7:00 am- Wake up. Shower and get dressed. Have breakfast.
8:20am- Leave house to catch 8:32am commuter rail into city.
8:55am- Arrive at Margaret Bridge, walk to language school.
9:00am- Language school begins. We start with exercises to refresh our memories about what we supposedly learned the day before, and then go into new material. This picture shows my teacher (in the front with the beige sweater) and the other students. It came out a bit dark and blurry- I am hoping my camera did not get water damage at the fireworks.
10:30am- Break. We make coffee and tea in kitchen at language school and sit around and chat... in English, German, Spanish- basically, anything except Hungarian!
10:45- Break is over, and we are back into the heavy Hungarian. When our teacher asks us to make up sentences and we come up with things like "I do not speak Hungarian" and "Hungarian is hard," she makes us come up with even more sentences! It appears she believes in the principle of positive thinking... though I myself am not yet convinced.
12:15pm- We get our homework assignments for the next class and head out. Normally I will go into Budapest with one of the other students and get something to eat (we are on a mission to find the best CHEAP eatteries in Budapest!) and take care of whatever we have to take care of- getting our bank accounts straightened out, cell phone, post office, etc. This mainly involves a lot of walking around the city and trying our very best not to get lost (he he).
4-6:00pm- Jump on the commuter rail and head home. I found an English language library and use the hour daily on the train to get some great reading in.
4:30-6:30pm- Arrive home, have dinner, do my homework with my host father and "study" by trying to have an understandable conversation (in Hungarian) with my host parents. Check email, watch the news.
7:00pm- A Hungarian soap opera that my host dad loves comes on at 7pm, so we all sit and watch that. At this point I understand very very little (since it is in Hungarian) but I have managed to understand that it is about a hospital here in Budapest.
9:00- You would be amazed how totally exhausting it is to try and carry on for 12-14 hours straight in an unknown foreign language. By 9pm I am totally exhausted and usually lay down to watch TV, read, etc.
Two events this week are tied as the high points: first, I finally figured out how to work the window blinds. Sounds like a simple task but for some reason they really tripped me up. I somehow communicated to my host mom that I had no clue how to work them and she showed me. Definitely an accomplishment! More importantly, this week I had my first real conversation on the street ENTIRELY in Hungarian. I stopped a Hungarian on the street, asked directions and actually understood his response. I was so impressed with myself! A close runner-up for highlight of the week is the multiple times I was mistaken for a Hungarian. I went to the bank with a fellow American; he was trying to explain that his internet banking was not working but the lady did not understand him and she turned to me asking for clarification. Ha! As I was trying to get out "nem beszelek magarul" she figured out that I was not Hungarian.
The weather this past week was quite cold- people were wearing sweaters, jackets and an occassional scarf and they were selling hats and gloves on the street. This coming week is supposed to be warmer. The weather this weekend is beautiful so I will go tomorrow morning and walk around Margaret Island, a popular place to lounge, swim, walk and run, etc.
2 comments:
Post a Comment