November

I know I haven't written in a while, but things in Hungary are going great. I tried to get the pictures from Spain together, but I still haven't gotten the first half of my pictures onto a CD. Maybe it's for the best. I have to have something to share when I get back.

Thanksgiving here was a new experience for sure. I was asked by an English teacher to give a presentation for a higher level English class explaining what Thanksgiving is, what traditions there are and some fun facts and pictures. Also, for my regular class, I made brownies which were a huge hit. I had so many people asking for a recipe and I didn't have the heart to tell them it was from a box! That, and it was Hershey's brand which you can't get here, even in the international foods section (which is where I finally found peanut butter). I do have a recipe and hopefully they'll like homemade brownies just as much, if not more than the ones I brought in. I did feel a little lonely later on that night knowing what my family was doing at that time at home and a little sad that the day was just a regular day filled with classes, big band rehearsal and music lessons.

The next day at school the we had to be in early at the request of the teacher for a Christmas play rehearsal whether you were in the play or not. I waited in the usual rehearsal spot of the main lobby and then went through the halls to try to find everyone. I met a classmate along the way who then led me to the classroom. When I went in I saw that everyone was working on something in the front of the room and the tables were all rearranged. I set my bag down and began to take off my gloves when everyone began to sing. Of course, I was extremely confused and surprised. I looked up and saw everyone trying to keep a straight face while facing me and singing a Hungarian holiday song. They all smiled with delight when they had finished and their one-person audience applauded them. Then one of the girls stood forward and told me that they had loved that I had brought in something for the class and shared my holiday with them and that they wanted to give me a Hungarian Thanksgiving. As she said this, a couple other students put out a couple baskets of rolls, muffins and cookies, some tea and they even had lit candles in the middle of the table. It was absolutely adorable and I didn't know what to say. We spent the remainder of the hour sitting together around the giant table made from desks, eating and drinking. It was definitely one of the most memorable Thanksgivings I'm sure I'll ever have.

This weekend was extremely busy as well. On Friday, I went to a music cafe with another exchange student and his host mother to see a gypsy band play. It was certainly interesting. The music was like a combination of Spanish guitars, Indian female vocals, and a techno beat with abrupt and rapid changes. It was a lot of fun to watch and even more fun to watch people try to dance to it.

On Saturday I was invited by a small group of boys to go to a ska concert. I have recently altered my schedule at the school so that I am with different classes throughout the week and they had asked what sort of music I like when I went to their class for the first time on Friday. They saw that we had something in common and invited me to a place called Lovarda which is on part of the University campus. It was a giant hall with two bars at the back, a place to stand on the floor and the lofts upstairs around the walls and seats at tables at the back and benches. It was the perfect thing to have at a university. It seemed to be like a sort of "battle of the bands" at first and not many people were there. As the night continued though, more people arrived and the music improved. The highlight was the band they took me to see, PASO (or Pannonia Allstars Ska Orchestra), a Hungarian ska band who is very famous in Europe. It was interesting to see such a popular band play at a place where the entrance fee was about five dollars for a night.

On Sunday, I woke up early and travelled three and a half hours to Budapest with the Melódia Big Band where we competed at the 8Th Annual Budapesti Big Band Találkozó Fesztival. The competition was fantastic due to most of the bands being there by invitation and being the best jazz bands in Hungary. - Our director was very nervous on the ride there and made sure to tell us all multiple times that we would be on the radio, would have pictures taken of us and would be recorded for the DVD they would be making of the festival. What a pep talk! We played and then watched the rest of the bands after us as well as the professional bands at the end. At the awards ceremony we received a gold rating and first place for our category of jazz band. They referred to us as a big band, but big is an understatement. There are 12 saxophones, 5 or 6 trombones, 7 or trumpet players, two guitar players, three percussionists, and of course a pianist and a bass player. And that's the just the usual number. I'm not sure how many there are if everyone is present. The main attraction for the festival's last night was the Police Big Band which really was a group of Hungarian police officers (I had my doubts at first). They played in casual uniform and of course played pieces such as Peter Gunn and Jazz Police. It was a fun trip and we didn't arrive back to Debrecen until 3am.

