Round 2 of Class

Szia!

After breakfast we made our daily commute to our classroom. It was exciting to recognize a few Hungarian words along the way and know how to pronounce them. Today's Hungarian lesson consisted mostly of learning verb conjugation and more vocab. We learned the useful phrase egészségedre which can be used as "Bless you" or "Cheers!" More importantly, Erika taught us that the accents are very important on this word. If you forget one of the accents, you will surely be laughed at by Hungarians because instead of "Cheers!" you will have just blurted out an embarrassing obscenity.  Finally, we ended our language session by singing a song in Hungarian. 

For lunch we tried the cafeteria in the building were we have class. It was both tasty and economical! Then we went back to the room for Number Theory where we learned the LCGCDT (Linear Combination Greatest Common Divisor Theorem). After taking a good fifteen minutes to write down the name of the theorem we spent the next four hours proving this gem of a theorem.

During our marathon of proof writing we bore witness to a tragedy; Professor Hanson broke a piece of orange chalk. Although this probably went unnoticed by most, we couldn't help but notice that this was just one of many pieces of chalk the professor has broken in just a couple days. Furthermore, just yesterday professor Bruce Hanson nudged a chair and it went flying off the stage across the room and landed in a noisy crash. These series of events leave us with no choice but to conclude that our professor possesses an unnatural amount of strength. Thus, we must wonder if he is truly grading papers at night or if he is actually busy fighting crime and being the hero Budapest needs. Bruce Hanson or Bruce Wayne? We are as unsure as ever. 

After class we found that the doors on the public buses are unforgiving as Michael found himself stranded on the curb staring through the bus windows as we waved goodbye. I (Jordan) continued on with a few others to the Alexandra Bookcáfe which was recommended by our Hungarian teacher. We wandered around the bookstore and admired the beautiful fresco on the ceiling of the cafe. Then we continued exploring and found the Hungarian State Opera House and the Dohány Street Synagogue. Both were quite impressive when lit up with lights. We headed back to the Guest House and worked on Number Theory and Hungarian homework. I went to dinner at Arany Pince with a few other people where we enjoyed our meal in the fun atmosphere, listening to some interesting music.

Alexandra Bookcáfe

Synagogue

Opera House

. . .

As I (Michael) stood watching Jordan and the bus ride off into the distance I came to the conclusion that buses aren't so cool. Luckily some fellow Oles were across the street and were headed on a journey in search of a coffee shop. I quickly met up with them and thus began our adventure. Our journey began by successfully boarding a city bus. After a bit of riding around we decided to get off. We barely made it out of the bus as the doors started closing on us before we had made it out...of course. Although we made it off the bus in one piece, we realized we were not so sure where we were or where we were going. Eventually we found ourselves at a rail hub where we were exposed to a bit of Hungarian culture. Here in Budapest there is a small fee to use many of the public restrooms. Someone in the group had to go and was brave enough to walk up to the sketchy looking hole in the wall. Just as he was about to attempt to enter, a man walked out of the bathroom and began speaking in Hungarian to our friend. Not more than ten seconds went by before two policemen appeared and approached our new bathroom friend. Pretty confused as to what was going on we dispersed from the area. In doing so we learned the valuable lesson of strategically planning bathroom breaks. Another lesson we learned was that although Budapest is a big city and it is easy to momentarily get lost in it, the public transportation is so good that even with a sparse knowledge of Hungarian it is easy to relocate yourself and find your way. We found this out as we happened to get on the correct tram that took us to a restaurant that was very near to our hotel and also had a cool ceiling (as seen below). Thus concluding our journey of life long lessons of Budapest.

Szia!

Michael and Jordan