Sziasztok mindenki!
Boldog ünnepnap kívánok. Ez múlt héten jó volt. Nincs hó de nagyon nagyon hideg van. Szenteste Debrecenben voltam és Karácsony második napja Egerben voltam. Szilvester Budapestban voltam. Ó, és Gratulálok új csere diákek!!!
The Christmas holiday started off pretty slow in comparison to how the holiday feels at home. On the 6th of December, we celebrated Szent Mikulás/St. Nicholas' Day. The week of the sixth all classes within the school would choose a day to celebrate with each other and exchange gifts. On the morning of the 6th, I was surprised with some candy and small gifts in my shoes. In Hungary, Santa Claus comes on the 6th and brings children small gifts and leaves them in their shoes. On Christmas, the baby Jesus brings gifts for the family. The 6th isn't a big holiday, except for the smaller children, but some friends from school still wanted to celebrate by going out to a karaoke club. I watched, using the excuse of not knowing Hungarian to the fullest. Watching them was more than enough fun.
On Christmas eve, I woke up to the sound of loud Christmas music from downstairs. As soon as I reached the bottom step, I was offered a quick breakfast then told to help decorate the tree with my host grandfather while my host grandmother was tying szalon cukor together, a brightly wrapped Hungarian chocolate candy, to decorate the tree with. It was like I had suddenly ran into a wall of Christmas. There were decorations, food being prepared and a tree appeared in the living room. This year, as I was told, was a red and gold year for decorating the Christmas tree. I've heard other exchange students mention that their host families did this as well. Instead of using all their decorations each year, they use one or two colors for their ornaments.
That afternoon we had lunch at my host grandmother's then everyone came over to my host parent's home to celebrate, eat, and open gifts. There was a large dinner with the special Hungarian fish soup and the main course of turkey. Some of the cousins laughed as they apologized for the "Thanksgiving foods". Before opening gifts the entire family sang Hungarian Christmas songs while sitting around the room by the tree. They were surprised that this wasn't a custom back at home and even more surprised to find out that I wasn't used to celebrating Christmas until the 25th!
Christmas Day is a day of traveling to visit friends and other family members. We went to my host grandparents' home in Eger and then we went to four homes of the family's friends and cousins that evening. It was more than exhausting! Everyone of course wanted to feed me or give me something to drink and no one spoke any English. My host sister though my inability to politely decline the offer of yet another Christmas meal was more than amusing.
On the 30th, my host family took me and another American exchange student to Transylvania with a large group of their friends for a winter hike. There were about 50 people all bundled up for what we were told would be a six hour hike through a meter of snow in -20 degree Celsius weather. It turned out that the snow wasn't quite that deep and the temperature a lot warmer than -5F! The bus ride was about 3 or 4 hours of loud speaking and laughter as they all opened their bottles of liquor and stood around the back of the bus (we started at 4am!) After winding up the snow covered mountain roads that were made of 180 degree turns as the bus zig zagged up the steep slopes, we put on all our gear and started our hike through the snow covered fields and pine trees. Finally I saw some snow!
As soon as we reached the top, my host father pulled two bottles of champagne out of his bag and everyone drank at the top. The way down was a great deal more amusing than the trip up. While this group had a good and early start which continued through the morning and at the top, it made it a hilarious spectacle to watch them climb - fall back down the mountain while continuing drinking songs and snowball fights. It was impossible to keep your footing and my host sister, friends and I decided it would be better to just slide down the steeper parts making it a competition to go down the mountain seeing who could stay on their feet the longest.
The best part of the day would have to have been the sunset over the mountains of snow. The sun colored everything gold and the clouds below us created a feeling of being in an everlasting desert of snow.
For New Years Eve, I went to Budapest to a party with my host sister and a few friends of hers. Budapest during New Years was filled with people from all over and the streets were filled with stands of hats, gloves, colorful wigs and noise-makers. Fire crackers were being lit everywhere and there were many stages set up for bands to play throughout the night. It was so cold that it was a welcomed treat to try some Hungarian hot wine. It's actually really good.
Later that night we all headed to the Danube River for the party. The party was thrown by a friend of hers on a yacht that was to sail around the river as soon as the ship contained the maximum allowed guests of 200 people. Everyone danced and sang the entire night as the DJ blasted music. At midnight, there was a brief countdown and everyone began singing a sort of Hungarian version of Auld Lang Syne and then we went out onto the boat deck. We passed the lit city, Parliament and other official buildings as well as pass under the major bridges. As we watched these go by, fireworks appeared up and down the riverside.
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