So this is not a post detailing what I've done, but what I'll do.
This Thursday is Gluttony Thursday (I'm unsure if it has any relation to Lent and Fat Tuesday or if it's something completely separate), which is a Budapest even where many restaurants in the city present everything on their menu at half-off. Needless to say, I will be heading out to dinner at a nice restaurant with some friends. I'm very excited.
And then this Saturday I'll be heading over to Debrecen, the second largest city in Hungary, with some friends via train. Not sure exactly what there is to do in Debrecen, but it should be fun. The only down side is that the train ticket cost about as much as the one to Vienna. Ah well, still not too bad.

Alright. Long time no post. I was going to start with Vienna last weekend, where I left off, but then I decided that there would be a good deal of information to pack into that post. So I'm going to instead go through this week, which was much less exciting.
We returned from Vienna around 7pm on Sunday and then some of us returned to my apartment where we made dinner with what I had lying around from last week, which ended up being pasta with bacon, onions, garlic, tomatoes and a fried egg on top. We then, instead of doing homework, played cards. Hearts was played, with rules being explained as we went. 'Tis a good game, Hearts.
Monday I decided to take advantage of having a late class and slept in, simply reading until my class at 2, which was classical algebra, the non-credit class designed to catch us up on everything. I was a little lost on Monday, as the class goes fast, assuming you've seen everything before. As I'm not sure I've seen all of this before, it can be a little much sometimes. I'm glad there won't be any grade for the class, though it is definitely entertaining and useful. After class, I just returned to my apartment and did homework, so it was not a very exciting day. I don't even remember what I had for dinner, though I assume I threw something together.
Tuesday was pretty similar, though I had class from 8 to 12 in the morning, followed by another class at 2. In the middle, however, I went and got lunch at a nearby langos stand. I believe I've mentioned langos before, but I'm not sure. It's pretty great. It's basically fried dough topped with things. The stand near the university fries the dough up fresh in front of you and it costs (at most) 2 dollars. I had mine topped with bacon, cheese, sour cream, garlic and purple onion. It was delicious, though not quite filling, so I stopped on the way back to pick up some fruit at a little fruit/vegetable store on the way. After my last class, I simply returned to my apartment and did homework. I made myself a nice dinner of leeks, tofu and noodles, which was very tasty. I also roasted some peanuts, tossed them with a small amount of oil and pepper, which was very good. Unfortunately, it's rather greasy. I was using the oil as a way to get the dry pepper to stick, but I'm not sure if it's necessary or if there's a better way. The oil itself was delicious though, as it was chili oil and sesame oil, so I rather like the flavor. Besides homework and dinner, I celebrated Valentine's Day by talking to my girlfriend, Anna, via phone. This was really nice, but unfortunately expensive; it ate up all my minutes. I have yet to refill my phone, which I should probably do soon.
Wednesday things start to get a little more exciting. I meant to wake up early and do homework before my first class, at 2, but I ended up just sleeping in. I got a bit of work done, making a grammar reference sheet for Hungarian, but it was not nearly as much as I would've liked. I then had Hungarian, which was great. It's a very enjoyable class, and will only get to be more so after it splits into two sections, but I kind of wish it met more often, and I don't think I'll have as much time to put into it as I'd like...the language is really cool. I've said it before and I'm sure it'll keep coming up, but Hungarian's a neat language. It doesn't seem particularly difficult, despite its reputation, but it's just very different from anything else, which would make it difficult, I suppose. Anyways, after class, several of my classmates came back with me to my apartment, where we made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, accompanied by roast peanuts (prepared as the day before) and tomato soup. This was delicious, and followed by homework for a little bit, before devolving into cards. Hearts was played for a bit, but we also played a game I had never played before, 13, which was an interesting game. It was good, but needs to be played with exactly four players and involves getting rid of all your cards, in a manner similar, but not identical, to the game Presidents. After 13, a full game of Spades was played that lasted for an unexpectedly long time and so was the last event of the evening.

