First, I would like to thank everyone for their emails and small little facebook/msn/g chat messages that you have left for me asking how I am and how am I finding Budapest. Well.... I'm not going to glorify the entire experience. The first two weeks were challenging. That's the best word to find for it. I had mixed feelings the whole time. I wanted to be here, but on the other hand, I wanted to go home. I didn't know the language, I hated the cold, I hated not having a microwave oven in the apartment, I didn't know anybody...
But then, I guess it's a sort of initiation ritual that everyone goes through. You find your own niche, make your own friends. I remember when I first came here, I was trying to find a church with english mass to go to. Somehow, it felt particularly important that I do so... Talking to my flatmates, they were like, " oh there's no way you're going to find one here, you're going to have to just go to the hungarian masses." Ok... sure... GOOGLE. Thank you US EMBASSY WEBSITE. They actually had a list of churches in budapest which offered english mass, and what do you know, there was actually one like five minutes down from where I live and it was the correct denomination at that (Roman Catholic). The parish there is really small, lots of old middle aged people, but it survives. Today was the first time I dared to venture into the tea room after mass to meet the parishoners. At first I was just like standing helplessly around, but slowly.. I found myself talking to this Australian dude... and slowly one by one, was introduced to the room. Everyone was obviously so much older, but it was nice to talk to fellow "expats" or whatever one refers to foreigners living in Budapest. There were a number of english teachers or those who had experience teaching english as a foreign language previously. Most people were from England... but I guess an experience in all....

Not sure if anyone would ever be interested, but english mass is every sat at 5pm and the addy of the church is:
Budapest VIII Maria u 25.

So what about hungarians in general? Haven't met many to be honest. Many are painfully shy, most probably because they do not have much confidence to communicate with english... so it's often a hi and awkward silence when I do meet hungarians. Interestingly enough, I met my landlord for the first time yesterday, and the moment he heard that I was from Singapore, he began a tirade on how Singapore was a fascist and was a country run by a dictator. Everything was so strict, people got fined for smoking, for drinking etc etc.... It got so ridiculous (his claims), I was like laughing the whole time. He claims that he worked briefly as a translator for Suharto before and firmly believes that chinese buddhism (taoism I suspect) is rubbish. I think he got a bit wary when upon meeting me, he realized that I was chinese. Actually... he actually asked me if I was chinese or malay. I actually repeated the question, because it was such an absurb question to me and I couldn't believe that I looked in the least bit malay for him to be asking that question. But as it turns out, he was totally serious about it... and gosh... dear readers, you should have seen him rolling his eyes 360 degrees when I repeated his question. Anyhow, upon seeing my slit eyes and flat nose, he was wary because he had planned to serve thai tom yum soup that night for dinner and of course, you could probably cheat an angmoh, but not an asian... lol... But to be fair, although it wasn't thai authentic, it was very tasty and I had many helpings. The best part was when he brought out the tom yum paste he had supposedly used to make the soup and when I looked at it, the expiry date was listed as 12/2008.... LMAO...
One thing though, Hungarian desserts are really really YUMMY... I would have taken pictures, but it was my first time as a guest and I probably looked/sounded wierd enough as it was... lol.... we had so many different sweets: cookies/ biscuits/ cakes/ bars.... it was all so nice....:) I think my landlord is really into the Asian culture thingy, coz he's already announced that the next time we meet for dinner, I have to cook asian food for everyone... I was like... PRESSURE.... haha... serve everyone spicy curry... see how they would like that... :P

I mentioned in my previous post that drinking is cheap here. No kidding. For the first time in my life, I went out and celebrated St Paddy's Day ( coz it was an excuse to drink... and I got laughed at by my flatmate for even asking if it was St Paddy's Day) We went to an Irish Bar, Becketts, which incidentally is listed in eyewitness guidebooks top 10 pubs in Pest (around town). It was the first time since I arrived that I went to a bar and there was more english being spoken than hungarian... I think I even spotted this group of malaysian/singapore students (I know from their accent) hanging out in the corner (the lots of small cute girls and their protective boyfriends picture)... but they left the bar pretty quickly.. lol.. And that bar played pretty decent dancy music... James says that I automatically started humming/moving to the rhythm when "poker face" came on... haha..

Becketts: Green was obviously the colour of the night.

Greennnnn beer...

They even show football games!!! Its kind of wierd seeing football games being shown in the pubs now, after living in a NZ where football was like "huh" and it was always rugby at the bars only.

Kiwis...

Ok, so this is what happened. Rodrigo (I hope I spelt it correctly) received two unique carribeanas with a touchlight on them. He gave one to me. James saw it and wanted one too, but the bar girl said he had to buy a glass of irish whisky to get the freebies. He wanted them so much he bought it. So he got that, plus one of those neck key chain holders or something, a lighter and a dice...

Happy St Patrick's Day!