For the past few weeks I have been continuing to take guitar lessons, play basketball, and to travel to see my friends. My basketball team has had two matches so far. We lost our first match, but last Monday when we played our second match we creamed the other team, which was highly satisfying. In order for me to be able to play basketball competitively in Hungary, I was required to have my basketball coach in Canada confirm that I had not played professional basketball. If the head of Hungarian basketball had just watched me play then he would have known from my lack of skill that there was no way I had ever played professionally, but all the paperwork sorted itself out and I get to play in all the matches.
I am starting to enjoy my guitar lessons more and more. I don't make my poor teacher's ears bleed when I play anymore, so I think I am headed in the right direction.
Last weekend I went to Budapest to visit my friend Irene who is an exchange student from the U.S. When I arrived in Budapest I found out that Irene had newly developed the flu, so we took the weekend pretty slowly. On Saturday we went to Irene's host brother's graduation ceremony which was deathly boring. In Hungary, when someone graduates from High School, they don't get a diploma, they get a school pin which they wear on their jackets. The pin says the name of the school and the graduation year. At the ceremony, everyone gets all dressed up and is presented to the audience, pinned, and then they all rush backstage to change into their white poofy dresses and tuxedos for the traditional partner dance. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the dancing part of the evening, everything else was very highly unorganized. All in all, the ceremony lasted 5 hours.
While it was painful to have to sit through the graduation ceremony, I was happy to see Irene and was ecstatic to be able to talk to Irene at a normal pace in "real" English instead of Hungarian English. My host dad's English is better than my Hungarian, so when something really important needs to be discussed we always end up speaking English. Because of this, I have had to change the way I speak in order for Béla to understand me. I now say things like "I very like that" or "I come home 9:30". My goal for the end of the year is to be able to put together perfect Hungarian sentences and perfectly terrible English sentences. Maybe I won't even be able to speak English by the time I come home. That would be kind of cool...
Today I have a meeting with a zookeeper at the Nyíregyháza Zoo to see if there is any volunteer work I can do. I told my Rotary Club that I was bored and asked if they could please come up with some volunteer opportunites for me, and working at the Zoo was one of their suggestions. There were many other volunteer opportunities, such as working at the animal shelter or in the hospital, but I have yet to look into these options. I am also looking into taking traditional Hungarian dance lessons, piano lessons or a drawing class. I recently took up Karate, but I am not completely sold on the class, so I am trying to find other things to do with my time.
This weekend, my friend Alexandra, who is another Rotary exchange student from Canada, is coming to visit me. Alex lives in Debrecen, which is a big city not far from me. I have been to visit Alex numerous times, but she hasn't been to Nyíregyháza yet, so she is finally going to come this weekend. On Friday I am going to the theatre, then Saturday morning Alex will arrive and we are going to a Rotary event. The event was described to me as a pig killing, but I don't really know what that means. I have been assured, though, that I will not have to witness the killing of the pig, I just get to eat it. I'm sure I will have lots of interesting photos to share on Monday.
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