT exxaggerating!! So today someone took a fall. We can laugh at this because he did hobble off to the ambulance so he wasn’t too terribly hurt.
Last odd occurance: I’m in a conference room down the hall in a meeting. Someone comes over the loud speaker saying something very loudly in Hungarian. Apparently there was a gas explosion in the building next door and we need to evacuate. Okay… I really thought maybe it was a drill… so I picked up my notepad and pen and walked the 7 flights down the stairs with everyone else. We stand outside for 20 minutes or so and the police come by and tell us we need to go home. They are evacuating the district. We could certainly smell something quite strong in the air… so I know it must have been pretty serious. So there I was… no purse, no money, no computer, no keys, no phone. Nothing but the clothes on my back and my favorite pen. haha Ugh. And all those meetings… how would I let anyone know?! So what does a girl do in this situation… SHOP! Thank heavens for my good friend Simone who also works in the building. She spotted me some cash and we went shopping. Was quite a lovely afternoon really. We shopped around, took our time… lovely afternoon!!
I’m back at her place now… we are going to go meet up with some Brazilian’s that she met here. Still not able to get back into the office so might as well make the best of what we’ve got!!

Crazy, eh?

Here is a photo that Simone and I took a couple of weeks ago… you’ll be seeing more of her I am sure.

Hope you have a good weekend… I’m sure mine will be MUCH less interesting than today… wow.

I am enjoying the Hungarian lessons I’ve been taking. I’m on lesson #2 now. The hardest thing about it is that you can relate it to absolutely NOTHING. Seriously.

…these all have little marks over the top but I couldn’t figure that out on here.
Hungarian……………Pronunciation……………….Meaning
Egy……………………..edge……………………………..one
Ketto…………………..kettou…………………………..two
Harom…………………haroum…………………………three
Negy……………………nedge……………………………four
Ot……………………….ooot……………………………..five
Hat……………………..hot……………………………….six
Het……………………..hete……………………………..seven
Nyloc………………….noltz (rhymes with Foltz)…eight
Kilenc………………….keelentz………………………..nine
Tiz………………………tease…………………………….ten

We learned all the numbers. This is a valuable lesson because the currency here (the forint) is 200 forints to the dollar… so everything is in thousands. I am a bit slow but I can do ALL the counting. 1.5 hours of counting in Hungarian. MAN… I am tired.