there's no place like home

I'M HOME!!! :-)
flights went smoothly, my whole family was there to pick me up at the airport!!! :-)
so I don't have power at my house yet, which makes it sort of interesting, but I'm not really jet lagged and not too much culture-shocked besides almost saying "excuse me" in Hungarian to someone at the airport...
yeah. but it's good to be home!
I'm thanking God that everything went so smoothly!
talk to you guys later!!

The last weekend...

Hello!
So I haven't updated this in a while, and I head home soon, so I figured it was time for a new post :-)
Things here have been good but busy lately! we've been finishing up school stuff--two finals, two final papers, and a field studies journal. But I am now done school for the semester! It is sort of crazy to realize that everything is almost over--that I will be home in three days...But I'm really excited to see everyone!!!
well, I should go! I have a lot to do today (and this weekend in general): Christmas shopping, packing, cleaning, more Christmas shopping...plus I want to walk around a bit and see the pretty Christmas decorations and stuff! That should be nice! (there are some Christmas markets that some friends and I are going to visit!)
So I will see some of you when I get home monday evening, and the rest of you sometime in the near future!!
enjoy your weekend everyone!!!
~Andrea~

Happy Thanksgiving!!

By the way...i hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving!
mine was great! my whole group got together to do a dinner, and we had a TON of food! it was awesome! we got turkey and ham and mashed potatoes and stuffing and carrots, peas, green beans, rolls, cheesecake, ice cream, apple turnovers....it was yummy :-)
and it was nice to be with everyone since i couldn't be with everyone back home...but I got to talk to family types that night! yeah. so it was a great day!
and i'm so thankful for all of you guys back home, and i'm excited to see you all soon!
take care, and enjoy the weekend!

Pictures!

Here are some pictures from my Poland trip!

From Auschwich

"Work Makes You Free"

A park near our hostel

The rest of these are from the old city...

Poland :-)

hey everyone!
update on my latest travels: I went to Poland last weekend! It was a sorta last minute thing: we'd been thinking about it for a while but didn't actually book anything until Thursday (and we left on Friday...). So that was pretty cool!!!
We took a bus to Krakow on Friday afternoon..it left Budapest at 2 and was supposed to get there at 9:30. well, things don't always go quite as planned: there was a snowstorm. so we went wicked slowly, got stuck at least once, stopped a couple times (i made my 1st snowball of the winter!!) and finally reached Krakow at about 3:00am. yeah. so that was a looong bus ride!
The next day, we got up and took the 1 1/2 hour bus ride from Krakow to Auschwich. we took a tour in the freezing cold (it was snowing again) which was very...i dunno...interesting, depressing, neat but sad. it was crazy to actually be in the place where all of the disturbing, terrible things happened: we saw the prison cells, the tiny shoes of all the kids that they killed, the luggage of the Jews who thought they were just moving to a new place, the room full of hair that they shaved off because it could be used to make clothe...we walked under the gate stating "work makes you free" into the compound surrounded by barbed wire...we stood in the gas chambers and saw the ovens they used to burn bodies after murdering people.
yeah. so needless to say, there was a lot to think about on saturday.
after that, we went out and had a nice dinner (it was SO CHEAP! i love conversion rates in countries that aren't on the euro!) and then saw a couple bars before turning in for the night. (oh--forgot to mention: the kids sitting in front of us on the bus also happened to be american college students studying abroad in Budapest--one at Corvinus another at a different school--and they were staying at the same hostel as us! so they joined us for dinner & stuff. that was fun!)
On sunday, we checked out of our hostel and then braved the cold and snow for a little while so we could see the old city. it was really pretty!! we stopped in a couple stores to warm up in between seeing old churches and castle-type buildings. (i'm not really sure what some of the buildings were, but they were pretty!!) after we were sufficiently frozen, we went to the mall that was right near the bus station. we ate lunch there (which turned out to be a bad idea: no one really liked the food they got...oh well...) and then bought a few snacks for the return bus trip.
At 2:30 we got on the bus and settled in for what turned out to be only the 7 1/2 hour bus ride that it was supposed to be! (on both bus trips they played movies almost the whole time, which was nice!!)
yeah, so that was my weekend! It was awesome! very relaxing and very, very pretty!! the snow reminded me of home and Christmas...it was probably one of my favorite trips this semester!
I only took a few pictures, but i'll post some once I've uploaded them to my computer!
see you all soon!!! :-)

pictures!

