oh happy day... =P

oh happy day... =P 16 oct 2002 sziasztok! what an insane week! i was actually going to skip writing for a week and give all your eyes a break, but i've already gotten waaay too many people wondering why i haven't written another mass email yet this week, so here's the current plot... for those of you who seem to think i never have homework, a big HA to that -- this week is midterm week which means that i'm insanely busy and feel like i'm behind in everything -- not really behind, just LOTS to do by thursday! -- yuck! on the happy side, i had a blast of a weekend, as detailed below -- it just didn't so much help with getting a head start on my homework! =P so anywho -- if you had a birthday this week, apparently budapest is the place to be, as i had not 1, not 2, not even 3, but 4 friends here with birthdays in the past week!... yay for all of these folks =P -- cristina (bsm), turned 21on saturday, and had a dinner party at her apt with quite a few of us there to celebrate with her, shalom and nathanael (both from church) turned 21 and 20 respectively this week too (shalom last wednesday and nathanael today), so sunday after church we went on a tour of some of the underground caves in the buda hills and had majorly happy out-to-eat dinner after... finally, catalina (bsm) turned 20 yesterday so party in a box all around! =) my week, however, involved more than just birthday parties =)... besides lots of homework all week (i.e. *very* little sleep!....oops =P), i went to the movie theater for the first time here with my friend shalom from church -- an experience to say the least.... a very large percentage of the movies here are american films, shown in english, with hungarian subtitles. however, the whole experience is a bit different when you have assigned seats!... just like if we were going to a play or something, movie tickets have row and seat number -- based on my whole whopping one movie experience that way though, it seems like people treated the theater a little nicer as a result -- no popcorn and soda sticky all over the floor like i'm used to watching out for -- or maybe it was just because it was a newer theater -- i dunno -- at any rate, it was fun, and i was quite amused by the seating arrangements =P moving right along, on saturday, marianne and i went on a tour of the hungarian parliament building -- quite impressive to finally see the inside.... random facts: the parliament was built with two assembly halls for hungary's then bicameral parliament, however now they're unicameral so the one assembly hall is used only for international conferences etc...... outside the assembly halls are numbered cigar holders -- back in the day, the parliament members would smoke in the hallway and if they were interested in the debate inside they'd leave their cigar in their personal numbered slot -- you could tell a talk was really interesting if the cigars burned themselves through in the holders -- a cuban quality talk was a pretty big complement apparently =)... the hungarian crown jewels are now on display in the parliament, whereas their former home was in the national museum -- the hungarian crown is the oldest crown in europe.... also on the parliament tour is a model of parliament made by a hungarian family completely out of matchsticks between 1962 and 1965 as a gift to the country -- mighty impressive -- after they finished, they realized it was too big of a model to take out of the house in one piece, so they actually removed a wall from their house and put it back just to move the model and give it for display in parliament!... the parliament is also the most expensive building in all of hungary -- according to our guide, the cost of building it was enough $$ to be able to build a small town for 30,000 people!... but anyhow, yeah, that's just a sampling of what i learned -- like i said, mighty impressive building =) finally, as referenced before, on sunday, i went with a ton of people to tour the caves under the hills just north of my part of town... it was a pretty spiffy time of things -- when we got there, there was no one manning the ticket booth so that we could pay, and they more or less shooed us into the cave with a large group of hungarian school children. the tour was given in hungarian, and only one of our group of 15 was fluent enough to translate for the rest of us --afterwards, she told our guide we still needed to pay and, realizing that we didn't really understand much more than to ooh and aah during the "real" tour, he offered to take us on a private tour, with kristina (totally different person from cristina, mentioned before =P) to translate for us going out a different route that hasn't been used on tours since 1989 -- it was pretty spiffy -- our guide's english was good enough to understand us, but not to respond, and with kristina's help, we got much more out of the second time through =)... interesting facts -- there are around 200 caves under the buda hills around budapest, 2 are tour-able... since these are under hills, you go in at base level and then climb waaay waaay up inside the cave and come back down at the end, parts were practically like climbing straight up a wall for several dozen stairs!... we saw some prety cool fossilized shells, etc in the walls, and some pretty spectacular formations of various kinds of stones/crystals... it was just a fun time altogether... also since it was nathanael and shalom's birthday party, nathanael had several of his friends from his school who i hadn't met yet come with -- all here for an engineering study abroad program, mostly from the states and one from south africa -- several of whom i hit it off with pretty well too, so the