Arriving in Budapest

Hello world! Here I am in Budapest, Hungary! It's the end of day two, and it's been a bit of a whirlwind tour. I don't have much time to post, so I'll be quick. I'm here with a group of about 20 students, our professor, and his family. We're here to take classes and learn what life is like in a different culture. I'll explain more about my classes and such later.

I met up with most of the group in Toronto, where we boarded a plane to Dusseldorf, before catching another plane to Budapest. it was a looong day of travelling, and I and my stomach were very happy to reach solid ground. We moved into our dorms and then set off walking around the city. We mostly just wanted to sleep, as it was the middle of the night where we came from, but we made the smart decision to stay awake to fight off jet-lag. It was an exhausting day, and never in my life have I been so excited to eat pita and hummus. Eventually, we made our way back and slept for about 13 hours.

Today was a national holiday in Hungary. It was Saint Stephen's day. (no, not Christmas-time St Stephen) So again we headed downtown to join in the festivities. There were free tours of Parliament and free entry into the Art Museum. However, I and a few others were not feeling up to more walking and decided to go check out the air show by the river. (the Danube) It was... meh. There were a few planes that flew by but it wasn't anything super special. But the real attraction were some pools on an island in in the city. Unfortunately, we ended up walking more than a mile to get there. ...so much for not wanting to do a lot of walking! But finally we got there, and it was so worth the walk. Admission was 2300 forints (about $12) and there were a series of pools at different temperatures and with different features. My personal favorite was the wave pool, but there was also a pool with a fast moving current. (kind of like a lazy river, but faster and without the blow up rafts) Then we met up with the rest of our group at the art museum where we enjoyed a fireworks show.

Anyway, that's a short update on what I've been up to the past few days. In the future, I hope to be a lot more informative about life and curiosities of living in Budapest, but today was more of a list of happened.

szia!

Jen