Robbed!

So on Friday night I went out dancing with a girlfriend.  And I had a lot of fun, until my purse got stolen.  Now, when your purse is stolen from three inches from your hand in the ten seconds it takes you to order a drink, and the phone is already disconnected when you call it a minute later, you can only assume you have been robbed by a pro.  So, while my friend freaked out, I was rather calm at the moment.

The next day I got up super early and headed back to the island, where the club was.  I combed through the bushes, and even gave my flatmate's phone number to some homeless guys who were doing the same, asking them to call me and promising a reward for my ID.

Still in my party gear, I then went and waited for the bus.  Two dudes started to sort of harass me, and I snapped at them that I had been robbed, and demanded a bus ticket.  Mollified, they actually gave me a bus ticket, and then turned friendly and non-creepy enough.  I guess it's easy to pick on the girl in a sequined dress at seven in the morning.

So the next step was canceling my Hungarian bank card, which Anna helped me with.  Then it was off to the police station to file a report, which I was able to do myself.  Actually, the male police officer at one point had to go ask his female colleague exactly how to say "sequin" in Hungarian, which I found amusing.  I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't know everything!  After that, a new phone.  Then going to the bank to order a new bank card, and last of all heading to immigration for a new residence card, which, as usual, was a nightmare.  The only good thing was that Balint pointed out that we needed new locks on our door and was able to change them out for us.  It's good to have a handy person around!

I really recommend you don't get your bag stolen.  I mean, it could have been worse: it was only a small bag with some essentials in it, so I still have my passport and all my other cards.  But, really, this has been one annoying, expensive, week-long hassle.  So hold onto those bags while you're out dancing, ladies!

Fluffy Boys

Laying in bed, watching silly TV shows while reading a good book, letting my two little fluffies climb all over my back and kiss my cheeks...

sometimes it's good to just be lazy.  Real blog posts about Paris and Copenhagen coming soon!  In the meantime, a funny kid story: yesterday during tutorials, I had my sixth graders play a game from the television show Whose Line is it Anyway, where they each are given a prop and have to come up with different mini-skits using the prop as different items each time.  And they had just tons of fun with it, actually taking the whole half-hour session to play.  I had expected they would take about ten minutes and then it would be time for a new activity.

One group of boys had a lot of fun with it.  They had a little bulb-shaped timer as their prop.  And, surely enough, at one point they used the little timer as a bong.  I kind of just pressed my forehead to my hand, and asked where they had learned about these things.

The kid turned to me, scoffed, and said, "Ms. Lauren.  Youtube," as it it was the most obvious answer in the world.  Which, really, I suppose it was!

Free bird!

This is a traditional Hungarian folk song, rethought.  I've kept coming back to it over the last few days.  The lyrics, translated by me and repeated in various patterns throughout the song (I'm translating in the full order, starting at 1:40ish) are:

Cold winds are blowing.

They do not bode well.

Free life, free as a bird.

Oh, how beautiful is the one who travels free.

This is important for me to remember.  Maybe cold winds are blowing right now, but who knows what they will bring?  More importantly, I am free.  If the winds blow too cold, I'll breeze into something better.  It really is beautiful to be free.

Maudlin

So this weekend, one of my sorority sisters was in town.  Nobody I was ever particularly close to, since she was a freshman when I was a senior, but still a really nice girl.  So I took her and her friends out for dinner on Sunday, and then we had some drinks last night.  It was nice to see her, catch up, and gossip about Lycoming people for a little bit.

After she left the bar last night, I stayed and had another drink with my friends, and then headed home.  As usual, when such things strike, it struck on the bus.  I became horribly dark.  Now, most of you know me, and know that I'm not really all that dark.  I'm regularly described as a "sunshiny" person, for goodness sake.  I think this is mainly because I keep my darkness to myself.  So I rode the bus a few extra stops, then wandered home over the back of my little hill.

I'm not sure exactly what it was that tripped me over the edge into an emo midnight wander.  Certainly, it has to do with roots.  I'm not really in touch with anyone from America anymore, and while that's ok and understandable, in many ways it's also awful.  I have a life that I genuinely love, and I'd like others to understand it with me, and yet there really is nobody who can.  This whole experience is also changing me so drastically, in so many (mainly) positive ways, but I don't know anyone who knows both old Lauren and new Lauren.

