A Trip to the Countryside

Today we went with our contact teacher, Agi, to her countryside cottage. But before that we went to the Achaun (pronounced Ocean). It was a HUGE super market. Parts of it even looked like a mall with various stores in it. Then we headed to this small bakery a couple of towns over, on the way to her cottage. After that we went out for Langos!




I love Langos!!!!!

Next was our final destination, the cottage. It was unbelievable! I love how, in Hungary, you can go 10 minutes outside of the city and be in a quaint country village. I have to be honest, my jaw dropped when I saw the amazing view from her cottage!

See..... pretty awesome huh? Val and I were so honored that she took us to see it. We even sat out on the patio and ate food and drank wine with Agi.

Great times. We can't wait to visit people in the small towns :D

The End of Orientation

Yesterday was the end of orientation for Val and I. We went to the various classes, we missed Hungarian because my back was causing me problems, and then everyone went out to the Bagolyvar (not sure if that's the spelling on that one) and it was really good. They have it set up so that you can order a "Menu" and they bring out different courses depending on the Menu you get.
When we fist walked in there was a guy playing the hammer dulcemer, which seems to be a popular thing in Hungary! It's very cool.

You can also see how nice the restaurant was in this video. Very swanky! The other night we also just stumbled upon St Istvan's Basillica. It was unbelievable. I can't get over how amazing the architecture is here. Budapest is truly a hidden gem of a city!

This was walking towards the basillica.

I love the very artistic lighting on it. It adds to the dramatic ambiance and made for a beautiful scene.

Anyways, skip ahead to the present. We are currently sitting in the computer room waiting to meet our contact teacher for our school. We shook hands with her and she seems incredibly nice. Val and I are both scared and excited to see our school, apartment, and potentially our boss and coworkers. This will probably be the last time that we'll be able to easily access the internet until we get it in our apartment so there should be many long posts to come about the first day of school and about the continuing saga of our lives.

(On a side note: I suck at spelling so if you see a typo know that I can't spell check because the computer thinks that I spelled everything wrong in Hungarian)

Gellerthegy and a Hungarian Speaking English

So we finally figured out how to pull out money. Thank God!!! We paid the rest of our money that we needed to and we're now debt free. Hurray! So the other day we climbed up Gellert Hill and took some video.

It was pretty tough but the view was worth it! This was mostly at the top. We didn't go ALL the way up but that will be an adventure for another time.

And finally for a little something extra, this is Maria, one of the instructors, speaking english. This gives you an idea of what the Hungarian accent sounds like!

The audio is pretty quiet but you can still kind of hear her : /.

Last night we had some pretty awesome experiences though. We showed some people the movie "Kontroll" and we also hung out in front of the hotel with some people and that was pretty fun as well. We and Val also drew some monsters. I'll be sure to post them! O_o

That's all for now! I haven't been carrying around my camera for some bizarre reason so my future posts will have much more interesting things in them!

Orientation

Just a real quick update. There hasn't been too much to blog about. Mainly because we've been trying to take it real slow. After all, we do LIVE here so we don't want to burn ourselves out on everything.
Today was ok. Actually it kind of sucked. It turns out the bank's debit card stuff isn't working. Whatever that means and they have no idea when it will be back up. Kind of annoying. Other than that orientation was actually pretty fun and we learned a lot.

Day 2 And There's a LOT To Talk About

Ok. SO it's really the next day here but I couldn't find the time to blog yesterday. I did want to make sure to do it at all though. Yesterday we went to the zoo, even though we originally planned to go on a paddle boat ride.










The plan kind of fell through when the park ponds were all dried up and hence unusable for a paddle boat. However, the zoo was amazing! I've never been to a zoo where you can get closer to the animals! You can even feed most of them, which would be unheard of in the US. Here's a look:

These were the hippos that we saw. They would open their mouths whenever someone would put their hand up. They were always expecting some sort of food.

A Giraffe!

There were these amazing baboon babies. They were really playful as you can tell. I'm amazed at how people are allowed to feed the animals or at least I think they are..... regardless, everyone did feed them and it makes for a much more enjoyable experience than American zoos.

This was another instance of something that would NEVER happen in the US. These rhinos were in an enclosure that was seperated from people by a few flimsy wood poles and pieces of metal. It makes for both dangerous and amazing fun times :D.

We didn't really do much today so not much to post about on that. Anyways, anyone who's in Budapest MUST MUST go to this zoo. It's deceivingly large and full of amazing things!

