Long time between posts

I have not posted in a long time.  I had a lot of issues with depression the last couple of months in Hungary and couldn't get up the energy to post ANYTHING.  However I'm ready to go again.  I hope at least one person is still reading this.  Since my last post I have left Hungary, gotten a new job working on a video game, and felt a lot happier.

I think that Hungary was an amazing time and I really hope that everyone will feel inclined to visit Budapest at some point in their lives, but I think my time there was over.  I will miss it a lot but on to new things!

For my first post back I would like to post a few picture of a vinyl figure that I made and that's it.  Enjoy!

Remembering 9/11

So, I'm sitting in bed and looking at pictures of the terrorist attacks from 9/11. I still get choked up seeing them. I hate to think that anyone is even capable of doing a thing like that. However, I'm also happy to see how everyone has united to remember the people that died. I think this is a day I will always remember for the rest of my life, as if it happened yesterday.

It's strange that here they can talk about it so casually. I don't think that they really truly understand how, as an American, that I feel about this. I hope that they never have to know either.

Fail and Epic Fail :(

Soooooo.... This is bad.... really bad. I haven't updated this blog in a REALLY long time. I have a good excuse though! I've been busy..... that's a pretty lousy excuse... but it IS true. Well anyways, I'll do my back entries for all the videos that I've taken. There's been a LOT.

Well, on to the present. We went to a wine festival today and it was really fun. It was in a place called Skanzen. We had some wine, but not too much, and then we enjoyed some electrofolk music, which is amazing. If you haven't heard it, check it out! This is a short entry but there will be more soon!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

It's a little late but the 24th was my birthday! It was a really good one too! I got presents from some of the teachers, some of the students, and everyone wished me a happy birthday! It made me very happy :D. Unfortunately, it's at times like this that I really miss home. It makes it very hard not being able to see everyone that I love and care about. I miss everyone so much!

On a second note, I worked on a project for our friend Jake. He wanted an intro video for his videos so here it is.

Not too much else has been going on. I got some more videos to upload from our trip to Serbia.

Today.... is a sick day. Val and I have been feeling like crap since we got back from our vacation yesterday. Val wasn't feeling good since Saturday and it really started hitting me on Monday. Blech!
On the bright side, I'm now able to post updates to my blog! Huzzah!

First update: The Buso Festival. This was a crazy holiday where people dress up in demon costumes, scare people, befriend children, and sexually assault women.... and yes it was as weird, and as fun, as it sounds.

One of the first busos we saw.

baby buso!!!

Buso parade!!!!!

Busos starting the bonfire!!!!!!!!!

and last but certainly not least....

The Buso bonfire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Although we walked around for 8 hours, and felt like our legs were going to fall off, it was an amazing time and it was an easy festival to get sucked into. Eveyone had a great time and I think that most people would enjoy it. Even the kids, oddly enough, were delighted by the Busos. Weird, wacky stuff!

Otkert

Ahhh what can I say about this wonderful place? It's the MOST amazing place in Budapest and our favorite place to go. This place has it all, good food, amazing decor, and the friendliest staff I've met anywhere in Europe. If you go to Budapest, you have to go here. I've been agonizing about posting about this place because it's so amazing and I don't want people knowing about it, but my kind nature made me change my mind :). If anyone wants us to take them there when they're here, let us know! (Not that you'll have a choice) :)

Otkert on Google Maps!

The Speaking Test!!!

This has been the craziest week that Val and I have experienced yet! It seems that everything is falling on the same days. For instance, this week we had everything happen! The new teachers from CETP arrived this week and we stopped by to say hi, My kids had a practice speaking test (That they all did great on!) and Val and I started our Hungarian lessons this week as well! It has been crazy, but mainly exciting!

To everyone that I haven't talked to on Skype, sorry about that. This week has been absolutely packed with things and I've had a hard time managing all of it.

4 days of school..... after today

So, today is Saturday and, just like every work day, we woke up at 5:45 to get ready for work. That's right, we're going to work. It has something to do with not working on the 24th and instead working today. Blech!

Noone is happy about this. The kids are unhappy, the teachers are unhappy, and Val and I are unhappy about it. However, on the good side, we only have 4 more days of working, after today, and then we'll be heading home! Val and I are very excited about this! We also have a friend from orientation coming into Budapest and we'll see her tonight!

After school I'll post some more videos about what we have been doing, as well. We've been quite busy doing some fun stuff and also looking for presents for everyone!

That's all for now.

Anna's Great Fall

I'm so proud of my students! They came up with this short stopmotion this afternoon. They did such a great job!

Gerbaud and the Zoo: Part 2

Val's dad and stepmom have arrived in Budapest. We've done a lot already since they arrived last Thursday. The first was to visit Gerbaud! Where I saw the awesome old guys playing music. The guy playing the violin would say, "Opa!" every time someone would put money in the case.

Awesome.... Then we went to the zoo. It was some great stuff!!!! Sweet animal stuff happening............................................. NOW!

Cute gorilla baby!!!!!.........

Isn't that crazy????? I love the Budapest zoo!

Yes, that's a rhino and yes, I'm touching it O_o!!!!!!! I also enjoyed this particualarly sweet moment of an old lady and the same rhino.....

Ridiculously amazing stuff. Even better than the first time. We also saw some people feeding elephants. Nuts!!!

After the zoo we finished with a relaxing afternoon at Szechenyi furdo!!! It was great! What an amazing place to live in!

Back to Basics

I've been forgetting my video camera EVERY time we go out and do something interesting. There was a band playing in the metro last night and I missed it :P. I've also missed a couple of opportunities to show off some of the amazing places that we've gone to in Budapest. Last night we went to an amazing cafe in a book store. It's definitely a new hangout spot. The ceiling was huge and the music and atmosphere were ridiculously nice.
In school related news, Val and I have been adjusting to working at the school and it's started becoming second nature to us. It's nice because it gives us a chance to actually focus on other parts of our lives. Other than this, things have been quite calm. We try to keep things from getting routine and in Budapest it's not very difficult to do. There's always something new and exciting happening and I can't help but feel inspired by the city. It makes me want to create things and work on art all the time!
When we first arrived in Budapest, I loved it. Then I started to dislike it, due to culture shock and the language barrier, and now I feel like I love the city again. There's something special about it and I can understand why people love Hungary so much!
Today we'll be going to Gerbaud and a couple of other places to try and find some things we need. (I/E paint, pencils, and other things) Can't wait to see what happens today!
I'll start posting some more videos today.

That's all for now!

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.

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