I went to the National Theatre a couple days ago.  It was another wonderful day when I started out, but it seems to always get cloudy, and thus cold, in the early afternoon.  The sun sets by about 4 and leaves me longing for the drawn-out days of summer.  The weather has been mild, and it still doesn’t feel like winter yet.  I’m sure it’s coming.  I hear there’s a winter market set up somewhere in town, and I think I’ll go look for it sometime soon.  But I digress.  The National Theatre has some crazy architecture.  It looks almost as though the entire building is sitting on a boat in the water and the water spills over the edges.  The edges start by the building, as if it’s the base of a triangle, and meet at a point in front of the boat.  The cool thing about this is that the water just trickles over the edges near the building, but once you get to the point the water is rushing over the edge and roaring the small lion’s roar of a miniature waterfall  transplanted in the middle of this urban jungle.  They also kept a wall from the original theatre before they tore it down to build the new one, and it’s laying in the water next to the boat.  There are a few statues sporadically dotting the grassy landscape in front of the building as well.  Johnmark told me I should go check it out, and I’m glad I did.

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Today I gave my first lesson to a student I picked up to tutor.  She’s a senior in high school and is applying to colleges in the US.  She speaks English pretty fluently, but mostly wants help with her written grammar and punctuation for her college application essays.  She’s cool, and the lesson went well.  I made six grand (in forint) for an hour and a half, and actually doing a little “work” left me feeling productive for the rest of the day.  I might get to tutor her mom as well, so things are definitely looking up on the job front.  JM and I decided to celebrate by getting groceries and eating crazy Hungarian food.  I tried some lo kolbasz (horse sausage).  Yeah, you read that right, horse sausage.  It tasted like…sausage.  Surprise!

Cheers!
-E