accomplishments + more

it’s getting dark here at 4:30 p.m., especially if it’s cloudy and rainy like today. reese and i went out to find a couple of bookstores near by only to be rained on. :( that’s not fun when it’s a chilly 45 degrees outside! our only outing of the day was successful though. we liked the bookstores we found - one for children with a little play area and one for adults. (side note: here’s your language lesson for the week: könyvesbolt means bookshop in magyar. könyv means book, bolt means shop, and, i believe, es means and.) we also stopped in a cukrászda (candy shop) with cookies, cakes, marzipan, etc. to try out some hungarian cookies. yum! we are continuing our language lessons, however, we skipped two weeks because we moved and then the next week matt needed more time at work. last week’s lesson was good. we learned the days of the week and the numbers. matt and i have been drilling each other to practice. of course, when i’m in a store and someone says a number i don’t know what it is, but that should come with practice.

each day i feel as though i have accomplished something, like yesterday, i ordered egy kilo (one kg = 2.2 lbs) of marha darált (ground beef) from the meat counter! the man took a big slab of beef from the case and put it through a grinder right in front of me. it was great! my inspiration to order from the meat counter was this little book I was given called “surviving and thriving: a guide to living in budapest”. it’s put together by the nawa (north american women’s association) women each year. it’s fabulous! it has a TON of information from people just like me, not a little guide book, not to say those are bad, but you get my point. it suggests lots of favorite places people have already scoped out! (ie: hair salons, pedicure shops, massage places with English speaking people.) the grocery store translation pages were my real inspiration. i finally learned out how to order ground beef and how much! :) those pages are SO helpful!

my new favorite quote from the book is “the only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.” by susan jeffers (anybody know who she is???).

other recent accomplishments: domestic things like cleaning, laundry and cooking something new, finding what I need at the store, finding new little shops along the streets, catching the train right before it leaves, asking for the right ticket for the train, having correct change, etc. that’s all I can think of right now.