Class is as class is, and was still good. Thursday afternoon, I, along with many other BSM students, watched a documentary on Paul Erdős, a very strange Hungarian mathematician, who was one of the founders of the program. He was also the most prolific mathematician ever, publishing over 1500 different papers with around 500 different collaborators. Once he became an adult, he never had a home, simply traveling from conference to conference, staying at the homes of colleagues along the way, and he continued doing math up until he died in his early 80s. All of his belongings could fit into two half-empty suitcases, and he was eccentric to say the least. I'd recommend reading up on him, because he's an amusing fellow. He's also an incredibly important mathematician, not only for his work, but also for fostering work in others: he would call people up whenever he had a problem he thought they were specifically suited for and provided a link between Communist Hungary and the West during the Cold War. So the movie was definitely interesting, to say the least.
Afterwards, I went with a large number of people to go get dinner and make cookies. Dinner was from the hummus bar (we did take out), which is a wonderful place, even though it took a very long time for the one guy working there to prepare all of our orders. I ordered the falafel plate again, accompanied with a simple salad of cabbage and cucumber and some mint tea (while we waited). As the hummus bar is right next to the good beer store, I also headed across the street and picked up some interesting-looking brews. After we picked up our food, we all went to somebody's apartment and ate. It was delicious, as expected. Afterwards, I baked cookies. That was the whole reason for this adventure. As my oven doesn't work, I asked one of my friends if I could use hers. She said yes, and then proceeded to invite many many people to come watch me bake, essentially, so this entire event came out of that. It was great.
Their oven doesn't have a degree markings, so we kind of picked a pot on the dial where the flames (it was an actual gas oven) looked good and put the cookies in, deciding to check up on them regularly. The cookies came out a little too done for my taste, as I like them to stay a little raw, but they were still good. Different from at home though, because we couldn't find baking soda or brown sugar. Or chocolate chips for that matter. For the chips, we just chopped up some chocolate and threw it in, but for the baking soda we used something that translates as "volatile salt." It worked well, and according to the internet volatile salt was a precursor to baking soda, so that's probably what I will keep using to bake. For brown sugar, we used aranybarna cukor, or golden-brown sugar, which wasn't actually brown sugar but looked more like raw sugar. It had much less moisture and much larger, most distinct crystals than brown sugar. This changed the taste somewhat, but they still turned out well. After the cookies came out, we all just kind of hung around and talked for a while before leaving and making it back at a decent hour.

And that's all the blogging I think I'll do for now. I made a dent, but there's still much more catching up to do.

So now I shall summarize the events of the end of last week, leading up to my first departure from Budapest since I arrived here about a month ago.
My only class on Thursday was at 8, which was quite nice. I used the rest of the morning to work and bought my train ticket for Vienna. It was a very easy process, as the people working there spoke English and I only needed to specify the day I was leaving, since the return could be anytime in the 3 days after the departure. Anyways, after working and ticket-buying, I went with some people down to the Four Tigers Market for lunch. Our classmate who speaks Vietnamese didn't go with us, as he had class, but we were still able to order some delicious food. I had knuckle soup, which I believe was pork, and was quite good (and rich, as was expected), though I think I prefer the pho. Again, the soup was made much better by the addition of the homemade chili-garlic sauce (I believe, it was very similar to sriracha) and pickled peppers/garlic, which were fantastic. Next time I go with the student who speaks Vietnamese I'm going to try and get him to ask the shop owners if I can buy some of the peppers, because they're great. I tried to buy a bahn mi (a Vietnamese sandwich on a baguette) from the stall to split with one of the guys, but they were out. Again. I sense a conspiracy.
After lunch, tofu and fun-looking mushrooms were bought. I don't know what type they were, but they were very good. I then wandered the street opposite the market with people in order to try and find the Chinese groceries and restaurants that I thought were there. After much wandering through markets and office buildings, with signs, in Chinese, that I couldn't read most of, I eventually found a grocery store. It was more of a normal Chinese grocery store than the markets across the way (though they had fewer vegetables it seems), and I picked up some chili oil, Sichuan pepper, and peanut butter. This is the first time I've seen peanut butter in a store, so I promptly bought some. It's a brand I've never heard of, from I have no idea what country. It was only 1000 forints, or between 4 and 5 dollars which, considering the scarcity of peanut butter, is something I'm willing to pay. Pretty good peanut butter too.
After the grocery (which I was more excited about than anyone else), we walked a little further down the street, poking our head inside other places, and found a kinai gyorsbüfé, or Chinese fast food restaurant, which is what most of the (bad) Chinese places here are called. However, we saw Chinese people coming out and, knowing the location, I wanted to give it a try. We had already eaten lunch at this point, remember, so I was just looking for some dumplings. And it was definitely different than any other kinai gyorsbüfé. I don't quite remember what was in it, but it definitely wasn't your usual affair. We did buy some dumplings, at 50 forints or about 25 cents a pop, and they were delicious. I also got a chance to speak some Chinese with the man working there (as I can speak Chinese much better than Hungarian). I had some trouble understanding him as he was Southern and had a lisp, but I was successful.
I then called my trip a success and returned to my apartment, where I spent the rest of the day and night doing homework, with a brief intermission to make dinner (throwing together what we had lying around) and watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail with some friends.

