First Animation In Budapest

Well, I finally caved in and did my first animation. It took me about 15 minutes and I mainly did it to fill the need to do SOMETHING. So here it is. I'll start getting some much better one's done when I spend more time on them and actually have a consistent source of light (I/E not the sun).

It's very short but hey what can ya expect? I'll work on another one probably this week or this weekend. Get something done that is more presentable. It all depends on if I get an idea for something or not. If I do it'll be up here soon!

The Fun Run

This past Saturday, Val and I went to a fun run for the area of the city that we live in. We didn't participate in the run but we stood by and watched, which is good enough I think :D. Anyways, the thing that made this so interesting was the exercises that people did.

Pretty interesting..... Lol!

It reminded me a lot of a scene from Lost in Translation where some women are doing water aerobics in the pool. Good times.... good times.

We hung out with this guy Daniel from the school. He speaks English VERY well and we had a nice time talking with him.

On the way home we saw the bike portion of the fun run, which was nice to see. We even saw some of our kids!

As you can see, Val and I have been quite busy with things but it is getting easier and easier every day. Today, Sunday, I was even able to lesson plan for the entire WEEK! That's nutty. I'm really looking forward to getting some stop animation going too. I really need to and I really want to. The creative part of my brain is screaming for me to do something like this. Especially after I saw these : /.

Just awesome! Hope to do stuff like this!

Sugar and Yet More Work.... With a Splash of Potential Stop Animation :D

Not this past Wednesday but the Wednesday before Val, a couple of friends (Amy, Jake, and Jamie), and I headed out for a night on the town. This is one of the places we went to!

It was called Sugar. It was crazy and amazing and very Japanese!

They also sold a bunch of random things. It was pretty cool!

This is what everyone ate. It was all quite delicious but I wish that I hadn't been so full at this point : /

This past Wednesday we went out with Jamie to the Pink Cadillac. It was a really good pizza place but a tad pricy. It was very fun nonetheless. (FYI: when I say pricy I really mean that it is what you would probably pay in the U.S.)

Other than this we have been working and we are going to work tommorow. By work I mean we have to cheer on a fun run. Next week we are also supposed to start our extra lessons. We will need to choose a day to do these and I haven't decided which day. It was going to be Monday but a lot of my kids said that they have Hungarian lessons that day...... bwah! So I'll probably do them on Wednesday or Tuesday. I'll teach some stop animation in class, in English, and I think it should be an enjoyable experience!

Workin' and More Workin'

Bwah! Val and I have been quite busy with working. I have some videos that need to be posted but I can't find the time. I suppose that that's good. A lot of the stuff that we have been doing has been fun things but, of course, we have also been quite busy with work. Today I have to teach a double lesson for one of my classes. It shouldn't be too hard, but my lack of experience is very apparent whenever I have to do anything that is even slightly more difficult than normal. However, I'm learning a lot so I think that these situations shouldn't be difficult for much longer.

Well, anyways, life is going well and our days have been packed with more things that we can even think to do. I'll post some videos today when I find the time.

Gulyás Festival

This past Saturday, Val and I went to the Gulyás Festival in Szolnok. It was pretty great :D. (Special shout out to Emily and Tamas for the invite!) On our way to the train station we saw this sweet violinist!

Now THAT was worth giving money to! I have no problem giving money to someone on the street if they do something. Dance, sing, play something, juggle I don't care as long as it's a talent.

We took the train to Szolnok, where we met up with Emily and Tamas to go to the festival.

This is what the festival looked like.

Here's some delicious gulyas!

This guy looks like he's in trouble!

Heading home, we had to go through the Szolnok train station..... This is probably the creepiest train station I've ever been to at night! There was water dripping from the waiting area and we kept talking about how it was probably blood! BWAH! I took this video of Jake because he looked really creepy. It didn't turn out as creepy in the video, however.

Here's some more creepiness.... except the end where Jake waves. lol

That's all for now. What a great weekend it was!

A Bufe (No Accents)

This was the bufe that we ate at for lunch today. It was ok. Well.... the hotdogs were pretty good and the soup stuff that we had. The only thing that was bad was the yellow stuff. I don't know what it was but it tasted like rye bread..... and I hate rye bread. It was a fun experience, nontheless, and I got the chance to speak some hungarian with some of our colleagues. Lessons seem to be going a lot smoother already. This is great news for both Val and I considering how freaked out about teaching we were.

On a personal life note, we went out with some friends last night. It was really fun and it looks like it will be a normal occurence. We also looked into a school for Hungarian but they told us that it would be pretty pricey (50,000 forints) and that they didn't have a Hungarian teacher at the moment but would let us know when they did..... No thanks.

On a hungarian note, does anyone know how to make the accents on an english keyboard. I wound like to actually spell things correctly!

Agi Turner's Hostel and the Bear Sanctuary

Ok. These are two different thing but they were both awesome and I didn't want to make 2 seperate posts for them. The first thing is that on Thursday Val and I went to the hostel, like I wrote about in my last post. We had some awesome food that Agi prepared and met some people fro various places around the world (Germany, France, Australia, and Scotland).

It was an amazing experience and was very fun. I'm seeing more and more that Hungarians are unbelievably hospitable. Like going out of their way hospitable.

Today, we went to the Bear Sanctuary (Medve Otthon). We had a great time and after speaking in pretty pathetic Hungarian to our waitress, a lady over heard us and asked us if we'd like to go into the wolf pin to see the pups in there........ ummmm hell yeah!

This was when we first went in.

Here I am getting an overkill of love!

There were some other people but they were really scared of the wolves. But seriously? How could you not think they were just really cute?....

Then, if that wasn't enough excitement, we got to feed bears with honey on a giant spoon!

What an amazing day it was! It took us about 2 and a half hours to get there but it is WELL worth the traveling. To anyone who wants to know if it's worth checking out, it is! I love how, in Hungary, you can get as close to the animals as is probably safe. In the US people would be too scared to let anyone do these things but realistically it's not usually the animals fault that they hurt people but really the stupidity of the people who get hurt.

This day was both the most amazing and unusual experience that Val and I have ever had.... EVER!

First Day Of School

Bwah! Sorry for the lack of updating...... I guess it's only been 4 days or so but Val and I have done a lot in that time and been super busy. I finally took a video of our apartment.... I mean.... flat. I said I would do it a while back but the video I took was too long so it couldn't upload. Anyways, here it is..... (drum role)

I know EPIC right?

Now on to the matter at hand. Our first day was pretty great. Val and I were both incredibly nervous. However, she is excited to teach the 5th and 6th graders and I'm excited for the 7th and 8th. Our second day was also good and not much to report there. Tommorow we'll meet with the teachers that we'll work with and start some lesson planning. I'm considering making a lesson on Sunday for the entire week but that might be a little heavy. I dunno.

Tonight we have been invited to Turner, Agi's (Agi Turner) daughter's hostel for some Hungarian home cooking. We actually leave in about 40 minutes from now. That should be exciting and I'll probably end up taking some video of the experience. We'll have to see if there's anything that would be ok to record.