Random Things and More School Stuff

     So I know I mentioned that the driving here is crazy, but it really really is.  A lot of the roads are made from big grey brick that now have horrible tire ruts in them and most of them all really uneven.  Its really bumpy for cars, which is fine, you're not supposed to be driving too fast.  But I've seen bikers going down these roads too, and that just looks terrifying.  Also, a lot of the roads here are either one way roads already, or if not then they definitely should be.  Even a lot of the roads that are pretty wide are still effectively one way.  People park on both sides of the street, mostly on the side walks, making two many two way streets one way streets.  Quite often we'll be driving, in the middle of the city, and have to do some quick parallel parking on the side walk to let a car going the other direction by, and vice versa.  Driving anywhere is like a big game of chicken.  Except not really, because everyone here is so nice and polite.

     When people ask me what I want to be, I tell them a veterinarian, then say in Hungarian 'animal doctor' to clarify.  Well, I finally decided to look up the actual Hungarian word for Veterinarian so people wouldn't be confused.  Turns out it the word is állatorvos.  Literally animal doctor.  Every great once in a while this language is easy.

    There are no set meal times here.  We never eat breakfast and there's no lunch time.  Everyone brings a sandwich/some sort of food to school and then we snack on it during each break.  At around 3:30 I meet Zenkő and Erika at the Hotel and we have an actual meal together.  Then we go back to the house.  György come home from work late, usually around 7 or 8 and then we have a dinner snack, which is usually veggies and bread.

     For school, unlike at home, the girls and boys uniforms at school are identical.  Navy pants, light blue button up, and no tie or anything.  The girls have red blazers and the boys have navy though, and of course girls can wear skirts.  The uniform code here is nice because we can wear whatever shoes and socks/tights we want.

     I found out today that I'm not in the Mathematics/Informatics class but the Science/English class. Turns out the sign on our door is simply outdated.

    And here is my school schedule I finally made up.

     Classes start at 8, which the exception of Tuesdays which start at 7, and we meet in our classroom.  Each class is 45 mins long with 15 min breaks in between, except for a half hour break for lunch.  The only class we move for is Geography. We go down to the basement where there is a classroom filled with maps.

    English class is a lot of fun, we still are mostly just playing games.  We started a sports unit and the teachers tried to get me to explain the rules to baseball.  That did not end well.  Some days Romanian is more productive than others.  The first day the kids were learning house vocabulary so I got Anna, who sits next to me, to give me the english and Hungarian translations.  Today they were writing stories, so not very good for me.  All the other classes are a bit dull.  Math I can take good notes on because the teacher has good handwriting.  The other teachers tend to have horrendous handwriting so I usually just sit and listen and sometimes doodle.  I made up vocabulary lists, though, so on Monday I can have something more productive to do.  I'm looking forward to German class.  At the very least it will be a change of pace from the lecture-style of the majority of the classes.  We were supposed to have it today but the teacher was out.  It was supposed to be the second to last class, so the kids all asked the computer teacher, we had computer last, if we could just skip computer and go home early instead of sitting around for an hour.  The teacher actually said yes and we all left school at 1.  I got to go to a cafe with Anna and her two friends, who are both in our class as well.  They had really good smoothies there.  Also, everything is really inexpensive.  It was the USD equivalent of a $1 smoothie.  During some of the breaks at school we go outside.  Behind the school is an old concrete something. I don't really know what.  Most of its gone but there's still a concrete group and some stairs going up a hill.  All the freshmen were down on the concrete learning traditional songs and dances that they have to perform at some point and everyone else in the school was watching from up the hill.  They're actually getting pretty good.  

     And on another side note, we get milk delivered by a neighbor every night.  It then lived in the little milk warmer upper pot thing in the fridge.  It's adorable and tastes really good!  All of our fruit and veggies come from this local farm about ten minutes away, and usually they're delivered to town, but sometimes there is a dinner at the farm so the customers can look at where everything is grown.  I went with György and Erika and it was really neat.  The farm itself is a little family run thing with a couple of green houses and some apple orchards on a hill.  They had chickens, pigs, and one ginormous rabbit that was just free hopping around the place.  The food was really good, homemade bread, cheese, bacon (but what they call bacon is just cooked fat?  That wasn't my favorite), a weird eggplant/mayonaise/onion spread, and of course lots of fresh veggies.  There was amazing apple things and plum dough things for desert.  I even found the Hungarian equivalent of sparkling grape juice.  They have this stuff that they call syrup, which is some sort of concentrated fruit juice.  They put a little bit of it in a cup then add water and have homemade instant juice.  Except, that fizzy water is super common here.  So all they had tonight was fizzy water.  Plain, it doesn't taste the best, but with the fruit juice it came out tasting just like sparkling grape juice.

(Lots of potatoes)

(Eggplant/mayo paste on the left, cheese on the right.)

   The first rotary meeting was Wednesday.  Both Ashlee and I were there, as well as Jakab and Petra, two students from Udvarhely who were on exchange last year.  Jakab was actually in a town right next to Ashlee's so they already knew each other.  Ashlee did her presentation in English and Jakab translated.  I did mine in Hungarian and it went pretty well, but it was awkward because everyone in the room spoke English so every time I forgot or messed up a word the entire room corrected me.  Jakab and Petra did presentations too.  There was a nice rotarian sitting next to me and Ashlee who translated some of the important bits of the meeting.  Our first inbound orientation meeting is on September 23, in a city called Brăila, which is about 4 hours away.  I can't wait to meet the other exchange students.