Friday, it seemed, had broken his dreams.
I had classes all day on Friday, which was interesting. 4 classes, back-to-back, in the university building for around 8 hours. It was more classes I've had sequentially since I finished high school, though there were breaks spread throughout it to make it more do-able.
This was the first time I had three of my classes: Statistics, Bioinformatics, and Dynamical Systems and Bifurcations. Statistics is about what I expected, but should be reasonably interesting, as it will probably be a little more math-y than if I had taken it at Oberlin. There's 3 of us in that class. Bioinformatics seems cool; the first class was an overview of the (very limited) biology we'll need to know and a very simple model of genome rearrangement, which will be the topic of the first half of the class. There's 4 of us in that class. Taken in total, 3 of the 6 classes I'm currently in (those two plus intro to abstract algebra) have 4 or fewer people in them, which is interesting.
Dynamical Systems and Bifurcations looks like it will involve systems of differential equations and how you can use them in models, which will be very fun. Though scheduled as a reading class, it has more than 7 people in it, I'd say, making it rather large.
Lunch was a hurried sandwich that I made at home eaten in the 15 minutes between class at noon. I need to find artichoke hearts here, which I know exist, because they'd be great on the sandwiches I've been making.
After class, which ended at 4, I ran back to my apartment to pack and head over to the train station. Fortunately it was the one right next to my house, because the train left at 5:10 and we were meeting up at around 4:45 to make sure we would get there in time. As we were only going to be gone until Sunday,  I didn't need more than a backpack worth of stuff, which was very good. Anyways, we all made it on to the train with no problem, though the latest member of our party made it on about 3 minutes before the door closed, and we got there too late to have seats next to each other, so we were spread out across two cars. This was perhaps not too surprising, though, as there were 11 of us.
The train ride was without incident. We didn't even have to show our passports when we crossed the border, just our tickets again. It took about 3 hours total and was a very easy ride.
Then we arrived in Vienna and that will have to wait until later to be told.

Wednesday morning I had no class (again). But I didn't get to sleep in. I went to the immigration office bright and early, waking up before 7 in order to get there around the time it opened, 8:30. There were several of us who had issues with our forms and so needed to go back, but only one other person had her form signed by Wednesday. We made it to the immigration office and, as it was the day set aside for students and we weren't in a group of 30+ this time, were able to get out by around 9:30.
After a brief run to the nearby Tesco (a giant grocery store) in a failed attempt to find peanut butter (I had been told that peanut butter could be found in the international foods section of the store, but I was unable to find this section), we left the area. I returned to my apartment for a glorious 2-hour nap before I had class in afternoon.
My only class on Wednesday was Hungarian language, which was shortly afterwards split into two sections, one for beginners and one for intermediate. The intermediate class is composed of people who took the intensive language class, either this semester or last, and the beginner is designed for people who haven't had any Hungarian, but there are a fair amount of people who were in the intensive class who want to take it as well, as they don't think they're ready for the intermediate class. It will be very slow and uninteresting for them, then, because they start with the alphabet and pronunciation, but ah well.
The intermediate section started with a very brief review of pronunciation and numbers before moving onto animals and adjectives and various other words. It's a very cool language, I must say (as I've said many times). But the whole throwing on of syllables to change/add meanings...it's neat. Hard to wrap my head around, as an English speaker, but very cool. Class met for about 2.5 hours, with a brief break in the middle. It was long, but not too bad.
After the first couple weeks, we might split the intermediate class, into one that goes fast and one that goes slow. The fast one sounds like a lot of fun, with reading actual Hungarian (she said last semester they spent the entire time reading and going over a relatively long speech) and going into more detail about the grammar, as opposed to the slow one which will just read children's books and the like. Both would be valuable, but I feel like the faster one would be more interesting to me.
Afterwards, I met up with some other guys who were in the class to go play some Race for the Galaxy. It's enjoyable, and doesn't take quite as long as other, comparable games. It reminds me a little of Puerto Rico, though it's a science fiction card game instead of a historical board game.
After we played several games, we all went out for a late dinner at the Hummus Bar. I had the best (of the various ones I've tried) Middle Eastern food I've had here. It was a falafel plate, composed of falafel, hummus and pita. And it was very tasty, and reasonably filling. Also, ridiculously cheap. 1000 forints, or between 4 and 5 dollars, for a delicious meal. Probably the cheapest dinner I've gotten at a restaurant, which is a reasonably impressive feat.
Anyways, I then returned to my apartment and being lazy, didn't blog.
This was, it turns out, a mistake, as I now have much catching up to do, and suddenly...homework! I will try, though.