So here's some pictures from last weekend with Mom & Julia!! I would love to post all of them, but unfortunately some people are a little bit picture-happy and there are over 600 of them. :-) so you'll have to settle for 9. enjoy!


night view of the Danube, Parliament, Chain Bridge, and Castle.




Us at the castle district












In the castle district












Julia and a friend in the castle district ;-)


















Mom & I in the castle district


















St. Stephen's Basilica

















Liberty Statue


















At the baths

Heroes' Square

last weekend

hey all!
things here in Budapest are going quite well!! this weekend was wonderful as i had a visit from Mom and Julia!!! it was awesome to see them! we got to see so many cool things! we went to the castle district, margret island, the liberty statue, the baths, hero square, st. stephen's basilica, the malls, my school, the central market, city park....plus we ate lots of good food!! i of course had to introduce them to don pepe's (my favorite pizza place) but we also had gyros, some good greek food, and of course authentic, hungarian, goulash soup. it was awesome!!!
and of course all of that was mixed with good times filled with laughter, random picture taking, a couple movies, some late nights and a (very) early morning. oh--and we went to church on Sunday!! that was probably one of my highlights of the weekend! and Mom planned a birthday party for me! it was a lot of fun!! spice cake and ice cream and candles and presents and friends AND family!! yay!
so yeah, it was an awesome weekend!!!! i'll probably post some pictures soon! and if i've left anything out, i'm sure you can bug Mom or Juli for details :-)
I hope everything back in the US is going well, and i can't wait to see the rest of you when i come home in a month!!!
have an awesome friday tomorrow! and then a great weekend!!!!
~Andrea~

"How great is our God! Sing with me: how great is our God! And all will see how great, how great is our God!!" ---the first song we sang at church last Sunday :-)

so here's some pictures from italy...i know there's a lot, but I took a ton so it was hard to decide which ones to post ;-) haha. enjoy!!
they are the river and a church in venice, a museum and a tower/basilica in florence, the protest in florence (by the way...we ended up seeing the same protest in rome...) followed by coliseum pictures, pictures of St. Peter's basilica, the Vatican museum, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, and finally the Pope.

