Cost of Common Items in Hungary

**The exchange rate was calculated at the rate of 1 CAD to 190.306407 HUF** Rent and Utilities	66,000-100,000 HUF and up ($346.80-$525.47 and up)
Laundry Detergent (5 KG powder)	3699 HUF ($19.43)
Refrigerator/Freezer (140x54x60 cm)	71990 HUF (378.28)
Water melon	145 HUF/KG ($0.79)
Monthly Transportation Pass	9800 HUF/KG ($51.49)
Taft Hair Mousse	849 HUF ($4.46)
Woman’s blouse	3990-6990 and up ($20.96-$36.72)
Mobile Phone	2125 HUF/Month ($11.16/Month)

The great Facebook count down......

.....the visit to Germany.

Over the last month or so many people have enquired about the countdown I was having on Facebook.  I was surprised at how many people were curious about what was going on.  In fact I did not start the count down, but my friend Elisabeth did. It ended on day 0 with a 9.5 hour bus ride and a 1.5 hour car ride to visit with her in her eastern German village near the town of Löbau.  I had such a great trip visiting with her and meeting all of her friends.

Elisabeth and me in her youth club

Can you see the flag??? Hungarians are everywhere!!!

Cigarette Vending Machine

Beautiful house with beautiful snow

Cow crossing

Classic East German car. The "Trabant"

Door in the church where we went to a youth service

I am sure to a German this is a common scene, but I love the spiral staircase

These stars a quite common in
Saxony where Elisabeth lives

Thank You Mom and Fall Library Update

I would like to give a big THANK YOU to my mom for sending me these:

 

The students love colouring with the assortment of markers, crayons and pencil crayons that she sent.

This fall the library has been busy as we celebrated TEEN READ WEEK (TRW) and kicked off a reading competition with American candy as the prizes.  I went on an adventure to Culinaris on the other side of Budapest by public transit to get the candy.

Signs were posted around the school to encourage student participation in TRW

Culinaris - expensive but the only place in Budapest where you can buy many 'American' and other imported products

Display of prizes for the reading competition

The elementary students have been learning the Dewey Decmimal Classification System and other important library skills using these cute animal cut outs:

 I have been busy selecting and ordering new books.  Here is the 'small' order we recieved this fall.  We will have the 'large' order in the spring:

Szabadság

Here I am sitting on the continent where so many soldiers gave their lives for freedom during the two world wars – at least for the West. Yet, here in Hungary the dates that we celebrate in Canada as the dates of freedom can be seen as times of repression. For many Hungarians the end of World War One is viewed as the time they lost 2/3 of their territory and the end of World War Two as the time the soviets moved in starting 40 years of communism. Hungarians have other dates that they use to celebrate their great desire for and for their present ‘Szabadság’ or ‘freedom’.


Being half ethnic Hungarian living in Hungary, but born in Canadian to a Canadian mother causes me to think about what today November 11th actually means to me. My Canadianess and my great thankfulness to the Canadian people for opening their gates for the 1956 Hungarian freedom fighters tells me that today I need to be thankful and remember all of those soldiers who fought for the freedom of the West which in turn gave freedom to my family and many others in need a safe haven from war.

So today – the eleventh day of the eleventh month – lest we forget.

Thank you to Tina for the reminder.

Tanulok Magyarul - I study Hungarian II

As a continuation of the post on studying Hungarian here are some related pictures:

I labeled all of these kitchen items and then kept them on the counter for over a week to help me learn the names

Ki-Be two prefexes we recently learned in class.  On, off, into, out of, etc. they have opened up a brand new world of Hungarian. Also do not leave out le, fel, rá, el, vissa or meg!

My Hungarian classmates and a couple of friends out for the afternoon at the gyermekvasut (children's railway)

Tanulok Magyarul - I study Hungarian I

This fall I finally decided to take seriously my lifelong desire to learn Hungarian by taking language lessons at a local language school.  During the last two year I have studied Hungarian under various tutors and friends, but by going to language school I have become more motivated and my ability to understand Hungarian has increased.  Because Hungarian an extremely difficult language for English speakers to learn I am only able to have very simple conversations, but with each new word I can use to communicate there is another victory.  For me living in a foreign it is a great feeling to be able to communicate through reading, writing and speaking in the local language. It takes some of the helplessness of not understanding what is going on around you.

Below are some ways that Hungarian differs from English:

#1. There is only one word for he and she – Ő (this is the easy part)

#2.  Hungarian most prepositions in Hungarian are formed by adding a suffix to the end of the word i.e. to say  in the store you would say “boltban” bolt=store ban=in

#3 Hungarian has 14 vowels: aá eé ii oó öő uú üű

A walk around my neighbourhood

On a love summer/early fall on a walk around my neighbourhood in Budapest here are a few things you might see (watch out for the dogs barking at you from behind the fences):

On of the many different types of side walks found in Hungary - there are no standards.

A hedge hog - they are very shy and only come out in the evening

The only clean sign (no graffti) I could find

The bus stop I wait at every morning on my way to work

Kelenföldi Pályaudvar - I see this train station on my way to work every day

.

The kiosk where I buy my monthly bus pass

Budapest city buses - the red ones were called the 'Red 7' when I first arrived two years ago, but now they are the '7E'

A map of South Buda - the beautiful eastern hilly side of the city

Ok well the parliament building is not in my neighbourhood, but it is only a half hour tram ride away and a beautiful sight on a sunny day