Today I had many more classes to make up for my lack yesterday. I had to get to the university by 8 for my first class and spent most of the day there.
Introduction to abstract algebra, which currently has 4 people in it and needs 6 by the end of the registration period or it will be dropped, was first. It seems like a good class, and should be fun. It transfers as group theory, a required class for the math major at Oberlin, which is very convenient and the reason I'd rather have it not be dropped.
Then came combinatorics, which is so large that it's split into two sections, both of which are large. It's a popular course, as combinatorics is a branch of math that Hungary is particularly renowned for (or so the program tells us). It also seems to be a good class, and, like all the classes I've been in so far here, it moves along at a good clip.
Then more classical algebra, which consisted of solving problems about complex numbers. It was a good time, with interesting problems and the teacher running around being very excitable, which was rather amusing.
Classes were interesting, though it is still taking some getting used to the accents and getting back into the fast pace of the classes. Hungarian was much slower than this, and much more notes need to be taken now than before. I'm still unsure how much work I'll have because homework hasn't started yet. This will be the important factor in my semester. I could end up having way too much work; we shall see.
After classes, I met up with a bunch of people and we all cooked dinner consisting of pasta with a variety of veggies: eggplant, broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes, onions, garlic, mushrooms, and possibly others that I can't remember as I'm tired.
I apologize for this kind of fragmented, short post. I'm tired and I also don't feel like recounting the details of all my classes, as much as I know everyone reading this/the entire internet was looking forward to hearing the secret details of Hungarian math classes. But I was sworn to secrecy, so what can one do?
But in other exciting news, I recently found out I got into the summer program I applied to, so I will be spending this summer in Beijing. Which means there might be a sequel blog to this, with a similarly clever name.
I'm also going to be going along with a group of people to Vienna. Which will be very exciting, especially as someone else is planning most of it.

Today was the first day of classes, a very exciting one for us all.
While many of my classmates were up early, especially those who lived on the opposite side of town, I got to sleep in today. This was due to me living so close to the school and also not having any class until 2.
So I used my morning by sleeping in and then heading out to do some shopping. I needed to find some notebooks, as I did not bring any with me. I searched up some places in the area and also planned on checking the giant mall that is across the train tracks from my apartment. I found one of the two stores in the area, but they didn't have quite what I was looking for, so I decided to keep looking around. The store was a papirbolt or paper store. I guess it's the equivalent of a stationary store? I don't know, it was kind of strange. Because they had printer paper, some notebooks, some portfolios, some calendars, sleeves, envelopes...it was like the paper section of an office store.
Anyways, I then checked out the mall. I had no luck finding supplies, but I managed to recharge my phone and find another ethernet cable. Now everyone in my apartment can have internet! Because we have no idea how to get the wireless working. Our landlord insists that it should be working, but we checked every network and tried resetting the router, to no avail. Ah well, the wired stuff is good enough. I also found a bookstore. Among many titles I didn't recognize, I found a bunch of Terry Pratchett books. They were all various Discworld books, some I recognized, some I didn't, with the British (versus American) covers, and were, as should be expected, completely in Hungarian. I will most likely buy one before I leave, because they're awesome.
The class I had was classical algebra, a three-week-long no credit course designed to make sure everyone's up to speed on the basics of algebra necessary for some of the higher classes, as the Hungarian professors have discovered, in years past, that the American students don't have the algebra background that they expect. The class meets twice a week, for an hour and a half split into two 45-minute blocks. The first week will be on complex numbers and the last two on polynomials. What we covered today was part refresher and part new stuff for me, having learned about complex numbers my senior year of high school in International Baccalaureat Higher Level Math, and not having seen them since.
The professor was really good, both amusing and informative. Unfortunately, his hand-writing was terrible and you could easily fall behind, through a combination of him moving fast and having a somewhat-thick Hungarian accent. This is the first time I've had a college professor with an accent (excepting Chinese, of course), and it's rather strange. I need to focus much more intently. This professor also teaches number theory, which is a course (one of many) I would like to take, but don't really have the time for.
After class, I went out and, after trying several more stores, finally found some notebooks. They're not exceptional, and the folder situation is less than ideal, but they'll do.
I returned to my apartment, where I met up with some people. We hung out for awhile and then several of us went to go get dinner. We returned to a restaurant I had been to before, and I got some always-fantastic garlic cream soup to accompany my pork páprikas with those wonderful noodle things. It was a good meal, though the service was slow.
And now, a cultural note! PDAs, or public displays of affection, are much bigger here than in the States. At restaurants, bars, on the street, in the metro, and certainly in the baths...people are all over their significant others. It's...uncomfortable. I bring it up here because a couple sitting behind me at the restaurant were a rather stunning display of this. They were there for the entire time we were, had gotten there before, were staying after, and I don't think they were eating much, just shifting around in the four or five seats at their table and ...enjoying each others' company.

