Finally.

Well yesterday, after a great day at school (great but super challenging) I went to see my great grandmother and eat some DELICIOUS food. Seriously, best food ever.

The amazing women of my life. My great aunt (far left) the first person to go to college our family. My great grandmother, she was in her early 20s when the Nazi's came to Budapest. She is courageous, loving and she likes the show Friends as much as I do. And my mother, the continent hoping pioneer of the family who will always be a personal hero of mine. She is so brave and just overall amazing.

and finally, pictures of my new house! By the way, my parents went all out, and I cannot believe i'm living here.

This is the living room and a little bit of the dining room, from the kitchen.

Here's the kitchen. My contribution? The two empty Stella bottles.

The master bedroom

The view from the bedroom windows

A close-up of the FML shower, complete with the I don't contain anything shower door

A full shot of the bathroom.

Laundry room and the most complicated washing machine i've ever seen. Each wash cycle? Two hours. TWO WHOLE HOURS.

the spare bedroom

I guess you could say i'm learning pretty quickly. There are however really strange things going on with this language which confuse me to no end. One example is there are prefix and suffix games which rival some calculus equations in it's difficulty.

Speaking of which I have 7 worksheets for homework. Which I am SO stoked about because when compared to the homework I used to have this is a cake walk.

Better.

Today went considerably better. I am more than likely approved for a student Visa and I now have a tax id number. Sweet. I also have a permanent address in Hungary which is super rad. I live somewhere here, officially.

After that success Ma and I wandered over to the mall to eat at the food court. As luck would have it the straps broke on my purse so I got to go shopping! Bought a new bag at H&M (which I am going to rally in the streets for a Denver H&M when I get home) as well as another smaller bag at Mango (not a high priority but there should be one of those in Denver as well).

oh and I found this: the penis bong:

Hilarity. Now the greatest news? I made a new friend. He's very nice and is interested in the same sort of subcultures as I. He also invited me to the Henry Rollin's spoken word which is happening on a boat. Something I never thought i'd see and am probably going to go attend.

I think this was the best day yet.

Stronger Than All

Paintings from my school building:

So I guess you could say i've had a really, really shitty day. Like the kind of day that you feel like you've been shit upon by whatever higher power it is that governs the amount of crap that you deal with on the day to day.

My school, pretty much, is completely backwards. And not like Wayside school funny haha backwards, more like completely stressful and unecessary. I love my class, learning Hungarian is a wonderful experience and my teacher, is SO great. However, the administration is rude, unorganized and somewhat dumb.

long story short, I might be cutting my trip short 5 months and coming back in the end of July or August. The second semester which deals with the history, culture and literature might just be out of the question. I don't want to go into here but suffice it to say, i'd drown, and they know it.

Now after I came home and felt like the biggest failure, my grandfather poured me a beer and I sat down to lunch and calmed down.

My mother and I decided to go out on the town to help take my mind off stuff and help me explore the transit system.

We ended up at a bar called the Negro bar. Now my father has been to this bar, loved it and so do I. I could not get enough of the Negro bar. It's super SUPER nice inside and it makes me crack up inside. They have a drink called "Mulata" AND personal sinks in the bathroom. Basically, I want to live there.

At the Negro bar, drinkin' cosmos with mom.

Oh and I had to not laugh when the bartender, a very nice Hungarian man, would come over because underneath is Absolut emblem, it read Negro. GENUIS.

In the coming months, when I get enough courage, i'll take a picture of him.

I guess after being enraged all day, there are always things to look forward to. Funny things.

Beautiful basilica, around the corner. I'll take a better picture in the daytime.

GET ON THE BOAT!

I've learned a very important lesson about this country.

You must get on the boat! No one is going to tell you where it is, when it leaves, what color it is or if they mean boat or bus.

This place is crazy, but I love it oh so much.

I've decided that in America we baby ourselves and we also help out strangers. Not so much around here.

Today I kicked ass in class and I actually managed to study and get a little bit ahead. This ego trip was soon deflated after I ran into the key card debacle.

Wherever I chose to go to school, America or any other country there is always going to be a piece of dick "I hate my life" security guard. They are also going to seek me out and exact their revenge.

Unbeknownst to me, they have decided that they must keep out the random strangers from the building (and if anyone is mistaking this building for a place where they need to burglarize, they are SURELY mistaken) and that all students must have a keycard.