At the same time, as soon as I feel like I'm putting roots down here, the ground starts to become sort of shaky. The international and financial situation here in Hungary has always been something that, as a foreigner, I could happily ignore.  But it's reaching a level where I can't ignore it any more, and I have to consider the future of this little country that I adore in my life plans.  And that is so upsetting to me.  I hate the feeling of uncertainty where just a few months ago my life was laid out in front of me, for the next few years at least.

Beyond that, so many of my friends are planning to leave in the next few years.  And that's fine, and I'm happy for them, and I know that I will make new friends.  But... still.  Add to that the fact that this weekend I met a boy that I think I could grow to really like, and I think he feels the same way about me, and, of course, as usual... doesn't live in Hungary.

Then mix in the fact that this feeling of uncertainty is not unique to me.  All across the world, young people and especially young women are starting to worry about their futures.  We have to care so much about everything, while pretending to be cool and not care at all.  We have to worry about our bodies.  Appearance is tantamount, and we have to present a perfect feminine appearance, but we have to also act like men.  More than anything, though, we feel a bit cheated.  We have to deal with living our whole life being told we could be anything we wanted to be, and then coming out of college into an economy where we're all still sort of scraping by five years later.  So many of my friends are still in an entry-level position, or back in school racking up more debt.  It's ridiculous.

And last night it all became too much and I became a little bit angry.

Happily today's the last day of my work week, and tomorrow I'm heading off to Sweden and Denmark for Easter.  And I'll remember that I'm one of the lucky ones.

A weekend in Madrid

The first weekend of the month, I headed to Madrid.  I found the ticket for about 30 dollars, round trip, so I figured why not, and bought it just about two weeks beforehand.  So after the typical Ryanair runaround, I arrived to Madrid and discovered this in the metro.  (I must say, it's a good thing that this wasn't such a common ad campaign last year when I was in Madrid and desperately missing Hungary.)

I found my way to Mary's flat and dropped off my stuff, quite pleased with myself that Madrid is still second nature to me.  We then headed to her friend's apartment, grabbing me a yummy kebab on the way, to play Settlers of Kataan.  Which is pretty much a perfect table game, by the way.  Then it was off for some really overpriced tintos, which Mary got delightful Spanish over, before heading home.

Saturday's breakfast was at Mundo de Croquetas.  The dude working there judged us slightly for eating croquetas before noon, but I didn't care.  They were delicious.  Croquetas.  I miss you.

I headed to Moncloa and caught the bus out to San Lorenzo to see Hernan and Yoichi.  We had a nice dinner outside: the weather was amazing for the first weekend of March.  And I held Yoichito cat and he was angry, but then he relented.

Hernan and I then went for walk, and admired the bucolic sheep grazing under the bucolic almond blossoms...

... and the Spanish sky...

... and the monastery.  We had a really nice talk and it was really great to speak for hours in Spanish again, and especially to see my old roomie.  He was a good roomie and I miss him.

Then it was back to Madrid and out for Cien Montaditos, which no longer serves gulas to my horror, and then to Magic Beer.  Which still serves magical beer, to my delight.  Silliness ensued, and, as usual, I wound up buying beer from a dude selling cans on the street from a cardboard box stand.  We then went back to Mary's and played darts and danced with puppets.  And then, to continue the as usual, I ended the night at a gay bar.  It was a fun night.  There's me, Jess, and Mary up there.

The next day, Mary, Chelsi and I hit the Rastro, where we found nothing, and then visited one of the funniest shops ever, where we read ridiculous books and improved our vocabulary.  Then for lunch it was pinxos!  Yum.

Then there was a trip to buy some jewelry, and we visited Chelsi's tea room.

I also pierced poor Mary's ears, in the most horrifying and least successful piercing ever.  But now she has pretty earrings!  Chelsi even managed to help, despite her fear of needles (which she has somehow despite all her many piercings).  After that, it was off to the airport to catch my flight back home.

This is all the loot I got in Madrid... I have a problem!

It was a great little whirlwind trip.  Definitely a new kind of trip for me: a trip to see people only, and pretty much ignore the city they are in.  It was beautiful to speak Spanish again beyond the very elementary stuff I get to speak to the kids.  I do miss Spain: the food, the language, the spirit of it, even though I really didn't love living there.  It was funny to complain to my friends about the same old things, because the country's never going to change.  It was also great to just see my girls (and Hernan) that helped me through that really tough year.  They're great people, and I miss them.

