Thursday.
This is it. The homestretch. Tomorrow is the last day of Hungarian classes, and will feature a test and, if our teachers are to be believed, a performance of some kind.
I spent lunch wandering around for a while, trying to figure out where to go, before settling on the Turkish place near the language school. It's cheap and easy, pretty tasty, but relatively expensive. But that's probably because I got a lot of food. I had roast chicken that seemed to have eggs and some vegetables stuffed between the skin and the meat. It was good but rich. Even better was a warm yogurt, spinach (I think, it may have been some other sauteed green), onion and tomato dish that was really tasty.
In class, we finally learned about the past tense, so I'm not stuck just speaking in the present. It's relatively simple, not changing the normal conjugations very much. It still has rules for whether it's conjugated as definite or indefinite though, which is one of the hardest parts of the language so far.
Afterwards, I left with a group of fellow nerds to go find a Magic: The Gathering shop in town. Once there, we checked prices (a little bit higher than in the States) before sitting down and playing amongst ourselves. We also traded with some of the locals. Since Hungary is so small, there aren't any cards printed in Hungarian; they use English cards. This is slightly disappointing, because having Hungarian cards would be really cool, but also nice, because it means we can trade with the people here very easily and can even participate in an event if we desire. One of the guys on the program has already done so, playing in three events over the last weekend.
After playing for awhile, we met up with a separate group of people for dinner, at the Thai restaurant that I had been looking for on Monday. We were too many people for the restaurant, so they split us into two tables, with the three of us at the small table getting a distinct we're-at-the-little-kids'-table vibe, but it was a good time. The service was a little slow and the dishes a little expensive, but it was very very tasty. I had masala chai, chicken coconut soup, and chicken pad thai. They were as I would expect to find in a good Thai restaurant in the States, which was nice. You may notice I'm complaining about prices while still ordering an entree, drink and soup, which is a lot. However, most restaurants are cheap enough here that I can do that and still eat pretty cheaply. It's wonderful. But it means I'm very spoiled. Returning to the prices of the States will be difficult...
The group of us then headed off to the apartment of one of the people in the area, which I hadn't seen yet. It's a nice apartment, with lots of room. And it's cheaper than mine. It seems like a common theme. Jaj! We ate chocolate cake people bought from a store, because they were jonesing for some cake. It was good, though not fantastic.
When I returned to the apartment I met my final roommate, who had just gotten in around noon and had pretty much been sleeping since then. He goes to one of the SUNY schools, Geneseo, and had been here last semester, on the same program and in the same apartment, which means he'll be a valuable resource in the city.