Weekend Update

Today was a lazy day to say the least. I was perhaps recovering from last night- not because I had too much to drink, but because I got home late. I repeat... it was not crazy, just really late. We had an end-of-term house party/birthday party for Jeff last night and about 100 people showed up. Luckily it was a large apartment (and amazingly the cops did not show up), but still, it was tight quarters. We went dancing afterwards and all the sudden it was 3:30am and I was taking the night bus home. After 11:30pm I have to take the night bus home instead of the train, and it turns out that after 4am it's no longer the night bus but the MORNING bus, and the MORNING bus doesn't go all the way to my house, so I got dumped out in the middle of who knows where and changed buses last night/morning at 4:30am to finally make it to my house at 4:45am. And my crazy host dad was on the internet when I walked in. Yikes.

In other news, I was feeling a bit down today (perhaps from the late, but not crazy, night last night) and needed a pick-me-up. So I decided to go by myself to see the movie "The Holiday" (which Monika and I affectionately named "Hazi swap"- hazi meaning house in Hungarian, and swap in English because we don't know how to say it in Hungarian!). After standing in line for 15 minutes for the tickets the lady informed me they had dubbed over the English (WHY?!?!) and that the movie was in Hungarian. I was let down, to say the least. So I went instead and bought a pair of socks and a Christmas card for my host parents (which somehow came to $7...crazy) and went home. Very disappointing. So to summarize the productive things I did today: well, I worked for maybe an hour on my last assignment. That was about it.

Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow I am going to the market with my host mom to get a small suitcase for my trip (I guess I don't eed to bring 70lbs worth of crap in my monster suitcases for 3 weeks around Europe) and ... something else. How sad, I can't even remember, and it's the highlight of my day. Oh that and we're going to have a little family Christmas dinner since I am leaving on Monday.

I am posting a picture of my host parents finally so that everyone can see who I am living with. This picture was taken in October when my dad came to visit.

Book Recommendations

I love that I was able to read so many good books this semester... none of which were at all related to class. I think I already recommended "Anil's Ghost" by Michael Ondaatje, about a forensic anthropologist in Sri Lanka. I also just finished reading "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss, another amazing read. I will let Amazon tell you what it's about. But suffice to say it's also amazing. I will go to the library this afternoon to pick up some good books for Eurotrip 2006.

Speaking of Eurotrip 2006, I finally put together a tentative itinerary, which brings us from Paris to Budapest over the period of December 27 to January 6, with stops in Germany and Italy along the way. It will be intensive, yes, but what other way is there to do it? Ryan and I have a Eurail pass and a few set plans along the way (such as seeing a friend in Munich), a few tentative plans (perhaps staying with Hospitality Club-ber in Berlin and seeing a friend in Bologna) and a whole lot of adventure to fill in the gaps. I am counting on snow- these past few days it's gotten bitter cold here in Budapest, and yet no real snow yet. Should be fun :)

With all this focus on books and traveling you can probably guess that I'm done for the semester... almost. I have one more question to go on a take-home exam for Qualitative Methods and then I'm officially done. But for all intents and purposes I'm already considering myself retired until January 9 when the winter term starts.

Update on my thesis plans: I am meeting with my professor the first week in January to put together a solid plan. Although I was able to find data from the WHO (that was the easy part!), I have lots of reading to do between now and January to come up with my specific focus. My preliminary thought is to look at the global polio eradication program, comparing quantitative data on how many people vaccinated in a particular country with # of new polio cases reported. I have data for at least 30-50 countries, so I can then run a regression and see if there is a relation between vaccinations and polio outbreaks, and try and use this conclusion to talk about one of the current polio countries (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria) and the policies they are employing to eradicate polio. I think the data will show there is a relationship between vaccinations and # of new cases, and yet why isn't this relationship holding true for the countries that still have polio, where extremely large-scale eradication campaigns are currently underway? I will know a lot more about the policy implications when I actually run the regression, but until then it's nice to theorize about what COULD be the reason for the continued polio. I am thinking something about size, ruralness, etc. But we'll see.

Update on spring semester: I am very excited to be taking only 4 classes next semester, which are Comparative Political Institutions, Qualitative Methods, Microeconomics and Ethics. Shouldn't be too bad. Best part: I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and some Friday mornings. And the earliest I start is 11am. Very excited about that. Should give me plenty of time to work on my thesis.

And finally, an update on the job search process. I think I have decided that I want to go back to Latin America. I think. So I've been sending out some cover letters and resumes and keeping my fingers crossed that someone will come back with a "yes." Knowing that I want to move towards public health, I am looking at jobs involving public healthcare financing reform, decentralization of healthcare, etc. I was pleased to see a lot of this going on in Peru. So we'll see.
*Countdown to Eurotrip 2006: 3 days!
*To-do: finish take-home exam, buy small suitcase, charge batteries for camera and empty memory stick, buy small present for host parents, return books to library and check out more, and most importantly... end-of-term (and Jeff's birthday) cocktail tonight!

The Christmas Season

Here in Budapest Mikulas, the Hungarian version of Santa Claus, comes to visit December 5-6. My host parents left me a basket of goodies from Mikulas and a note saying "Kelsey! Itt volt a Mikulas!" (Kelsey! Mikulas was here!- my host dad is the artist responsible for the Santa you see), as well as a chocolate Santa in my shoe. The typical treats from Mikulas include chocolates, oranges, peanuts and gingerbread cookies.

Last weekend I went to two of Europe's famous Christmas markets. Our intention was to actually do some shopping but somehow we were distracted by the hot wine and these circular sweet bread thingies. We walked around for awhile in the cooooooooold and Monika and I bought nylons so I can finally wear my skirts. LOL.

*Update on the countdown to Eurotrip 2006: 10 days.
*To-do list: 2 exams, 1 take-home exam, finalize 2 papers. We're getting there :)

Great week in Budapest!

I will admit I had a bit of a rough week last week. We'll call it the week 9 blues. It was the 9th week of the semester, 4th until the end, and I had basically had it. After a run-in with one of my professors, too many bureaucratic Student Council meetings and having finished East of Eden with no next great read on the horizon, I was in the slumps. I may have been a little homesick since it was Thanksgiving as well, even though I don't really like Thanksgiving as discussed here last week. But it's the principle behind it. Anyway, this week I turned things around and am happy to report:

-I got blood work done and did not pass out. This is good because it's scary enough in the U.S., let alone here in Hungary.
-I read two good books this week- actually one was GREAT. I highly recommend "Anil's Ghost" by Michael Ondaatje (who also wrote "The English Patient"). I won't spoil any of the store but will link you to Amazon.com so you can read about it. It's beautiful.
-I did GREAT on my macro exam, finished a paper for policy and cranked out not one but TWO drafts (corruption and rural development). In the past month I have therefore written... somewhere around 55 pages. Feels so good!
-I cleaned my room! I know it's a small thing, but it feels good to have things clean. Actually my host mom did most of it yesterday while I was out at this great cocktail party (!) and I just went through all my school stuff today. So now it's really clean AND organized.
-We got our 2nd semester schedules. I will have class Tuesdays and Thursdays and an occassional Friday. I'm happy because it will give me plenty of time to work on...
-Thesis! I met with two professors about my ideas to study Rotary's PolioPlus program and they were very supportive. So I basically have my idea and some of my data already.

I think that's enough good things to happen in one week, no?

*Countdown until the end (of the semester/leave for London!): 16 days
*To do before the end: 2 exams, 1 take-home exam, 1 economics problem set, 1 presentation and finalizing 2 papers