Sunday was a simple day. I got much sleep and relaxed in the morning, making myself a simple lunch of eggs, mushrooms, and small piece of bacon.
In the afternoon, I met up with several people at the Szechenyi baths. The baths are a very popular thing here, so I decided to give them a try. It was awesome. Possibly the most expensive thing I've done since I got here, about 3500 forints for a ticket, but very fun. The baths are a huge complex, in a neat old building (that I forgot to take a picture of) in city park. I found a bus that went most of the way to the city park, so that was exciting. The stop was in Hero's square, the entrance to the northern part of city park.

It's a beautiful square. Anyways, after some wandering I eventually found the baths. After paying, I had to go around to the other side of the baths, as the lockers were full at the main entrance. After much confused wandering and fiddling with lockers, accompanied by discovering a good deal of other Americans at the baths, we finally figured everything out. Unfortunately, we had also split our party and so had to go wander through the baths to try and find the person we had lost. We spent about 20 minutes wandering through the inside of the complex, finding no sign. Eventually, we stepped outside briefly, to look at the pools, which were much larger, foggier, and hard to see. And, lo and behold, we found our missing person. Quite a stroke of luck. About 10 minutes later we managed to run into the final member of our party, who had showed up a little later. How we all managed to find each other I'm not quite sure, since the place was huge and, with all the steam, difficult to see around.
The baths were a lot of fun, but it's a strange experience to swim when it's so cold at. The pool we spent the most time in was heated to 37-38 C, around 100F, which was rather nice when contrasted with the snow-covered ground and below freezing temperatures out of the water. It made traveling between pools a terrifying experience though.
After floating around and talking for awhile, we left and, unable to find the bus stop for the return trip, walked back to my apartment, turning the 10 minute trip into a 25 minute one. This was unfortunate, but after we returned to apartment, several other people joined us and we made a bunch of fried rice. A bunch is an understatement. We made an absurd amount of rice. There were about 9 people, all told, eating rice. We made four large batches of rice. Each was about three or four large portions. One of the batches featured bacon, two featured ground pork (the fat in those three batches was bacon fat), and one featuring vegetables. Carrots, peas, turnip, vinegar-steamed leeks and broccoli, eggs, onions, garlic, and ginger were all used in various combinations throughout the dishes. It turned out fantastically, with more than enough food to feed everyone, and much rice left over.
And that was about the extent of my Sunday, as classes started the next day, so people needed to get some rest.
Oh, but we did get another noise complaint. Just as everyone was leaving, our neighbor who speaks no English came to yell at us. At around 10, so I suppose it was justified, but still. Ah well, so it goes.

Saturday was a very exciting day. It was the day of the mangalica festival. I have been excited about this festival all week, and there were several instances at the party on Friday night of someone mentioning the festival, followed by my excited chanting of "pig, pig, pig." Seriously, I was very much looking forward to this festival.
And I was not disappointed. It took place near Parliament, a fantastic building that, up to this point, I had only seen from across the river. This was also the first day where we had real snow, which was good and bad. On the plus side, snow! On the other hand, cold...

Everything looked really good with the snow. And it had been cold anyways, so I still count the snow as a win. The above is the view from the metro stop, the pig festival itself was about two blocks away, in a cool looking square centered around an obelisk.

