Not My First Post?

My roommate, Jim, told me that everyone always starts their blogs with the post title "My First Post." I'm just a rebel.

So here I am in Budapest. (If you're savvy with the Magyar language, you know that the "s" is pronounced as the English "sh".) I've been here for three full days, and my main activities have been getting settled in my apartment, walking around the neighborhood, shopping, and getting to know my roommates.

Budapest was formed in the 19th century by combining the cities of Buda, on the west bank of the Danube, and Pest, on the east bank. Buda is prettier and more historic, containing the castle district and hilly residential communities, while Pest is flat, commerical, and cosmopolitan. Both my apartment and the BSM program site are in Pest, about 1.5 miles away from the river.

My apartment is great--it's a couple minutes' walk from the school and my landlord Eszter is one of the student coordinators for BSM, so it's easy to communicate with her. The apartment consists of a kitchen, a bathroom, a WC, and our three rooms, which are quite spacious. I have two roommates: Jim from Cleveland/Wooster College and Spencer from Vermont/Oberlin; they're both cool guys.

My best experience thus far was on Friday when I took a walk down to the Danube, across the bridge to Buda, and up "Gellert Hill" which has a bunch of cool statues on it and offers a great view of the city. Unfortunately my camera wasn't behaving and I didn't get pictures…so you'll just have to take my word that it was cool.

I was the first to get here on Thursday--Jim arrived on Friday, my friend Ivan from HMC got in Saturday night, and Spencer came in yesterday. Ivan lives close by and his roommate doesn't arrive until February, so he's been hanging out with us and stealing our DSL internet (yes! we have that)

It'll be a while until we find the best places to eat and shop here, and we have many local sites to see, so the discovery of Budapest will be an ongoing process. It's hard right now because none of us know ANY Hungarian, and while even grocery clerks know some English, it's painful to expose ourselves as an ignorant Americans. On Wednesday we start the two-week-long intensive Hungarian course at the Babilon language school (main classes for BSM don't start until early February), so hopefully we'll get better at communicating soon.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be motivated enough to write extensive posts like this for much longer…but we'll see…

I'm so excited for this semester!


The courtyard in our apartment building…spooky


A lake in the City Park that becomes a skating rink in winter


Me, Ivan, Spencer


Street near our apartment


Keleti train station


Heroes' Square statues