circle of spiffy people to hang out with continues to grow by leaps and bounds =) party in a box kind of day as well =)... now, as previously referenced, is insanity week! number theory midterm today, conjecture and proof midterm tomorrow, midterm humanities type paper to write by next week and lots of other fun stuff... but so it goes... (really, i'm not complaining, just detailing!... proof that i'm actually doing work here!) =P at any rate, onward! things lara has learned this week ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *if you've been mayor of budapest for 12 years, and consider yourself a shoe-in for the upcoming elections this next week, apparently you can get away with really really weird advertising-- for example, the demszky for mayor cd-rom distributed for free in certain parts of town right now (actually, fun hungarian word of the day, mayor = polgármester, which to my american ears is just a comic sounding word altogether) -- it features 3 different campaign posters you can print out, an outline of his campaign promises, a short movie commercial detailing how much he's already done for the city, a really goofy animated cartoon of the mayor motorcycling across your screen, AND the mayor himself, singing a rap in hungarian -- i tried to convert the massive .wav file it comes in to an mp3 so all y'all could enjoy it, but the mp3 is still too big for disk, and i can only get the converstion program to work on my laptop which is not online, so you'll just have to enjoy the thing when i'm back in the states w/ my compute =)... quite the amusing listen =P *i can actually play and explain music!... now that my flute's here along with my piano/flute music, they've become quite popular with visitors to our apt.... monday, for example, 2 bsmers who play clarinet stole the flute from me and had me teach them scales -- i actually played through a whole piano accompaniment part (that mom usually plays for me), with one of the clarinet people on my flute... for two whole songs! -- for teaching myself piano without ever having had a real lesson in my life, i was pretty darn impressed with the results =P *random happy news -- although, as far as i know, there aren't any bsm people on my flight back to the states in decemeber, we're 90% sure nathanael (from church) and i have the same flight from budapest to amsterdam on the 23rd and he has an even longer layover than me! -- yay for travel buddies without even planning on it! =P how cool is that? party indeed! *catalina is the coolest ever -- while we were sitting in class about 15 minutes before start time, she was building 3d models of various shapes for her geometry class, took a break and made me two 3-d origami parties in boxes -- by general consensus of everyone who has seen her work, these are the spiffyest models ever made! now to find a good way to get them in my scrapbook without messing them up! quotes of the week ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ok, abstract nonsense is done now ~prof. fehér this class? it just makes me want to find sharp objects and stab myself in the face! ~jenny "... and this is lara, she stabs people." ~anonymous (great way to be introduced eh?) ... and blah blah blah, lots of hand waving, it just HAS to work ... that's a good proof, right? ~alina me: (calling after a long fustrating evening of getting nowhere with one homework problem in particular and otherwise ready to sleep!) hi!... so have you actually finished all of the conjecture and proof homework? neil: more or less yeah.... me: (interrupting)... then you shall die!... um, i mean, can i get a hint then? neil: (laughing) you know, i must say, you're one of the most diplomatic speakers i've ever heard -- i mean, not only do you never fail to get your point across quite persuasively, you always put it in the kindest, least-implication-of-harm-to-the-audience terms possible! (oops!) =P zsofi (hungarian friend from church): and on christmas when you eat turkey with your family... me: but what if my family doesn't have a turkey, and we have a ham instead? zsofi: ok, fine, no turkey, while you're eating a nice ham on christmas with your family... me: but what if i told you our oven's been broken for over a year and we've never fixed it and we might just go to a restaurant on christmas instead? zsofi (laughing really hard): but that's how the story goes... i thought all americans have to have a turkey with their family on christmas but you have an excuse for everything! are you *sure* your family is american? IM away message of the week: "cast your vote: who do you think would win an all out game of mancala? (a) george w. bush (b) my tarantula" ~memphis jenny (after touring parliament) "today WAS a party in a box... a party in a fancy box... probably a party in the fanciest box in hungary!" ~marianne rahul: so where is this place? oded: *uuuuuuhhh* (bad sound approximation) utca rahul: what street? oded: *uuuuuuhhh* rahul: spell it? oded: *uuuuhh*... you know... o with the two dots... that's it rahul: oh! he, she, or it street... great! shalom: so how would you explain the different between good and righteous? nathanael: good is more relative, righteous is more absolute and set apart... (continues for a bit with lots and lots of big words) ben (interrupting): basically, it's like this... God is good and God is righteous... but my cup of blueberry tea here -- it's really really goooood, but i somehow doubt i can call it righteous. that's basically it: righteousness IS more absolute and set apart, but it's not *that* complicated of a thought! (how profound is that?) =P the end... party in a box to you all -- hope you're getting more sleep this week than me! =P lara =)