A Wonderful Day in the Neighborhood

Oh what a day! Today started out as a usual Wednesday, hump day. When I woke up this morning I immediately began to prepare myself to just endure today. I made a pact with myself to crack down and study for my first probability midterm on Friday. Probability is proving more difficult than I expected. I can already see an infinite number of possibilities to use probability in science, so I'm sticking with it, but there are problems that, if not approached in just the right way, can be hell. All my anxiety about probability was soon forgotten the moment class ended this morning, however.

My culture class was canceled this afternoon, so after probability I was headed back to my flat with the idea of using my unexpected free time in a constructive and efficient manner. As I walked down the stairs I saw a couple of friends milling in the hallway and stopped to say hi. My casual greeting turned into a quick conversation that ended with an invite to one of my friend's flats to arrange buying tickets to different shows at the Opera House. With the night's cultural endeavors to look forward to, I continued down the stairs. Upon reaching the security desk I decided to check, as I had for the past five days, if the package my parents had sent had arrived yet. It had!!! I was handed a box with my name on it, in what I recognized as my mother's handwriting. Needless to say, I hurried out of school and off to the metro to get home to find out what treasures lay inside the box in my hands.

It is absolutely ridiculous how excited I was at the sight of dish towels and coffee filters. As soon I got back to my flat I immediately opened up my long awaited package. To my delight a treasure trove of mundane items lay before me. The aforementioned dish towels (which only my mother would think to send) and coffee filters were only the beginning. My box also contained spices I had requested, office supplies, a book that had been left behind, a few movies, delicious peanut butter pretzel bites and caramel corn, and last, but not least, jack-o-lantern lights to hang in my room. To the average Joe these items wouldn't seem cause for celebration. In fact, many people might think they'd fallen from grace if they received post-its and coffee filters, but to me these items were invaluable.

I have yet to find the equivalent of a Target here. The all-in-one, one-stop shop doesn't exist here. There are different stores for everything. Where in Target you have to venture into another aisle to find stationary, here you have to go to a paper store a few blocks down. The same is true for groceries, electronics, household items, clothes, etc. To this day I still haven't seen a coffee filter. I know the coffee maker in my flat needs them, so they must exist, but where they are hiding I will never know. I have been reduced to using toilet paper and paper towels as make shift filters for the past month.

I couldn't contain my elation, so I decided to put it to good use and strapped on my shoes for a run. In the time it had taken me to open my package and change, a light sprinkling had begun to descend from the overcast sky. For days the clouds have been threatening to drain their accumulations. I didn't mind, though. I would rather run in the rain than with the too hot sun scorching overhead. It felt great to take to the road in such a good mood. I wasn't even discouraged by the cramp that suddenly made its presence known through the nerve endings in my abdomen. I set my resolve and ignored the steadily sharpening pain, resolute that it would not slow my foot falls. Eventually, the pain faded and I fell into an easy rhythm, free to let my mind wander.

When I finished my run, I cracked down and studied for a couple hours before heading over to John and Franky's for dinner with the gang. In the midst of studying my phone rang. I checked the number, but didn't recognize it. Fearing that I was about to be assaulted by Hungarian that I wouldn't be able to understand, I tentatively answered. It was the apple store down the street calling to tell me my replacement battery for my computer had arrived!! When I ordered the battery, the sales man told me it would take four or five days to get here. That was two and a half weeks ago. I'm thrilled to finally have a battery that lasts more than twenty minutes without rudely, and without warning, shutting off.

I wasn't able to stay long at dinner because I was off to arrange cultural excursions, but it was a great dinner. After not hanging out with the gang much in the past couple of days, it was nice to see them. The icing on the cake of today happened over at Jenny's. I was signed up to go to a Philharmonic Orchestra concert in mid October, a Ballet in mid November, and an opera at the end of November. And, all for a whopping grand total of 2,000 HUF (equivalent to a little more than $10). I can't wait! After all the logistics were taken care of in terms of shows playing at the Opera House, talking turned to traveling. Everyone at Jenny's was just as fired up to go traveling as I am. It turns out some of them are planning to go to Madrid in November, and they don't mind me tagging along. That's as much of an invite as I need. Looks like I'm headed to Spain! Hola España! I've never been so excited to speak Spanish. I automatically start thinking in Spanish when I'm in my Hungarian class. I'll think of something I'd like to say in Hungarian, and Spanish quickly rises to fill the void that is my knowledge of Hungarian. I can't wait to actually be able to communicate in a foreign language.

I also got into a conversation with one of the guys there about making a trip to Krakow and Auschwitz. Not to mention, people are already starting to think about a trip to Istanbul, and I'm headed to Prague next weekend. Budapest is only the staging area. The whole of Europe is open to me, and I plan on making the most of it!