It was a very classy looking square, currently filled to the brim with all sorts of stalls.

There was a great variety of stalls. Most of the stalls sold food of some kind. There were lots of various sausages and other smoked pork meats to take home. There was more cheese for sale in this market than I've seen in my entire time in Budapest. There were hot sausages, ready for consumption. There were more elaborate preparations, which looked to be from stores who had set up shop in the market. There were non-food stalls, not nearly as exciting, selling a variety of goods. And there was that theater, which you can see in the lowest picture above. When I first walked in there was a singer singing with a recorded accompaniment, but for most of the time there was no one performing there and they were just playing popular American songs from various decades. It was an interesting mix, this being a festival in the capital of Hungary to celebrate a uniquely Hungarian breed of animal that produces Hungary's favorite meat, and yet the music they played was almost exclusively American.
Anyways, I had only eaten a bowl of granola before showing up, so I was hungry and ready to eat. I arrived with one friend (the disapproving-looking individual in the leftmost photo), much earlier than anyone else, so we spent a good deal of time walking and eating. We first did a loop of the market, scoping things out. In the course of this, we discovered a stall filled with some of the mangalica themselves.

They come in a variety of colors, as you can see, are always covered in this wiry, curly hair, and get to be quite large. Our curiosity as to the nature of the pigs sated, we then made our way back to the entrance of the festival in order to start eating them. First was a delicious sausage sandwich: a hot sausage/hotdog (it was more of a combination of the two than the large, fatty beast that is called a sausage here), on a toasted bun, topped with fried onions and some brown mustard. It was delicious. This was accompanied with a large, steaming, delicious glass of mulled wine. After more wandering, and the discovering of an entire avenue of cheese stalls, we bought a grilled cheese. That is, the cheese itself was grilled (think paneer or halloumi) and then put on a piece of toast. It was delicious, warm, chewy, and having a slightly gouda-y taste that was interesting. They also called it grill sajt, for some reason combining the English word for grill with the Magyar word for cheese.
There was more walking, more discovering of areas we had missed in our first loop, including passing this:

We weren't quite sure whether these were just for show or would be eaten. Later in the day, there was only one of them left, so it's definitely possible that one of the stalls was selling them. In which case, I'm disappointed that I missed them...
After more wandering, we found another delicious looking dish. It was basically crepes filled with a tsatziki-like sauce (it looked yogurty and contained dill), topped with a combination of bacon and onions. It was delicious, but my favorite part might have been the dough. It wasn't thin and pancakey like crepes are, it was thick and substantial. It reminds me very much of something I've had before, but I can't remember what. It wasn't sweet at all, it was good and hearty. Perfect for filling with things.
After finishing this and making one final loop, we finally ran into other people from BSM in the market. They were, as should be expected, eating lunch. After this, we wandered around with them for awhile, eating a little more. At this point, everyone started showing up, so we ran into many many people. More mulled wine was had and then the most exciting food of the day. A group of us wandered over to near where the pig stall was and found a wonderful, wonderful dish.

Note the happiness on my face. That's a bread bowl filled with very hot, very delicious, slightly spicy pork and vegetables, tender and wonderful. There was an incredible amount of pork fat in it, deliciously rich. We're thinking that the meat in the bowl was possibly from the head and face of the pork, because we saw some heads in the stall we bought it from and the fat could very well have been cheeks. Now, as I didn't plan this out very well, this was my fourth dish. I could not, in no way, finish this, so I offered it to everyone I could find. Everyone tried it, and realized it was delicious.
This was the last of the food I ate here, though I did pick up two different types of cheese, one a nice trappist cheese, trappist as in the monks, like the ones who brew beer in Belgium, and one the cheese that is used for grilling. I then picked up a think of sausage, spicy according to the shop owner, and a slab of bacon. It was just a one-pound straight up slab of bacon, the kind you have to cut pieces off of. I had a little bit of it this morning for lunch...it was delicious. And rendered down quite a lot....there's a lot of fat in it. Delicious though.
At this point I had been here for around two and a half hours and everyone else was starting to wander out, so I took my leave from this magical place. I was always freezing at this point, so I was fine with heading out.
I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, and ate a small, late dinner consisting of granola, yogurt, and an open faced nutella sandwich. I then met up with some of the guys on the program, the guys I had played Magic with, to play a card game called Race for the Galaxy. I had never heard of it before, but they had been singing its praises since we got here, so I decided to give it a try. It's a very good game, one that I figure I will play much of in this semester. Unlike Magic, you don't need your own cards, there's one deck that everyone plays from, which is very nice.
So that was my Saturday, a day of pigs, food, and cards.

