WIP Wednesday: Raspberry What???

The other day I made something out of all of these ingredients, but what was it?!?

Whipped Cream

Marshmallows and Milk

Raspberries

Tune into FO (Finished Object Friday) for the answer.....

Picture Saturday: The Reformed Church next to the Danube

During our spring break back in April a friend and I took a walking tour from the Budapest edition of Blue Guide.  One of the stops was this beautiful Reformed church that sits a the bank of the Danube river:

The roof of this church was made my the Zsolnay company .  The company also makes beautiful porcelain.

WIP Wednesdays: The hope of painting something

My friend from Kittens with Mittens was giving me some ideas today about what I could put on this blog.  One of her suggestions was Work In Progress Wednesdays, so this is my first WIP Wednesday.  I bought these after a short trip to Wally-Mart.  I am hoping to use them to paint when I am in Hungary.

10 Stiff White Nylon Brushes

Fanned out:  You can see the bright white in the light of the flash.

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.