Szia!

Today marked the first full day of classes, starting with a crash course in Hungarian! It was a complex process involving some lingual acrobatics, lots of mispronunciation, and even more laughter, but our teacher Erika was very patient. After struggling through learning the basics (introductions and some simple phrases), we wandered into a cafe for lunch and promptly forgot everything. After lots of pointing and charades, we ordered hot chocolate, which turned out to be thick enough to eat off a spoon. Simply put, we will be drinking that with every meal from here on out. Although the drink wasn't the priciest thing on the menu, we're fairly sure that 199 forint (67 cent!!) pizza slices can't be beat anywhere. Stomaches full, we returned to the classroom to learn about greatest common divisors and two of the most important theorems of the entire course. Lots of different colored chalk for different terms and definitions meant a multicolored Professor Hanson.

Buda Castle

view of the Pest side: Parliament building (left)
and the Chain Bridge

Classes done for the day, a group of us hopped on a bus for our first trip to BUDA (YAY), the other side of the city across the river. On our agenda was the Buda Castle. Fun fact number one, it was first built in 1265 and housed the Hungarian kings. Fun fact number two, Katy Perry used the courtyard in her music video for Firework (Side note, we promptly paused our writing to watch the video and it's totally legit *freaking oooout*). After returning to our Pest homeland, we visited a cat cafe to do our homework. Number theory problems, however interesting, paled in comparison to having 10 cats wandering past your table. Hungry from yet another very full day, we dined at Indigo Indian Restaurant. The food, as seems to be a reoccurring theme in this city, had our tastebuds dancing. After finishing all our delicious food however, it took a full table of nine math majors almost 10 minutes to figure out how to split the bill using only Hungarian cash.

dinner at the Indian restaurant

bravo to Lucas for finishing all his food!
#cleanplateclub

While we had a lovely dinner on our own, other friends have been assigned to different "date nights" with the professors and a small group of students to learn more about each other and Budapest's food and culture. After dinner, the hotel's sauna is a popular way to relax and warm up after a day in the cold, although 104 degrees Celsius might be just a bit too toasty for our taste. Having such busy days is great for adjusting to a new sleeping schedule, and we've found jet lag isn't too much of an issue when we collapse into bed. Speaking of sleeping, it's past our bedtime. Check in tomorrow for more adventures.

With love, the weakest links (Brynna, Annika, and Sydney)

squad goals

"Does it look like I'm holding the statue?
...this does not feel natural..."

fun times, fun times

hot chocolate ft. a lurking Matthew