Yesterday was Friday, Friday.
The final day of classes consisted of a test and then each section putting on a performance. The test was multiple choice and didn't count for anything, since we're in no way graded or anything in the class, but it was a nice evaluation of what we learned. The little skits we all put on were entertaining, I should say. The best part though was before we did any of the skits. We had our classes in the morning in the language school, but after lunch we headed over to the university for the afternoon. We showed up in the room we were told to go to, and found it filled with Germans. There appeared to be another class, filled with German post-college pre-med students, meeting in the same room at the same time. Since none of the teachers were present, we all sat in the back looking confused. After a while, the teacher of the Germans walked up to us and asked if we knew what we were doing there. We said, nope, just kind of waiting. He seemed annoyed with us, but just went to the front of the room and started teaching. After a while, we then started filtering out of the room, pretty sure something had gone wrong. After a while of milling around in the hallways, our teachers arrived and, after much conversation with the administration of the college, straightened out the room. Turns out, we had been correct. I have no idea what the Germans were doing or where they were supposed to be or why the mix-up occurred, but it was an amusing little adventure.
After the skits, we had a small amount of time to kill, so I wandered the neighborhood with some people, trying to find a coffee shop and discover what's in the immediate vicinity. Not much was found, only a cafe that sold machine-made coffee, but we only went in one direction, so perhaps better luck will be had later.
We then had our orientation, which was very similar to the one I had the week after my arrival, so it wasn't very exciting. However, we also spent a good deal of time talking about classes, what they'll be, who's teaching them, when they're offered. This was very exciting. Real classes start on Monday, and it's something everyone's looking forward to.
I think I will try and take intermediate Hungarian language, statistics, introduction to abstract algebra, combinatorics 1, combinatorial and computational aspects of bioinformatcs, and dynamical systems & bifurcations. That's 5 math classes and 1 non-math class. This might end up being too much, in which case I'll drop one of them. But I have a 3 week shopping period before registration, so I think I'll be good. 3 of the math classes are also most likely going to be reading classes, which is when the class has fewer than 6 people in it and it therefore only meets once a week, primarily as a discussion and review section, with much work being done on one's own. So, I'm not sure if that'll make it better or worse. We'll see.
After the orientation we had a little meet & greet with the professors, so we could talk to them and, more importantly, set up a preliminary meeting time for the reading courses, which weren't scheduled yet. All of mine ended up happening on Friday, somehow, which is a shame. That will most likely change though, as people get a better idea of their schedule. Because no one wants classes on Friday, if they can help it.
I returned to my apartment to make dinner and pay my landlord. Dinner was delicious, consisting of fried rice with tofu, onions, mushrooms, egg, and arugula. Paying the landlord was not as entertaining, as the cost of utilities was more than expected. The good news is that hopefully he'll be able to get our oven replaced by next weekend. The bad news is that my roommate who was in this apartment last semester as well said he claimed the same thing almost every week. Now, however, he says he knows a friend of his father's who knows a guy who knows a place where they sell just the oven, instead of the oven/stove combination, which is what he needs. Hopefully, this means something will happen. I would like to be able to bake again!
After the landlord left, my new roommate left to go meet up with his girlfriend, another student on the program who had just gotten back today (they met here last semester), and me and Boris went over to an apartment belonging to several of the BSMers for a party. Almost all of the people on the two programs were there at some point, which was pretty impressive. Much time was spent talking to people, meeting the new people who hadn't done the language school, and drinking hot chocolate mixed with honey liquor. I went back with a group of people who live close to the same train station that I do and so discovered a night bus route that gets me home! This is very exciting news, as it goes much closer to my flat, allowing me to completely skip the sketchy walk between Blaha Lujza ter and Keleti that I'd been making previously. My roommate and I have made this walk several times past midnight, and each time we have been solicited by women that we're pretty sure are prostitutes. They leave us alone if we keep walking, but it's nice to just be able to bus it back home.

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.