Excluding the 22 months in which I needed to leave Spain alone after Alfonso and I broke up, I have yet to go a year without returning to Spain since I studied there.  And I imagine it's kind of always going to be that way.

Easter Eggs

No colorful dye to dip them in, but that's ok because it doesn't work so well on brown eggs anyway! I went to Anna's parents' house for lunch today, and after a delicious meal we decorated some eggs with markers. I made a bunny, a chick, a rat and cat eggs, a poem, a party, a kokopeli, and a Hungarian Parliament. Some of those were requests. It's always fun to do the things you did as a kid, even if it's differently and under different circumstances!

Icy Danube

Piroska Andras made this video of the ice on the Danube.  It captures the eerie beauty of the whole thing even better than the photos I posted a few entries ago did.  Enjoy!


Budapest Sorbet from Andras Piroska on Vimeo.

Blogger

So apparently I need to contact google.  Because it seems that my blog has permanently decided to not allow me to upload pictures.  Which is incredibly upsetting, considering that I PAY THEM for the storage space.  In the meantime, blog posts have been put off and off because I can't put the pictures up that would serve to help tell the story.  Boo.

So, yes, still waiting on the post about my visit to Madrid, and now also the one about my visit to Paris.  And some random Hungary ones in between.

It's finally spring time here.  And it's beautiful, and I've been biking to work and being happy in the sunshine.  Spring time also brings planning for next year, and it seems that I will be able to teach the classes I want to teach next year!  Which is awesome: all language teaching, all the time.  I will also be coordinating the FCE prep for the program, and organizing a unified plan for English in grades 1-8.  This, in addition to continuing to teach and plan Spanish from 5-8, plus now doing so in grade 9 with the assistance of a Hungarian Spanish teacher.  I'm super psyched!

Now I just need to see about maybe negotiating a small raise to go along with all of my extra responsibilities!

Boooo

I started to write a pretty long entry about Madrid.  But my fingers are tired and keep mistyping and the photos won't load... I just get an error message.  So, instead, I will simply wish you all a happy 350th blog post.

Mandula, my roomie's cat, was in heat last week.  She spent every night for a week caterwauling and keeping me up.  She was also just generally ridiculous.  She did finally get spayed on Friday, and things are back to normal, but I think the whole week without sleep, especially after a crazy weekend in Madrid, may have broken me.  I can't stop being, well, dumb.

So I'm going to go to sleep.

Lights

I spent this weekend in Madrid.  It was a very short time, and totally dedicated to seeing friends and eating delicious things.  I will write a longer post with pictures and reflections and such in a short time.  Right now, it's two in the morning, my bag is finally unpacked, and I'm pretty much 100% ready for bed.  This post isn't going to be about Madrid, though, but about Budapest.

Budapest, like most cities, lights up its major buildings, landmarks, and bridges at night.  The floodlights switch off at midnight, and only streetlights remain after that.  Now, I have experienced those lights turning on and off countless times.  It's normal enough that we sort of use the lights to tell time when we head home across the river from an evening out in Pest.  If the lights are still on, we're being good responsible adults.

Planes usually approach Budapest from the south, crossing over fields and suburbs to land at the airport, which is itself in the southern part of the city.  It's rather uneventful, view-wise.  In the right conditions, though, planes approach from the north, flying right over Margaret Island, the Parliament, and Varosliget.  From the sky, you can see all the bridges, the castle, the citadel, the cemetery... it's always fun to see the landmarks I'm so used to all tiny below me.

Tonight, coming back to Budapest from Madrid, the two coincided.  I was looking out the window for only a few seconds at that point, and our plane was directly over the river, when one by one the lights started to switch off.  Goodbye, Parliament.  Goodbye, Chain Bridge.  Szia, Heroes' Square.  Only the boulevards remained to show me where things were.  (Well, that and the ridiculous lights outside the Arena Plaza mall.)

For some reason, this moment really struck me.  As all those beautiful things disappeared, leaving a shadow in their place, I felt a strange sort of happiness.  It should have been sad, but it wasn't.  I could still see the places I love, even if I couldn't see them, more from their lack of light than from anything else.  As each light switched off, I felt happier.  I sort of feel like I saw all of Budapest tuck itself in for the night.  And it was good to be home.