Fanny, Zenkő, and I walked to the Gondűző Hotel for lunch. György owns it and Erika works there as a manager I think. Here's a picture of one of the roads.
I went uniform shopping with everyone except Zenkő who went biking with a friend. People bike a lot around here. I already have blue pants and socks, and I'm using Fanny's skirt, so all we had to get was two blue shirts and the red blazer. I'll take a picture of it at some point, when all the pieces are together.
We then picked Zenkő back up at the hotel and dropped Fanny off with her friend. Zenkő and I went to Tata's apartment, which was only a few minutes away. I think he's their grandpa but I'm not entirely sure. Örs skyped while everyone was there and I got to say hello. Then the parents left and Tata helped Zenkő with her summer math home work. He used to be a maths teacher. I watched some Hungarian tv. I flipped through the channels and Mia would be all set if she lived here (and knew Hungarian). I found Hungarian Criminal Minds (Gyilkos Elmék) and Castle. Its funny, when the commercials are about to start, the word Advertising goes across the screen to let you know. I also found my new favorite show. I'm pretty sure it was aimed at three year olds and came with Hungarian subtitles.
Another little girl came over at some point. I think she's a cousin. Her name's Monika and she's ten years old. She speaks both Romanian and Hungarian perfectly as her mom is Romanian and her dad is from Udvarhely, but she speaks no english. We watched Disney channel together and talked a little bit. Tata left a little while later and Zenkő went into the kitchen to roast marshmallows. I was confused until Monika and I walked in to see her literally roasting marshmallows on toothpicks over a gas stove. Which totally does not seem safe, but Monica had clearly done it before to. The marshmallows aren't quite like home, they're tinier with sugar on the outside.
Tata came back with two more little girls, one about four and the other maybe two. They were really cute. Zenkő and Monica knew them so I guess they're family of some sort. They were only there for a few minutes before György picked us up to go home.
There was another family there too. There was a girl, Orsi, who is a friend of Zenkő's. We hung out in her room. They listened to really loud music and danced, which was really funny because the Hungarian music was really good, and I recognized most of the English music, but some of the English music was really really really not child appropriate but beyond the common words, Zenkő and Orsi didn't understand what it was saying.
We then decided to play Clue (Cluedo in Hungarian), which went surprisingly well except that I was the only one who really knew how to play. Both girls speak very good english but unlike Fanny and the adults, they had no problem just shouting out random things in Hungarian. They only spoke english when I couldn't figure out what was going on. So we played the whole game of Clue in Hungarian. Which was easy because all the words for things are written on those little sheets you fill out. I do know know the Hungarian words for kitchen and bathroom (which is different from restroom) which are useful, but also billiard room and observatory which are less so. I won because the other too guessed way too soon. For dinner someone cooked homemade sausage, a Romanian food called mici. It was really good. I didn't end up going out with Fanny because she didn't leave until 9 and I was doing something with Ashely and her family the next morning. It's ok though because my Hungarian actually made so progress. The girls wanted to play some question game. I'm not sure how we were supposed to play, but it turned into 'what is your favorite ___'. They started out asking everything in english but after they told me how to say 'favorite' we mostly spoke Hungarian. It went well, they were very happy that I had watched Bones and they spent a few minutes moping that Sweets died. Though we did spend a solid ten minutes trying to translate 'do you prefer stripes or polk-a-dots' and had to resort to finding shirts with said prints. They also didn't seem to believe me that they're called polk-a-dots in english? It was fun though. I'm comfortable saying random stuff to Zenkő in Hungarian now.
This morning Zenkő and I grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for breakfast, they have a cute little panini like machine. There was also fresh tomatoes and peppers. The Nagys don't have a garden but most other houses around here do (even in the apartments) and all the food at the house and restaurant is home grown somewhere.
Around 11:00 Ashlee, her host dad János, her 16 year old sister Kata, and her 4 year old brother Mátyás picked me up and we drove about an hour to the middle of no where, except for a little farm house with some horses. I think they give horse riding lessons and since Kata likes horses the families are friends. There are some really good hiking trails in the woods.
We hiked through some fields and woods, then up a pretty big hill.
The landscape is fairly similar to home. I thought their dirt was way more sandy than ours, but now I think it's just really really really dry. Ashlee says it hasn't rained since she got here and that was a week ago.
There was a really good view up top. Down in the valley we could see the entrance to a huge cave.
Ashlee is in the middle and Kata is on the right.
We hiked down the other side of the hill and there was a more public hiking trail that followed a river, which eventually took us back to where we parked. The trail crossed back and forth over the river a lot so there were a bunch of really cool rope bridges.
There were also a couple of massive caves we stopped by. We walked around one for a while using our phone flashlights.
This is Mátyás, he was impressed by all the 'gomba' on the tree.
This is the house back where we parked. We ate our packed lunches under a wooden thing. The family (families ?) who lived there were cooking tortalinis on a fire, but the directions were in Spanish and everyone was so confused. Their kids were all hanging from trees and playing in the water. I really want to know how houses like this function in the winter. For a solid half hour we drove on only dirt road that were winding up and between steep hills. There was an entire town with no 'main road' so to speak. Either no one leaves after it snows or they have a better way of dealing with snow than we do. There are a bunch of turkeys because they were all coming home for the night. Driving home there was this one spot where it looked like the pied piper. A huge line of cows and sheep just walking over a hill towards the town we had passed. I think I forgot to say, but this happened in Udvarhely too. On the way back from the airport we had to loop around and go to the house from a different direction because a bunch of cows were walking down the road we needed to go up. And this was right near the middle of city with 30 thousand people! I can't believe they all actually know which house to go to.
Gonduzo Hotel has nice website. Good reviews. Restaurant menu looks good. I might like to try their local sausage.
ReplyDeleteNice Ashley's host dad included you in trip into the country. Landscape sure does look similar to ours.