Been a Crazy Past Couple Days!

Val and I have been in Budapest less than 24 hours but we have already done so much! Today is Szent Istvan day and there has been a lot of activities around the city. Val took a bunch of pictures of some funny things that we saw on the plane on the way over so I'll let her handle all that stuff.
Val and I had a long conversation about how scared we were last night and this is what conclusion we came to:




This morning, when we went out, we were terrified to do even the simplist thing, order breakfast. We walked around for a good half an hour, past cafes and etterems (restaurants), because we were too scared to speak Hungarian to anyone. We settled on a small place on Vaci Utsa (Vaci street) and went inside. the people were very nice and we got a reasonably priced meal. It was very enjoyable and the girl at the counter spoke English to us while we spoke Hungarian to her. After breakfast we decided to head over to the area around parlaiment and have a look around. Well, to our astonishment there was a little celebration going on!

This was a little area on the road. There was a lot going on there!

This was some of the opera that was going on!

Here is the greatest thing I've ever eaten! Langos!

and to top it all off a sweet gypsy band!

This was pretty much our day today. We did a lot and now we're too exhausted to even leave the hostel for the fireworks. Oh well, it was worth it! We're having an amazing time so far and Budapest is really an amazing city!

Harom Napmulva Budapestre Megyunk!!!!

(3 days until we go to Budapest)

I can't believe that we're leaving so soon. This Wednesday we will be leaving for another country. It's become almost impossible to comprehend as it gets closer and closer. I don't think that I'll comprehend it until we're actually on the plane.
I've been struggling with the thought of missing everyone and I'm not really sure how I'll be feeling after we leave. I really just hope that this sadness will leave and that it will be replaced with only hapiness and an urge for adventure upon entering Budapest. I am excited but I feel really terrible for making people feel sad.
I don't think I'll have time to think about any of this when we leave though and I know that everything will be fine.
Budapest, here we come! :)

6 days and counting

Only six more days to go. It's driving me crazy. Every day seems to drag but I know that when we get to Budapest it will all be worth it! I'm scared, excited, happy, and anxious all at once. I made the unfortunate mistake of counting the hours for a while! What was I thinking!??!!?! Well, at any rate I can't wait and doing something, anything becomes a chore. I kind of snapped at Val today, which I still feel kind of bad about : /. <--- that's an upset face by the way. Val was packing and I wasn't and when she said I should pack I kinda flipped out!!! Lame on my part. Well, to finish this post out. BUDAPEST BUDAPEST BUDAPEST! :D <-----that's a REALLY happy face!

Major Overhaul

I made some pretty dramatic changes to my SHIVU. I was very displeased with the limbs and their lack of interesting shapes. It just seemed far too normal. However, I did some concept drawing and redid the limbs as well as adding some decals. There still needs to be a lot of tweaking with everything but for now they are as they are. However, I am very satisfied with the results.
I also added some basic feet and am also pleased with those. I think that this project is really coming together even better than I thought that it would. I have not done any dramatic lighting work or done anything that will make it look realistic at the moment. Have a look! :)

Budapest and Skype and WAAIIITTTIIINNGGGG

I'm starting to lose my mind. I can't think of anything.... well, I can think of one think, Budapest. I've never felt so anxious for anything in my life. I look forward to hearing a new language, living in our apartment, calling home to family members. It all seems so exciting!
The thing about going to a different country, especially to live, is that EVERYTHING is exciting. Going to the store to buy food becomes a test in speaking, listening, reading, and general cultural experiences. I've read some blogs about how people hate struggling to communicate but to me that's the whole fun of it. It gets so boring day in and day out mindlessly speaking, driving everywhere, and generally carrying out a relatively predictable exhistance.
Well, on another, lighter note I have still been working on my robot. It's going well but very slow. I worked for a couple hours today and that's pretty much it.
*sigh* well, I can't wait for Budapest and that's that.

2 Weeks and a Robot

As of next Wednesday Val and I have 2 weeks until we leave for Budapest. There's still a couple of things left to do before we leave but it's hard to get yourself to do anything when you know that you're leaving so soon. I pretty much just want to sit around dreaming of Budapest. However, this wouldn't be the best of ideas so I push on... kind of. I slack of sometimes and other times do things that I shouldn't when I need to be cleaning and packing. One of those things is doing CGI. Not that it's unimportant but there are things which have a higher priority at this point in time. Oh well, this is what I've been working on. It's called the S.H.I.V.U. bot.

Simulated
Human
IntraVenous
Unit