This month I will be going to Vienna with Rotary and partaking in as many Hungarian Christmas customs as I can. Here, St. Nicolas comes on the 6th of December and leaves small toys and candy in children's shoes and "the baby Jesus" comes on Christmas Eve. There's still no snow here unfortunately, although the rest of Europe has been overtaken by storms. I've been told that Debrecen is one of the few places in the country which doesn't normally have snow but I'm still hoping. The weather changes drastically from week to week here as well. For the past couple weeks it had been extremely cold at night and during the day warm enough for a rain which coated the sidewalks with slush. Yesterday as well as today it has been about 55° and sunny (not that I'm complaining).

I'll be sure to post updates and pictures of holiday festivities as well as Vienna when I can. Happy Holidays!

Update

Hello everyone! I'm sorry this one's going to be a little short. I've been very busy lately between all my sport and music activities, high school and classes at the university. Spain was a blast and once I get all of the pictures in order I will post some details about the trip. Hungarian lessons are going nagyon jó. I'm learning lassan, but "Hunglish" is better understood by my classmates than English.

Yesterday my host parents took me to see a Jethro Tull concert. To say the least, he's a little bit crazy. The most amusing part of the concert would have to have been when they asked me what he was saying between songs and I couldn't even understand him. For those of you who have seen the movie Pirates of the Caribbean , he spoke exactly like the main character; a very slurred, drawling British accent. The music was excellent and it was definitely an interesting experience (though not particularly Hungarian).



And, seeing as how today is election day, I thought I'd let you all know I "Rocked the Vote" and post the picture of my first time voting via absentee ballot.

Romania and Budapest

This past Friday I went on a class trip to the Buda Castle in Budapest. We spent the beginning of the day going through parts of the museum seeing old Hungarian alters from the 1300s. Unfortunately there was no photography allowed but the condition they were in was amazing. It looked as if some had been painted 10 years ago and they ranged from ones that could fit in your living room to ones that could only fit in a cathedral.



The Buda Castle itself is not that old according to Hungarian standards. The museum used to be a palace when the Turkish ruled over Hungary. Walking around the cobble stone streets on top of the hill that is the Buda Castle, you could see many buildings with large bullet holes in the stone or cement from the wars that have taken place in Hungary. It acts as a constant reminder to the people of what they and their country have gone through in the past and some of their stories are amazing.




Getting through Budapest was a bit interesting as you had to stop and pull over every so often as police officers cleared the streets for NATO officials to rush past for the meeting taking place that day.







Saturday morning, bright and early at 5am, I went on a hiking trip with the school to Transylvania. It wasn't the best ride over as I knew absolutely no one else on the trip. After the first two hours of hiking people who could speak a bit of English started to speak with me though. I have a little trouble continuing a conversation in Hungarian still.







Throughout the weekend we went to 5 caves, climbed 4 mountains and rock jumped through 3 or 4 rivers. The first day I even amazed myself with my ability to pick up rock climbing. When you're faced with a 40-foot drop and nothing to hold on to but a chain or metal rope, you'll learn fast. There were a few times my not-so-tall stature just wouldn't cut it to reach each foothold and I had to either lower or raise myself using all upperbody strength and letting my feet slide along the rock.









Though I had a blast, I would be lying if I said I never had a "what am I doing?!" moment. (And I love that kind of stuff!) There were plenty of long falls and very narrow, wet rock ledges to shimmy across over a cliff. I wish I could show you some of the awesome cliffs and ledges we had to climb up or down, but I was more focused on not falling than taking pictures!

Transylvania

This past weekend was spent in the South-Eastern portions of Transylvania with my hosting Rotary club. The first day of the trip was spent driving about 8 or 9 hours on a coach bus to a tiny village around Slobozia. The people greeted everyone by leading them across their newly build covered bridge into the village and to the town house/church for food and drink. They told us that the village had about 100 inhabitants but that 40 of the were gypsies, leaving 60 true Hungarian inhabitants (this is just to show you how everyone feels about the differences between people here). The reason for the club going to this village was to see what their donations had done to help them rebuild their village after a flood a couple years ago. The town was also able to save enough money amongst themselves as a farming community to have a paved road created leading to their town. This is what the villagers were most proud of saying it would open new doors for their community.









