a buli a dobozban él mindörökké!!!!
30 sept 2002
sziasztok!
greetings again! -- so i planned to be a good student and stay out of trouble this weekend, but as is my new motto "things are never what you expect", accordingly, i did not just have my planned-on study-and-take-it-easy kind of weekend... from inadvertently finding myself in a children's museum to attending the most bizarre organ concert i've ever been to to finding myself wandering around budapest's chinatown i didn't know existed until i half an hour before i arrived, still decked out in church clothes to tramp through puddles, go figure... as you can see -- *not* your typical weekend -- for those of you with the patience to still read my details -- enjoy!
saturday afternoon, marianne and i went to find a science museum she found out about online. when we arrived, we were surprised to discover that this museum was designed totally for kids, and while we were welcome, we were by far the oldest people that didn't have small people attached to us (i.e. 3 feet taller than everyone else there! =P)... but, you know me, in good company, i'll gladly go pretend to be a small kid again =)... marianne and i forked over admission and figured out what we could of the displays -- here we are, two college math majors, who have studied much more physics than any of these kids running around us, and we couldn't read most of the displays to find out what they were supposed to demonstrate to us!... kinda ironic, eh? this place was founded in 1996, and at the time was the first and only hands on science museum in central europe (i don't know if it's still the only one, since their english brochure was a bit dated). it was originally the idea of hungarian physicist joseph öveges, and the name of the museum is actually the "palace of wonders", in hungarian, of course =)... besides hands-on electricity, optical illusion, etc. experiments, they had a theater that runs an all day show covering anythng from how toys work to extremely high voltage to extremely cold materials to playing with sounds that was extremely popular as well. totally a fun kids' museum, but all about teaching science at the same time, and very well-done -- i was quite impressed =)
saturday night, biji and marianne hosted a bsm potluck at their place, and mom, i brought your now-world-famous cucumber salad, (which many people have surprisingly seen nothing similar to before!) and also my experiment of the week -- homemade sour cherry soup.... one thing interesting about food here that i haven't mentioned yet is that cold fruit soup is a popular appetizer kind of dish.... i have a recipe for it now, so i thought i'd give it a shot -- apparently i'm not quite patient enough when adding hot and cold stuff together to get it perfect in texture, but my resulting concoction tasted fine as well according to many people, so by the end of the semester i should have this dish down =) -- now just to find all the ingredients in the states come january!
sunday, i expected to have a normal day of church, homework, then sleep!, but that's the great thing about being here -- when i wake up planning on a normal day there's pretty much a guarantee that that's absolutely not what's going to happen! -- first off my roommate jenn came with me to church, which was awesome -- second off, this week was a special service to celebrate the international heritage of the congregation -- mom, mrs. mell, did you know that "song for the nations" has about 7 verses? we sang them all... we also sang several songs in Hungarian, had the Scripture read in English, Hungarian, Estonian, and Polish, and all kinds of other things -- we also sang the Hungarian national anthem, and then several other songs that I'm used to thinking of in conjunction with the States along the theme of "heal our land", that it was really interesting to be elsewhere and singing them in conjunction with a totally different country that I'm really coming to love as well. The coolest part was for the sermon, instead of pastor glenn preaching, we had *two* guest pastors who each did a 15 minute sermon. -- first a lady pastor from the Ukraine who is the minister of a Russian speaking church here in Budapest spoke on the theme of what it means to be called and to bear fruit for God, and then, the pastor of Budapest's Chinese church spoke on the theme of how God's ways are not our ways and how He uses us to bear fruit for Him in ways we'd never expect. Both pastors spoke in their native language and had a translator along with, and that was just really really cool.
