!Yo Diggity!

One of my favorite things to do in Houston with my girlfriends is get a pedicure. In Houson it’s especially nice because there are so many pedicure places that the prices are low and there are lots of fun places to try. Here in Budapest, I have yet to found or even try a place yet. Well last week a friend of mine gave me a place to go. She said, “Here’s the number. They don’t speak English so if you want me to I can make the appointment for you.” I thought, gosh, I think my Hungarian is good enough to try. So I called all day today and no answer. But my other friend had successfully made an appointment so I went to meet her there and try it out in person. Well it turned out to be a mother and her son sitting there doing my friend’s toes. Ok, the son was not actually participating but he was sweeping and helping out. We all (yes, all 4 of us - my friend, the pedicure lady, her son, and I) akwardly figured out that she could do me after my friend. That was great! So I sat down and after some time my friend went home. This left me to the 13-year-old son, David, and his mom, Tunde. This is when the conversation really got interesting. I would say that David’s English was just about as good as my Hungarian. He knew lots of words but putting them together in the correct tenses… well…. no. Not so much. Tunde knew even less than he did but I could tell when she looked at us like we were crazy that his guess at what I said could NOT have been correct. It was funny to me that the both of them were really interested in talking with me, even though our conversation was so very limited. We actually talked the entire hour and fifteen minutes I was in there.

My favorite part of the conversation was when David said, “I no Skinhead. Not.” This sentence, to my knowledge, was absolutely out of the middle of nowhere. I have no idea why he said it or why they both acted like this was a completely normal thing to say! This kid had a really nice, full head of hair and did not seem in any way sort of a terrorist. So did he think that I thought he was a skinhead for some reason? Did he think I was a skinhead? haha - Not sure sure about that one.

And also during the course of the conversation, he asked me where I came from. I said Texas. And I’m sorry all you Hoosiers, but in this type of context this made sense for me to say. I’ll explain. The country of Hungary is the same size as the state of Indiana. If I took a poll and asked 50 Americans if they knew where Hungary was, I bet you that 15 or less would get it right. It’s not that American’s are stupid… because if that is true then Hungarians would also be stupid for not knowing where the state of Indiana is. The fact of the matter is, these two places are not big, and their International presence is just not that widespread. So such was in this converstaion. I said that I was from Texas and we pursued to talk about the film, Texas Chainsaw Masacre. Oh Texas, aren’t ya glad you are Internationally known for that one!? ha Then David asked me where my family was. I thought, “Uh-oh, here we go.” I repeated ‘Indiana’ 5 times until I realized he’d simply never heard of it. Then I tried with ‘Chicago.’ Nope. Never heard that one either. I tried to explain that Chicago was one of the biggest cities in the USA and then lead into a conversation of the translation of city, town and country. I couldn’t get David to understand the difference between any of them because he was not familiar with the term ‘State.’ So I just moved my family to Texas after 20 minutes. Sorry Ma!

So this turned out to be quite a good pedicure…. and I must say, some very stimulating conversation! I think I’ll go back!