We started our second full day in Budapest by finding our way to the college international for class without Professor Hanson's help. Only one group got lost! We timed the trip, and it took almost exactly 30 minutes by tram and foot to get from the Professor's Guest House to the college. To start off our day of school, we had our first Hungarian class with Erika. We learned some conversational phrases but focused mainly on the pronunciation of the vowels and consonants that make up the Hungarian alphabet. The most difficult letter for most of us was the consonant "gy", which is pronounced as "dj". After about 2 hours of Hungarian instruction, we split up for lunch, which we could go wherever we wanted as long as we were back within an hour. We then came back together for our first official number theory class, where we kicked things off with the division algorithm! Very exciting stuff.
After about an hour and a half of class, we were done for the day and free to do whatever we wanted with our time (including finishing our homework). A few of us decided to go to the Market Hall, a huge building with stalls full of fresh meats, vegetables, fruits, and local authentic desserts. The upper floor is full of different stalls serving ready made meals. We discovered that produce in Hungary is very cheap! For 8 mandarin oranges, 4 apples, and 2 peppers, Sara spent less than 500 forints (just over $2!). After all of this, it was homework time! We did a Hungarian worksheet and our first number theory problem set, they weren't too bad! The workload will probably increase a bit from here on out though, yay!
After our homework was done, Professor Hanson took the second group of students out for a professor's dinner. We went to a restaurant called Zöld Kapu Vendéglö that served authentic Hungarian cuisine, which we found was very heavy on meat (including ox and venison). The menu was even organized by meat type!
After that it was back to the Professor's Guest House to look over our notes and get to bed early. The jet lag hasn't quite worn off yet, so by around 10:00 everyone in our group seems pretty ready to get some sleep. We're looking forward to learning more Hungarian and math tomorrow, and trying out some more of the local cuisine!
We should add that while all of this was happening, Elizabeth was back in our room with a very fun case of food poisoning, so all experiences are Sara's (Elizabeth is living vicariously). Hopefully she'll be out and about tomorrow!
Szia! (Goodbye!)
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