hello everyone!!
so i'm back from italy!! it was an amazing trip! there's waaay too much to be summed up in a post, but here's the basics:
it all started with an 11 hour bus ride from Budapest to Venice. It really wasn't as bad as it sounds because it was overnight and so we could do our best to sleep the whole way there...didn't really happen, but we got some sleep! and got to watch "Daddy Day Care" in Hungarian. :-)
Venice was gorgeous! we stayed there only one overnight, but that gave us plenty of time to wander around and admire the view of the canal and visit the little shops and restaurants. (Italy has awesome lasagna!! :-)
we took a train from Venice, which was an adventure in and of itself: the guy traveling with us realized that he had left his passport at the hostel, which was about a 30 minute bus ride away…so he went off to get it while the rest of us (myself and 3 other girls) tried to figure out how we could make it so he didn’t lose his train ticket when our train left in an hour or so. After running around to various ticket windows and customer help offices, we finally switched his ticket to a later time and found someone at a random travel agency who would hold it for him. We finally got our phones to work in time to call him and let him know where to pick up his ticket before leaving on our train. So that was exciting :-)
we all made it to Florence and eventually found our hotel we were staying at. (we knew the road and number, but for some reason the numbers went up to a hundred then back to the thirties…it was confusing…) Florence was a lot of fun too!! We walked around to a lot of things because we were staying probably 15 minutes walk away from most of the big attractions! We saw the statue of David, which was amazing! And went to a couple gorgeous churches, and we saw this riot/protest thing that had something to do with Italy’s university system. We walked along the river and saw a bridge across it that was the same as the road: complete with houses/buildings on either side. It was a pretty neat place!!! We stayed there for three nights and then headed off to Rome!
Rome was definitely the coolest place on our trip. We stayed there for five nights, so we had plenty of time to see everything!! And we stayed in this very interesting hostel—called the freestyle hostel that we picked because it was cheap and had free breakfast and dinner. It was what you would think of when you picture a youth hostel: we stayed in a dorm for 11 people, so it had five bunk beds and one normal bed squeezed along the walls of the room. Then there was a common room which also served as the dining room for breakfast and dinner (no, there wasn’t a table…just seats lining the walls) it was also where you checked in and out and where the computer was for guests to use. Other than that, there were two bathrooms and a tiny kitchen. It was interesting. But a lot of fun!! There were a lot of cool people to meet, from all over. (mostly from Europe and the US, but there were some Australians and a couple people from Japan) it was a fun place to stay :-)
Since we did so much in Rome, I’ll break it up by day:
Wednesday: arrive at dinnertime, head over to the Spanish steps after dinner with people from the hostel
Thursday: head to coliseum, see that and the roman forum/palatine hill. After dinner: some people went to a pub crawl, I went with the group who wanted to see what the coliseum looks like at night…looks pretty cool! We hung out and talked…and one kid brought his guitar. Good night!! :-)
Friday: went to Vatican city. Saw St. Peter’s basilica (gorgeous!!) and the Vatican museums (including the Sistine chapel!!) that was an amazing day!!!
Saturday: went to all the random things that wouldn’t take a full day to see: saw the pantheon, the Trevi fountain, a few gorgeous basilicas, and some castles and fountains.
Sunday: went back to St. Peter’s to see the Pope! Sat in the courtyard during the mass and saw it on a screen and then saw him when he gave a speech/blessing from his window. That was really cool!
Monday: went back to the Spanish steps, but this time to do some studying…we had a midterm on Tuesday morning!! So we studied there until lunch and then headed to the airport where we studied until 8 or so when we could finally check in for our flight.
So that was our trip!! We got back to Budapest around midnight, and I got back to my apartment around one in the morning. It was an awesome trip!!! Pictures will be posted shortly!!!

Greetings from Florence!
stuff here in Italy is going great: Venice was gorgeous, the statue of David is amazing, and we are off to Rome tomorrow!!!!
I will write a full update when I get back to Budapest! and post pictures of course!! :-)

hello again!

so life here in Budapest has been (and probably will continue to be) very busy lately! Last week was spent working on (or finding excuses not to be working on) my paper, followed by an awesome weekend in Prague, and then studying for today's midterm. And tomorrow we have a field trip, and will be doing reading for Thursday's class and finishing the planning for our October break trip.

This past weekend in Prague was amazing! I went with a group of four other people (the three girls I went to Croatia with plus one guy) though four other people from our group also went to Prague this weekend, we just stayed different lengths of time. We left on Friday night, and took an overnight bus ride over there. (sleeping was rather difficult: it must've been at least a million degrees on that bus!!) we arrived in Prague at about 6:00 am on Saturday morning. Once we navigated the subway and found our hostel, we found out that we weren't going to be able to check into our room until at least 12. So, we decided we would just take a really long time eating their all-you-can-eat breakfast! It didn't take us quite the necessary 3 1/2 hours, so we had some extra time to look at maps and pamphlets and try and figure out exactly what we wanted to do while we were there.

after putting our stuff in our room, we headed out to the main part of the city. we explored the old town center, followed a free tour for a while, and then saw some cool buildings on either side of the river. the afternoon and evening was spent napping, eating, and observing local nightlife. ;-)

sunday was when we did more exploring as we had recovered from our lack of sleep. the first thing we saw was the Prague caste, which was gorgeous! then we spent a long time just wandering around the city before having an early dinner. After dinner we went on a boat tour! It was clear out with a full moon, so it was beautiful! (i'm including some pictures from this...) after the tour and some dessert it was time to head to the bus station. we took another overnight bus (much easier to sleep on this one!!) and arrived in Budapest at about 6am on Monday! Overall an awesome weekend!!

well, that's all for now...and I probably won't update this for a couple weeks because I will be gone in Italy for October break!! :-)

here are some pictures from the weekend:

Prague castle:

from the boat tour:

Hi everyone!
I can't believe it's October already! Time flies when you're having fun, right? :-)
This week has been a very good one! This past week's field trips were a lot of fun! The murder trial was pretty interesting! It was hard to follow because it was all in Hungarian, but Ildiko (the Hungarian professor who leads the field trips) wrote notes throughout the trial explaining what was going on. It was the day that the judge gave the verdict, so we didn't see any witnesses being questioned, but it was still neat to see! After the court, and lunch, we had a tour of a nearby monastery, which was really cool! It was up on the hill (mountain?) side and so had a gorgeous view, and the inside was beautiful also!

