yesterday was a celebration in Hungary called Mikulás day. it's a day honoring St. Nicholas, whom Americans have come to refer to as Santa Claus. I wiki'ed it (www.wikipedia.org) and this is what I found - I decided to paste it for you because otherwise I would tell you the exact same thing and that would be called plagerism, so all credit goes to wiki, ok? :P
"Although the role of gift-giver on Christmas Day itself is assigned to the Christ Child, on Saint Nicholas' feast day of 6 December Hungarian children traditionally place a boot on their windowsill waiting for Mikulás to come by and fill it with treats. While "good" children receive various fruits, candies and toys, "bad" children can expect nothing more than a wooden spoon, coal or a willow-switch ("virgács") left by Mikulás' somewhat sinister elf-companion, Krampusz. (However, as no one is either all good or all bad, most children get both sweets and a switch.)"
so, that being said, this is how I celebrated.
Silvia, Andrea, Evelyn and I ordered Pizza from Pizza Hut on Saturday night. This was no easy task because we ordered it online and everything had to be translated of course... and we were dealing with limited budgets and 4 very different tastes for pizza. Then we submitted a coupon that was only good until 30 November (they still accepted it!)... then they called us because getting into our building is only simple if you have the code, otherwise you don't know which button to push for which apartment. We enjoyed our pizza and watched Mamma Mia (okay, we only watched 3/4 of it - we lost interest... :/ ...)
Then Sunday morning was worship at St. Columba's Church. After that, we enjoyed a great meal prepared by some Iraqi refugees (YUM!). In fact, it was the same family that had two children in attendance at the previous day's youth group meeting.
Then I promised Evelyn that if it wasn't raining (it's raining a lot here), we would go to the Christmas market. There are actually 5 Christmas markets that I know of: one BIG one and 4 little ones at major points of the city. We went to Jokái Tér and wandered through that Christmas market. Found some cards and we shared one of those kurtoskalacs (only 350ft! I can't believe i thought that 800ft was cheap! woah - score!)
Then we headed to THE Christmas market - got some gifts that I can't wait to send home, tried some mulled wine (yum!) and got a Budapesti Karácsony (Christmas in Budapest) mug.
Then we headed to Nyugati Palyaudvar because there were supposed to be more little shops there - there are, but they're not so cool... but they all go to charities, so I might go back and check it out later.
then we went home and grabbed some dinner.
Then Silvia and I decided to go on a hunt for more wine. Armed with mugs, we went BACK to the Christmas market. The shops were all closed now, but they were still serving wine, so we filled our mugs and then sat and listened to a guy play Christmas music on a saxophone, accompanied by a CD. It was pretty great. We chatted about life and what it's like here and how we're already thinking about going home and what that will be like. Then we got on the metro to come home and Silvia said "someday you need to show me the Palacsinta (crepe) shop by Moszkva Tér." I told her that we were already on our way there... so we got csokikrémes palacsinták (chocolate crepes) for dessert and then headed home.
such a great day!
So, how was YOUR December 6th?
*~*~*
St. Andrew is another saint that was celebrated recently. The church I attend here is a Scottish mission and St. Andrew is like, the patron saint of Scotland. So, in celebration of him, the church hosts a Ceilidh (Kali). This is Scottish dancing with a ton of fun mixed in. Lots of thanks to Zoltán for being my photographer!
the man I'm dancing with here is Aaron, pastor of St. Columba's church
this picture cracks me up because Matt and I are dancing (with someone else, can't remember who)... and we are actually supposed to be dancing with those other three people, but instead we all just look very confused!
Jeff and I thought we were being cool and trying our first mulled wine ever... then someone told us that they thought it was non-alcoholic. Not a problem, since we found it funny to be served alcohol at a church, but it put our first experience of REAL forralt bor (boiled wine) on hold. Still - RCA peeps represent!
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