(Note: I’m setting the time for this post for when I wrote it rather than when I’m posting it. I don’t have very regular access to the internet, so I’ve written some of this on my laptop and then transferred it.)

I’ve now been in Budapest for about a week, though it feels as if it has been much longer. Everyday has been packed with almost 8 hours of class along with the the constant challenges of learning a new city. It’s amazing how much you have to relearn in a foreign country: how to order at a restaraunt, how to pay, how to use the metro, etc. I suppose you’d have to figure out some of the same things in any big city ÐÊit certaintly took me a while to learn the Minneapolis transit system, but at least there I knew the language and the culture.

Speaking of which, the Hungarian language is like nothing I’ve seen before. There are very few cognates, and the grammer is significantly different from English or French. It uses endings instead of prepositions, which I gather is like German, but German speakers seem just as confused as I am, so who knows. I’m sure part of the trouble is trying to learn the basics of the language in two weeks. Everytime I start to understand something we move on to something else and I promptly forget it all. I’ve gotten a few helpful phrases comfortably down, but for every word I remember, ten more slip through the cracks.

There is also a big difference between learning the language in the classroom and using it on the street. Learning a language is supposed to be easiest when you’re immersed in it, but it’s still pretty terrifying to realize that what I’ve learned in five days of Hungarian class is literally the only way I have of communicating with a significant portion of the population. Case in point: I would really like to buy some fresh fruit since you never get it at restaruants. Unfortunately, to buy fruit here you have to ask for it, which of course requires Hungarian. I theoretically know how to say “I would like a kilogram of apples,” for instance, but I wouldn’t know how to answer any of the questions the shop keeper might ask in response. Instead I tend to end up with that deer in the headlights look and regress to grunts and gestures. Eventually my desire for fruit will overcome my hesitation, but for the moment I’m relying on a jar of canned peaches I bought at the szupermarket.

I still have yet to visit most of the sights that Budapest is known for. The castles, baths, and museums of the city are all supposed to be worth seeing, and I’m looking forward to the chance to play tourist. Once the language program is over we have a few days before starting the math, so that might be a good time to go sightseeing.