The village is self-sufficient and I saw one car there that wasn't one of the Rotarians', which I'm pretty sure belonged to someone who did not live there. They used horses and carts to get around and wore clothing that we would consider outdated by fashion standards.



After walking around the village and the Rotarians talking to them, they all started singing Hungarian songs and cheering that they were Hungarians, not Romanians. The political split of Hungary has left both sides unhappy and seeing the pride of these people who refuse to wave Romanian flags or adopt a new language is a rare and amazing thing to observe.

The next day was spent touring Southern Transylvania by bus and viewing the famous old churches and monuments from Hungarian history including the Catholic Church which holds the largest statue of the Virgin Mary. After, we went to Cheile Bicazului, which had amazing mountains, cliffs, and lakes. The roads to the lakes were absolutely incredible, bus or no bus. The roads were all very narrow and were made of straight passages followed by sudden 180 degree turns. On-coming traffic was always delt with carefully. In the mountains, we had a chance to get off the bus and walk down the road which had random vendors in shacks trying to sell souvenirs. I was a bit disappointed when I saw the mass-produced Native American and Asian trinkets as opposed to traditional Romanian items.










The third day we went to what I was told was an inactive volcano. When we got there, we all walked through some trees uphill on a narrow wooden bridge. Suddenly at one point the guide stopped, pointed something out as he spoke and then all of the Rotarians stepped off of the bridge onto the ground and proceded to hop around. I stood there for a minute or so looking at all of the 50+ men hopping and stomping in the forrest as their wives walked around or stayed on the walkway as well. A lot of the time, such as this, my not having a clue turns out to be more amusing than frustrating.






As it turns out, this inactive volcano had filled with water and then was covered in a layer of ash. This resulted in some plantlife to be able to grow (trees were no taller than 6 or 7 feet at the top) and the ground to always be saturated and bouncey due to an abundance of moss. Later in the walk we saw to open parts where the water could be seen which looked like small black ponds. Each were over 100 meters deep and people were advised to not step off of the bridge while walking close to these. The plants which grew around them were also very interesting. Wild Venus Fly Traps and strange looking mushrooms or mosses grew all around. I would have taken a picture but they were very small. The colors of it all made it look very strange.












The last day we spent about 15 hours in the bus, stopping to see a small town for it's church and mill and another to see the home of Elek Benedek, a famous Hungarian fairy tale writer. The village that we stopped at to see the church unfortunately wasn't allowing visitors in at the time but a lady had told us to see their local mill. It turned out that a cat with her three kittens was the biggest attraction of the town, though the mill was interesting. The next stop was to see a church which had been build with a giant wall around it, about three stories high, to protect the church during times of war. We had all gotten in our Sunday service here as the pastor went on for literally 2 and a half hours explaining all of the artifacts and artwork within the church. After this, many of the Rotarians were not as interested in making further sight-seeing stops.










As we were later told on the bus, the homes in this part of Transylvania did not have the common style of roof. They were build with a higher slope and wider so that food and supplies could be stored during the war. As I learned throughout the trip on the many stops, there is an extremely high number of stray dogs. Every town we stopped at had at least two or three which would come up to you to beg for food. There were sadly many more that you could see on the sides of the roads as well. Many didn't want to be near the dogs and frowned upon the other exchange student trying to pet them, though a few would feed the scraps of what they had left from lunch. It was sad to see how skinny they were and I felt bad that I didn't want to touch them for fear of getting ill. This was also probably why the cats were so popular.





The rest of the ride back home was filled with viewing the rolling tree-less hills and sharp mountains with farmers harvesting their potatoes and shepards waving to us as we went by. We left at roughly 8:30 in the morning and returned home at about midnight. The many people trying to get back into Hungary mixed with those commuting back to the large city we passed in Romania and car accidents made for a slow ride back.



As for any other updates, I am still slowly learning Hungarian and I have met more people and I am able to communicate somewhat in what they call "Hunglish". The next step will be to get my broken-Hungarian point across completely in their language. Though my teacher loves our half and half conversations as it helps out their English skills. This weekend is a Rotary food competition between Rotary clubs across Eastern Hungary and some neighboring country's clubs such as Romania. Next weekend I may be going to Austria if it doesn't snow on the mountain -ahh snow!. I'll be sure to post more pictures and updates if we get the okay for that trip.