after church (already an adventure and a half), Jenn, (my roommate, whose mom just came to the States from China at age 8), was all excited and went up to the Chinese translator to ask where the budapest chinese market was that the Chinese pastor referenced in part of his message,... his response was, oh, follow me, i'll show you!,... turns out, Feng, the translator, is a Chinese student whose family moved to Budapest where e's now my age and a computer science major.... for years he attended ICB (international church of budapest), until this Chinese congregation started up and now he's been instrumental in working with them... he drove us over to the Chinese market, which was blocks and blocks of gutted out factories filled with small Chinese/Vietnamese/etc. shops and various and sundry asian restaurants... I never would have guessed from the past month that Budapest has such a large asian population! and i'm sure i was the only blond person within a mile radius for most of the afternoon! quite the adventure! after we were done wandering around, Feng showed us a small mandarin restaurant and when we were ready to pay, insisted we were his guests and that we'll just have to come again another time if we want to pay =P... it also made my day in the car on the way there to hear his casettes in the stereo -- all in mandarin chinese, but all songs i know from hosanna service back at immanuel -- but conclusion, as i said paragraph before this -- i have no clue what to expect any given day here -- gotta love that =)
finally, on sunday night, marianne and i went to check out an organ concert in the national lutheran church -- you should remember my adventures in visiting the national lutheran museum a few weeks back, and now i've actually seen the inside of the actual church building as well -- however, before any comment on music, i must say this was the most *unique* organ concert i've ever been too -- completely lutheranized... they started with a hymn sing (not realizing we'd need them, marianne and i neglected to pick up hymn books in the back, so we just listened -- it was to one of the several tunes that appears like a multiple times in each of LW and LBW as the music to about a dozen different hymns....but of course with lyrics in hungarian) -- after that, the organist played three of his five pieces, then we had a gospel reading and a sermon, followed by the other two organ pieces, the Lord's prayer, and a benediction -- all in Hungarian!.. never seen anything quite like it!... although we were slightly confused at some points, it was great to be there... more on the church itself -- this church is known for being so un-ornate (is that even a word?)... other than the huge painting behind the altar (a replica of raffaello's transfiguratio), it's basically a plain but huge white hall with an occasional gold lamp on the wall... they used to have a big spire/belltower on top of the building, but eventually it was too heavy for the roof and had to be removed!... apparently the building's been under nearly constant reconstruction since the 1940s to repair the damage done to it in WWII and then the damage resulting from the red metro line which was built 1970s-ish and goes right under the building.... but the organ and the chimes -- WOW... i've heard the chimes from outside on many occasions and already been impressed, but that organ can literally shake the building when it gets going -- acoustics were absolutely incredible! yay for awesome music and for good old-fashioned hymnsings -- the language may change, but there are ome things you can't escape no matter where you go =P
at any rate, that's more than enough...on with the usual... enjoy! =P
things lara has learned this week
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*they said budapest has "pennsylvania weather" before we came -- they lied! gone are the eternally sunny blue skies that have been in all my pictures so far... now, 9 days out of 10, it's just overcast and cold...
*playing christmas music in september convinces the people that live with you to let you turn on the furnace whether they're as cold as you or not =) (consequently, one of my roommates, amanda, has a lot of the same christmas CDs as me and *also* gets really excited and starts dancing around the house to hear christmas music in september!... i'm not alone on this for once! =) )
*we have a singing teakettle -- no joke... the first time we let it go long enough to whistle it sounded like a fire alarm and we *ran* to shut it off... however, letting it sit even longer, it gradually picks up notes to build a whole chord!... excitement =)
*i can now play camptown races, three blind mice, and the jeopardy themesong by ear on the wooden flute i bought in romania last week =P
*for future reference, when i travel for a weekend, it's probably a good idea to do more than half a workbook page of homework on the train if i plan to sleep at all before friday the following week! =P
*if falling asleep sitting up in the middle of writing a sentence takes talent, and waking up still sitting up with pen in hand still ready to write 7 hours later takes even more talent -- then i'm quite the skilled person -- either that or i was just waaaay too tired for my own good last thursday =P -- my roommate, jenn, was quite amused =P
*when you do your hungarian homework in restaurants with friends, waiters and waitresses get excited and check your answers for you =) -- general observation, in the states we more or less expect everybody to learn english to talk to us -- here, it's the opposite, people are used to hungarian not being such a widely known language, that when they see us doing hungarian homework, hear us making an effort to ask for things, etc. in hungarian, etc. etc. etc., 99% of the time they totally light up and want to help us and teach us a million and one new words =) it's quite exciting indeed! =)
quotes of the week
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arlene: but lara, wait a minute, does (name withheld) *know* that you're at war with (him/her)?
me: um, nooooo, don't tell... it's so much more funny that way =P
'you just don't know how crazy i *really* am'.. that's *exactly* what you want to hear from your roommate a month into the semester! ~amanda
watch out! when feng talks, machine guns are slow! ~pastor glenn
i don't want you all to be very unhappy, just reasonably unhappy! ~dr. siklós (my hungarian culture prof)
"... i have been keeping your legacy alive as best i can. i frequently sing songs (badly rhymed, of course) at random times. if anyone asks me why i'm singing 5-word songs, i tell them stories about la!!" ~excerpt from incredibly spiffy letter from laura johnson =) yay for happy mail =)
I'm glad to hear of all of your adventures and to know that you're doing well and haven't changed too much!! (you're still advocating party-in-a-box) I'm sure that all of the party in a boxes around the world appreciate what you are doing for their cause in challenging that party in a parallel math word that I don't know is superior to party in a box. I most definitely vote for the tried and true party in a box! ~nicole unrath
what is this?!?!?! you broke your finger with a sock?!?!?! that's outrageous at best! ~jimmy to cristina
come with me -- we're going to do something a little (*cough cough*) silly -- (*dramatic pause*) -- it's time to strain pasta in the bathtub! ~tom to evan (this is what happens when a dozen people try to make dinner in a hungarian kitchen (i.e. built for one cook and no one else!))
so yeah, the end once again -- all of you who responded to my save-the-party-in-a-box campaign are the coolest ever! happy birthday heather and nicole!
happy week to all! vislát!
la(ra)
=)