: )
expressing arrival in budapest on the sunniest of summer afternoons requires an eloquence I don’t at the moment possess, my brain being otherwise occupied by remembering the name of my train stop and the fifteen coteachers I really ought to know by now. none the less, impressive doesn’t come close, this place felt like home from the moment I stepped off the plane (and went through the fastest border crossing in recorded history – three minutes in line for the stamp, only stopped in customs due to my utter confusion when completely unconfronted – nary a question let alone a body cavity search)
the city turned into a whirlwind of meetings, language lessons, trains, and tipsy hill climbing – it was almost a relief to be picked up tuesday morning by two lovely ladies soon to be co-teachers at the cutest little elementary school in quite possibly the cutest little village in hungary
yes, it’s a bit kitchy. yes, there are too many tourists. but it’s summer, they’ll soon go away and leave me and a few cantankerously fun residents to freely wander the cobbled streets and slip from the timestream in art-lined cafes.
I’m typing this from the bank of the danube, which is quite a bit more smelly than it appeared in pictures. still, looking along a sandy path lined by wrought iron gas lamps it’s truly quite difficult to muster a complaint. aah, the church bells are ringing, distracting me from the odd looks I’m getting by the romantic couples strolling by. does a laptop ruin a mood? I think not; this is perhaps why I’m single.
it’s more difficult to articulate stories this time around. perhaps it’s simply not exotic enough. perhaps I’m just too busy looking at other things (like the cellar I spent the day cleaning to get ready for the opening of the school on monday ; ) this will be helped along greatly by the arrival of internet in my flat, finally corrolating memory time with laptop usage. this, of course, assumes I’ll eventually manage to get internet in my flat – the hungarians share the possibly-communist-leftover charachteristic of being rather unwilling to actually get anything done – as further evidenced by fourteen females standing around for half an hour debating whether the wooden helicopter still deserved its prior ceiling placement.
the smoking amusement.
in a country in which the non-smoking section required by law is usually tucked away in back next to the lav, I managed to find myself in a non-smoking house. ! Zhuzhi (or however you spell her name), the headmistress of the school, apparently signed a contract for this. And didn’t find it worth mentioning, even though one of the first things we did together was pop out for a cig. Hmm. The daughter of the landlord, who’s got rather good english, was over today to meet me and trade questions, and came back after a bit to ask if I smoked in the house. Is this a problem? Well…
She decided that as long as it wasn’t excessive and I kept the window open it was ok (though whether this is really ok or not I’ve yet to suss out). She came back after lunch to make sure I knew that it wasn’t a problem with me, it was a contract thing with zhuzhi, and I shouldn’t worry at all. She walked away, only to show up rather puckishly a moment later to say only “I just want to say, I like you!” and run away again. : )