Wednesday, Wednesday. Not much happened today, so this will be short.
There were no classes today. Instead, I woke up early and met up with pretty much everyone on the program at the university where math classes will be held. From there, we headed on over to the Hungarian immigration office, to try and get our residence permit taken care of. This involved, mainly, a lot of time waiting around, and a small amount of time filling out forms. Much bananagrams was played while waiting, and everything went relatively smoothly, except that one of my forms wasn't dated, so I need to get a new version of it that's properly signed and dated and then return it to the office in 10 days. This wouldn't be too big a deal except that the office is pretty much all the way across Budapest, which is very obnoxious. Ah well; I don't have much of a choice.
Afterwards, I simply returned to the apartment, ate lunch and relaxed.
I basically then decided I was too tired to do anything and so spent the rest of the day relaxing some more, cooked myself dinner and enjoyed my newly-purchased tea. I'm enjoying leeks. They are a tasty vegetable, and easily prepared. I've been steaming them, essentially, just throwing them in a pan that I have a little bit of hot oil in and then tossing in some vinegar and covering the pan. I'm not sure the oil is necessary (I've been throwing garlic and ginger in the oil and so giving it some flavor as well), so next time I'll try it in a hot dry pan. They have a nice meaty consistency and absorb flavors pretty well. They seem to be the most substantial fresh green vegetable I can find. Supposedly spinach has been found, both fresh and frozen, though I've yet to see it. I may need to venture to more exciting grocery stores. Something green I can throw in a pan, instead of eating raw like the arugula I have, would be very nice. Markets will be explored soon, in order to fix this.
There is also a festival this weekend, celebrating the mangalica, a special Hungarian breed of curly-haired pig, which sounds very exciting. It's free and consists largely of petting and eating pigs, as far as I can tell. So that's definitely happening.

Tuesday was an interesting day.
I was tired and so decided to sleep in and miss the first hour and a half of class. When I arrived at class, I discovered that most of the people in my section had had similar ideas, because for the first hour or so there were only two people (out of fifteen) present. More people showed up around when I did, so by the end of the day we had made it up to a grand total of six people. People are getting tired of the class and several of the people in our section had taken the day to go into the countryside to eat the Hungarian crepe-like pancakes and drink wine. So, that explains the low attendance...
Lunch was a sandwich I had brought from my apartment, and so relatively unexciting. With sandwiches, I believe, the focus is always on the meat and cheese. But the important thing is the accoutrements. Determined by your focus, but critical to making an enjoyable and interesting sandwich. I went with mustard, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tomatoes and arugula to flush out my sandwich of salami and cheese (an unidentified mild white cheese), and it was rather successful. But much less exciting than the lunches I've gotten when I eat out.
After class, I met with a connection, a Hungarian graduate student studying English at ELTE, one of the two big universities in Budapest (the other being BME, which is associated with our program). We went to a bar with one of his friends and discussed Budapest, what I'm doing, what they do. I got a large number of recommendations of places I need to go, from concert venues to bars to restaurants to parks and everything. They also told me about a wonderful sounding festival the city holds. It's called Gluttony Thursday, and on that day most of the restaurants in town offer everything on their menu for half off. It happens some day in spring, typically in March, and reservations are absolutely necessary on that day. So I need to scope out some places that are normally too expensive and make a reservation as soon as I find out what the date is...
I also talked to them about the places I had been, and said I had been over to the Four Tigers Market. They laughed and said that they've never been because it's an extremely sketchy place, like a ghetto or a shantytown and they're always scared of getting their stuff stolen from them when they pass by. I thought this was funny, because it really didn't seem too bad, but it's interesting to hear they're views of it.
I returned to my apartment, stopping to buy some groceries on the way, for a brief amount of time before turning around again and meeting up with people to make dinner. One of the guys on the program had volunteered to cook, and so made delicious chicken alfredo for about 7 of us. It was delicious, and we accompanied it with brie, wine, and palinka. It was my first time buying wine from a store to drink and it was...okay. The wine was very cheap (about 2.50 to 3 dollars a bottle) and not very good, but definitely better than you would expect for that price in the States. Plus, it was nice to have a glass of wine with dinner.
The apartment we were in was very nice. It was a one person apartment, but still very spacious, and the kitchen was incredible. Plus the building it was in was really cool looking and it was about a block and a half from the tea shop I had found the day before. All in all, it's pretty great. It's interesting to see different people's apartments and compare what we all got. Some people just got screwed in certain respects, but most people seem to have a nice place. The only thing is the rent...they seem to be all over the place. And don't really make sense, either based on location or on how nice the apartment is. It's kind of confusing.