The trip on Wednesday was really cool too! We had a tour of the police station after a brief presentation on how things work within the Hungarian police force. After the tour, we headed over to another building where they monitor security cameras that have been placed around the district. (I got to ride in a police car over there! fun!) It was really neat to see footage that they had from different cameras-footage from a recent riot, and the recording of a car backing into another one that they used to prove whose fault the accident was. Overall, a very good week of school! :-)

And this weekend has been very nice!! We've had two movie nights so far, one on Thursday and one last night. And I've gone running twice! (On Friday morning and this morning) I went with my friend Danielle over to Margaret Island where they have a running track that's about 5.2 k or something...not sure, but it feels nice to be running around outside. And the view is awesome! (I'll post some pictures...) And this weekend we have also made some plans for next weekend: we're going to go to Prague! It'll just be for two days/one night, but we figure that's enough to see things and that way we don't have to book hostels for two nights.

So I think that's about it! We have a paper due this Thursday (our first one of the semester!) and then midterms coming up...but we have plenty of time on the weekends to get things done! :-)

Hope you guys are doing well back home!!

view from Margaret Island:

pictures from the weekend :-)

castle district

zoo

So this weekend has been a busy one so far! I stayed in Budapest again, and have spent some time exploring. On Friday morning, I met up with my tandem partner and we visited Heroes Square and a little bit of the city park that's right next to it. Heroes square is amazing! There are huge statues of a bunch of historical figures from Hungary and in the center is a giant pillar with a Gabriel statue on top. (Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me...but I'm going back soon and will bring it then!) Then yesterday, my friend Danielle and I went back to the castle district (we went there the first weekend with the whole group) and just wandered around and took a few pictures. It was gorgeous! Pretty buildings, lovely view of the Danube, lots of random statues and fountains...
and then today we went to the zoo! Saw tons of birds, some lions and tigers and bears, (oh my!) camels, hippos, elephants, wolves, monkeys...and lots of other things, but you would get bored of just reading a list of animals ;-)
This week is looking like it's going to be pretty sweet. Tuesday is usually our really long class day, but this week we have an extra field trip planned for Tuesday! we're going to a courthouse to see a murder trial. and then Wednesday we're visiting a police station. (yes, that means we only have one class this week!!) I'm really excited for both field trips, but especially for the trip to the courthouse!! should be cool to see how courtroom procedure differs between Hungary and the US. :-)
And then next weekend some people are off to Romania...not sure if I'm joining them, but I might! :-)
well, that's about it! Hope everything is going wonderfully for all of you!!!!

here's a couple pictures that I like...the first is a picture of parlament from across the river..i took it the first week when we visited the castle district. the second is taken from my window when the sky was pretty :-)
hope you like them!

random

hey everyone!
new update so that if anyone actually checks this there will be something to read ;-)
this weekend was pretty nice...did a lot of nothing...slept in, did homework, read, hit up a couple malls, found a post office...it was very relaxing :-)
today i had the usual 6 hours of class, and i presented in our second class of the day. (it's a class based on class discussions, with 4-5 different people leading discussions each week) i was presenting/leading discussion on an article about drug use within different Native American tribes as compared within the tribes, between different tribes, and with a national sample. sorta interesting stuff...lots of numbers and stats....but interesting policy issues to think about. (i won't bore you with any of the discussion :-)
tomorrow, our group is heading to the immigration office to register...not really sure what we're doing, but someone at the university here is going with us to show us what needs to be done. and then we have a guest lecturer coming to talk about different Hungarian drug policies and problems. (sense a theme? yes...this is what justice studies students talk about...drugs and crime ;-)
well, that's about it! hope you all are doing wonderfully!
praying for you all!!!!

pictures from Jewish synogogue and boat tour of Danube