I have become very good friends with a girl named Henni, she's from Finland and might be one of the nicest girls I've ever met. We have so much fun together and after spending a couple months with her I feel like we've been friends for years. Her English is very good and everytime she hears me say a word that she's unfamiliar with she picks it up so fast! It's really cute. So Henni, Lauren and I decided to take a girls night away and travel to Budapest, Hungary last Saturday. We got on an early bus (8am) and arrived in Budapest around 10. We lucked out as the weather was beautiful that day, sunny and warm. We walked around the city for probably 8 hours that day. It was beautiful. I found the city to be very very touristy, which can be annoying at times, but it makes you feel safe at the same time. We had lunch down by the Duabe River which is beautiful. It also has a very neat memorial to the Budapest Jews who were killed in World War II. It was neat to explore some history I didn't know about.
After seeing the entire City, we checked into our hostel which was very interesting. It was small, very very small. We shared a room with two guys from Vietnam and our room was probably the size of my bedroom. It was.. interesting. However, the location was perfect, we were walking distance from the city centre and the famous St. Stephens Basilica, which was incredible at night. We went on a pub crawl that was organized that night by our hostel, it was lots of fun and we ended up meeting a ton of people from Australia and two girls from the US were studying in Greece. The girls told us the Budapest was known for it's Hotsprings and Spa's, something we had no idea about, so on Sunday while it poured rain we decided to check it out. This again was an intresting expeirence.. Europeans love there spedo's.. seriously old men everywhere!! However, the hotsprings were in this very old building surrounded with Statue's and scripture, it was really cool. All in all, a very rememberable and fun weekend!
Everything else is going really great. I love all of my classes, I wish that my classes at Mount Royal were taught the way they are here. I just finished a class called "Doing Business in Eastern European Countries" so interesting. I was the only person in the class who wasn't from Europe, so a lot of the history was all very new to me. I loved it, and our professor was funny, real and very motivational. It's so weird that the class was only for a week and now over. A lot of my other classes are focused on Marketing, Advertising and Sales. Public Relations is rarely brought up, it's very different than home, considering that is my major!!
Easter Break starts this week and Im so excited to go to London and stay with Lauren's Uncle. He's a teacher there and has lived in the UK for 5 years now. Im sure he is going to show us around the city.. and we will get to have an Easter dinner! .. It will also be very nice to have people all around me speak English again, even if it's only for a few days! My German improves day by day but it is such a hard language to learn. It's not even a nice language, I think it sounds horrible!! I can now at least say hi, exuse me, bye, can I have the bill, and those sort of things. The rest of the time, it's back to playing charades with people!!
I'm so happy the Stephen (my brother) and I are able to talk while I'm here. I love asking him things and always turn to him for advice. We were talking about trying to meet on our trip, he thinks I should meet him in Singapore in June and travel with him for a few weeks. I researched a lot about Malaysia and it freaked the hell out of me. I wish I had his bravery, I really do. I would feel safe because I was with him, and I know it would be so good for me to put myself out of my comfort zone and expeirence something like that.. but I feel like my fears overpower all of those things. I truly admire his bravery. I guess it's something to ponder.
I'm going to post a few pictures from our weekend in Budapest, a very beautiful city. Thanks to all my family and friends back home who continue to send me e-mails. I love hearing from all of you.
This is Lauren and I standing in front of the Danube River.
View from of one side of the city, Budapest.
Budapest’s Parliament Building.
Henni, Lauren and I standing on a little bridge with a statue of man who I don’t know!
St. Stephen’s Basilica
This is Lauren and I getting ready in our very tiny hostel.
This is Hero's Square in Budapest, this picture doesn't do justice to how huge it was.
Really nice bridge I liked :)
This was the memorial to the Budapest Jews, very neat.
St. Stephen’s Basilica at night.
Henni, Lauren and I.
Here is the group of us from the Hostel that ventured out on the town for the night.
This is our group a couple hours after finding out that ALL of our liquor was included!!
This is a picture of the hotsprings we went to on Sunday in Budapest.