I don't get telepathic memos, so I had no idea. I only found out upon entering the building, not being able to move the turnstile (TURNSTILE REALLY?) and then having the security nazi come around from his glass case of misery to rain down a shit storm of Hungarian telling me that I, in fact, needed a key card. (SIDE NOTE: You would think that screaming Hungarian at a school full of international students who are there, TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE would be both ineffective and SUPER annoying.)

Anyways, I was then thrown into a bad mood.

It took a lot of Prince and a few notches of Massive Attack on the ride home to equalize.

And if you don't know what kind of magic Prince can be when you're in a bad mood, you're missing out.

But when I got home my Poppa had cooked a delicious meal and had a shot of whiskey for me :)

Speed Bumps

I was housebound today due to the snow.

Gave me a long time to think. I understand that i'm going to live in Budapest but I don't at the very same time.

I left my whole entire life behind. Eight whole hours behind to be exact and it's kind of messing with me.

Hopefully I get over it. The studying is going well, and even though I joined a class already in session, I think I am caught up and doing well.

Tomorrow will be my second day of school and it will help to get out of the house.

It's also good that my text book has raunchy pictures.

More Birthday!

So today we ventured down to my mother's hometown of Tatabayna to celebrate my Grandfather's birthday again with my aunt's family. Since it snowed a lot (which by Colorado standards isn't really that much..... but it's cute to see them fuss about it) we took the train. And by train I mean two separate light rails and THEN the train lol

Riding the train was rad and the dude, at the station, playing the theme to The Godfather on what sounded like a recorder was equally as amazing.

We surprised Poppa (grandpa) by taking him to dinner at a place where I have been many times before with my parents. It's a neighborhood bar of sorts. I ordered my father's favorite meal and had a LOT to drink.

I realized over the course of the night how much like my mother and her sister I am. We're forgetful, we ask questions that don't necessarily need to be asked and we're fun-loving, jovial if you will.

The dinner went well and afterwards there was a band (a man and a keyboard but according to the paper that means band) who played a few hits. He was nice and played a birthday song for Poppa. Then afterwards, Poppa got up and sang a song, which was quite possibly the best thing i've ever seen. Such a good man. He then proceeded to dance around with Mama (grandma) and it was so touching.

It was also a wake up call when my cousin asked me what I was waiting for to get married, I am going to be 24 after all. LoL. They are still pretty old school around here.

It's good to see them all, I'm quite possibly becoming the best version of myself because of them.

YES. RULE.

Well. Today I started school and it was SO FUN. The teacher was super nice, in that awesome grammar school way where you aren't wrong and trying is always encouraged. The other students are nice and are from Finland, South Korea, Iraq, and France.... all super nice peoples. The school itself is pretty big and so far I am learning pretty well.

After that we went to the Vaci Utca (big huge long pedestrian street full of H&M, Mango, Zara, Promod and other amazingness) to pick up some books and grab some coffee.

Today I learned that to pay for certain things i.e. utilities or other things, you have to do that at the post office. It was completely strange. I'm sure if I went to a post office to pay my Xcell bill they would be zero sorts of helpful.

Hungarians LOVE Kansas. KANSAS. Nothing against Kansas it's just strange to see someone's eyes light up when they talk about it. My mother made sense of it and said it's probably from watching Westerns, which is also probably why when I say i'm from Denver they draw a blank until I talk about the mountains and the wilderness.

I also learned today that "fene" which is a word used in many curse words (think damn, or damnit) means anthrax. All these years my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother even have been cursing with anthrax. To me, this is completely hysterical and rather strange.

The kids here are precious. I find that when a child throws a hissy fit and whines in another language, I love it. It's cute. I also like the strollers they have here. Everytime I see one of these super Euro strollers in which the child is standing, strapped in the middle and carted around, I laugh. Sometimes I laugh real hard because it reminds me of a little baby hannibal lector.

This, translated, means pig cheese. There is only pig and no actual cheese in here:

Saw this. Hope it's the artists girlfriend cause that would be kick ass and pretty sweet:

THIS IS THE BEST CAR IN THE UNIVERSE. EVER. It's called a Trabant and I fully FULLY intend on owning one someday. Super cute and way classic. Forever I will love these cars.