a small update... and a post written yesterday...

first, an update from today:
we have internet in our flat. I'm writing to you from the comforts of my own bedroom. aw, yeah.
also, please keep in your prayers the Knauert family- Leigh, Lilly, David, Peter and Harrison - I met them while at my orientation in Chicago. here is the announcement from the PC-USA mission news - http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2009/09993.htm

second, an update written yesterday:

This is our last evening without internet at our flat. Wow. I feel like a milestone will be reached tomorrow afternoon. Today has been a long day and I probably should have gone to bed a lot earlier than I did last night. Whoops… but I was just so into my phone calls. I mean, between all three of the greatest friends in the world, the only other person I wanted to call was my mommy, but she’s been traveling this week.

This week, I am teaching about Thanksgiving at the school – please if you have any Thanksgiving pictures, send them to trazylyn@gmail.com – I would love to add them to my presentations. Next week is actually Thanksgiving. All of the North Americans will be coming together and Dick and Carolyn Otterness’ flat to share a meal together. There are volunteers coming from Slovakia, as well as the volunteers in Hungary. There is some guy that’s semi-important in the ELCA coming. There are a few other American friends that have also been invited along. It should be a great time of hanging out :)

Some of you have asked about budgeting over here. Let’s be honest, now, eh? So, I get 40,000HUF each month… that equals out to about $5 a day. My budget has been worked out to be weekly because it’s easiest to just go shopping every week. It is as follows:
10,000HUF
-1000HUF for tithe (about $5.45)
-1000HUF for savings (about $5.45)
-2000HUF for Saturday (lunch/extra shopping) (about $10.90)
-6000HUF for groceries and weekly necessities (about $32.70)
In all honesty, it should be enough, but there are some things to factor in here. My main meal everyday is covered, so I only need to buy food for breakfast and lunch. Not a big deal, as that equals about 2500HUF (about $13.60) every week for all those meals… so we’re down to 3500HUF (about $19) spending money. Factor in that I’m a coffee addict and we’re down to about 2500HUF. Then add in that you have to have pre-paid minutes on your phone and then if you want to do anything special for any of the meals (like cook for your roommates or for the boys), or if you want to travel… or say, if you need new shoes… and your money is shot (or like more than shot). Good thing? Train travel is fairly cheap (about 4000HUF/$21.75 round trip to Kristy’s village), but it is a huge amount of my weekly budget… plus, if I travel, I don’t get meals at the school then, so it will cost me in food.
So, I guess to sum it all up – I’m back to living paycheck to paycheck… and I am getting used to budgeting, but finding it difficult.

Life is good and hopefully my next update will be from my own home, on a wired internet connection… chilling in my kitchen :) Cheers, mates!

*~*~*

A couple weeks ago, Kristy and Matt and I woke up at 4:45a to catch the sunrise from Citadella. You can see in the first picture that it was fairly dark when we began our hike around 5:45a (it took an hour to get ready, meet Matt and commute). This is a statue of St. Istvan. I took this picture thinking it was Gellert, a missionary sent to this hill to evangelize to the wild people that lived here. Apparently it was all going well until the people that lived on the hill decided that they didn’t like him and threw him off. He died and the people that sent him decided to call the hill, Gellert Hill. Then in 1851, they built Citadella on this hill. So, really, it was his hill first and it should have been his statue... but whatever.


By the time we reached the top of the hill, the sun had risen and we had missed it – turns out that it was very cloudy and it just got lighter as time passed, but we never witnessed the sun actually rising. Fail.
Pass – check out the pretty fall colors on the Buda side! :)


These are some of the steps we encountered on our hike. Most of the area was very nice with widely paved paths and stairs – but this particular section is older and maybe a little intimidating, but also cute and picturesque. I couldn’t resist :P


I don’t know if you remember my previous pictures from the top of this hill, but if you want, you can scroll to the other posts and check it out. This is a picture of what Budapest looked like 159 years ago. Compared to today --- wow. You can see the one bridge – the Chain bridge – in the picture. That was the first bridge to connect Buda and Pest to form Budapest. And tada! There you have your history lesson for the day! :)