Sometimes we question our world... and get answers the next day

So, you know how I wrote about the feeling of not working?
Well, actually before I even posted it I got the answer. I just couldn't bring myself to delete the whole post.

Reason people didn't want to work? They weren't seeing any signs of getting paid.
In fact, as I sit here tonight, there are only 5 of us at the camp now. Me, Ricsi (volunteers)... Tibi (paid staff who HAS gotten his paycheck)... Mama, Gyürika (the 'grandma' and '8 year old grandson' team who are making sure they wish us a good night about 10 times. :P

the young people I was hoping to learn more from and hang out with? gone.
the 3 and 5 year old girls who didn't care whether I spoke Hungarian or gibberish, as long as I gave them hugs and let them sit by me at dinner, i was cool? gone.
apparently word got around that the Roma Self-Government wasn't going to pay them and they didn't want to work for free. So, the Roma Camp, in turn, told them that they couldn't just stay here for free... and so they left.

There are many things which transpired over the course of a couple hours that caused me to think:
a) why?! the camp needs to be fixed up and it cannot be done by Tibi completely. If Ricsi and I weren't here, what would happen? What is the Roma self-goverment thinking? If they really want a camp, this is NOT a good way to start.
b) I saw them pack up their stuff and one has to wonder what's next for them. You see, I brought three bags of stuff (plus a purse) for three weeks. I'm not sure how long they planned on staying, but the family packed up winter coats. Is this the only place they had for the time? Do they have no home, no job, NOTHING to go to? I was watching them pack up EVERYTHING they own and couldn't help but be sad that this was a really frustrating moment in their lives...
c) there's no way we're going to get all the work done now. Awesome. Oh well... Frustration, annoyance and apathy hit at about the same time, which was a very strange sensation.

*~*~*

Random pictures...

excuse me, sir. what IS this instrument? and is the face necessary to make it play?


just a random house in the Jewish Quarter that I think is cute


Hello, Budapest :)


technological injuries
I told you about my camera yesterday.
Today, I want to introduce you to my sad looking computer.
Let's start at the top. Yes, that's tape holding in the power cord. It's not duct tape, but if I were in the US, it would be. Not sure what happened except that one day I noticed it was plugged in and not registering a charge. hmmm...
I'm missing a control key. Also not sure what happened there. One day, while talking to my mom actually, I wanted to copy something and hit control and it came with my finger. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the phone call distracted and trying to put it back on. Sorry, mom!
then you see the bottom corner... My computer tried to commit suicide by jumping off the desk. Srsly. Maybe i pushed it, maybe not. The world will never know. :P

Balatonlellen vagyok.

So... i've found internet to steal from my cabin. Awesome! Not sure how reliable it is, but it's good for now. I have been here for two days now and while I see some progress, it's been interesting for me to be a part of this.

First of all, it's a family affair. I'm here with Emese's husband's ex-wife's mother (haha!), her other daughter and boyfriend and two little girls, a friend of Gyuri's and two ex-volunteer and one of their girlfriends. One guy lived in Canada for a few years, and his Canadian and my American are similar, so we're able to communicate :) (i joke, i joke!)

Anyway, this could be taken as a very racial thing, but I assure you that I mean nothing racial: i cannot get these guys to work. First, we took a break yesterday because the guys needed beer. Then after lunch, Gyuri called to tell us it was too hot to work (it's about 85* here). Then in the evening, it was still too hot to work and they're a little upset about a money situation.

Everyone else here is Roma. So, one of the things I'm faced with is the fact that Gadje (non-Roma) expect them to not want to work. So, if I am trying to get them to work, it MAY appear to them that I think less of them for not working (it may also appear to them that I'm just crazy and they'd be more correct... but not being able to completely communicate means my actions DO speak louder than my words). Last night a few of them stayed up a little late and it's now noon and I haven't seen three of them yet. Hmmm...

However, they also have the knowledge of the time frame we have - we have a week. With this many people, it's completely possible to have gotten everything done in 3 days (if anyone were in 'slave driver' mode). However, in this heat (which is really NOT that bad), they feel it necessary to take it easy for a few days. Oh well, the work WILL get done, because when we did work yesterday, we worked hard.

This has already been a great cultural experience. There are young people my age here, which is great - haven't met many Roma that are at the same "place" in their lives. They keep commenting on how great my Hungarian is after only 10 months (just wait until they meet Simon on Friday or Saturday - they'll be blown away!). They also asked the questions that I love being asked: "What do you think of gypsies?" and "Why are you working with Roma?"

Answering in Hungarian is a bit hard, but once I find some words I can use, it's easy to convey my thoughts and feelings to them. Sun up to late night, I am using only Hungarian and it's easy to see how those in a completely Hungarian environment have come so far this year. I don't regret living in Budapest as it's been a great time, but I am sad that I haven't learned to really speak in Hungarian (although I truly do understand about 90-95% of what people say).

Anyway, it's almost lunch time and I would like to go back out into the sunshine. Have a great day!

*~*~*

Horses took over Budapest at the Nemzeti Vagta (National Gallop!) It's kinda like the Kentucky Derby... only better costumes for the riders, less costumes for the audience. Oh! and if you want to watch, it's free to stand.








sorry about the terrible photo quality... I haven't written about this, but one of my technological injuries has been to my camera. Riding the trollibusz home from the homeless shelter earlier this year, I was greeted by a big, drunk, angry man who proceeded to push a few lucky people while trying to get on the bus. I had my camera (in it's protective case, even!) in my pocket and I was pushed so that my thigh hit a bar HARD. My leg hurt a lot, so I was worried to take my camera out and look. Well, it still works (obviously), but I can't really see the screen. The best part is that it doesn't have a manual viewfinder so my camera has literally become a "point and click" and hope. When I put my card in the computer, things either look amazing or like crap. This even, unfortunately, it was the latter. Oh well.

WHAT?!

I shut down my computer last night...
and started it again this morning

I lost my pictures.



No, not ALL my pictures, but the ones that I hadn't posted on here or in Facebook yet (which means they were only being held on here and hadn't been put on my flash drive because that's my system...)

goodbye pictures of Cluj-Napoca,
goodbye pictures of horses taking over Budapest,
goodbye random pictures of life in Budapest...
ugh.



What's funny is that I lost them because I accepted that my computer had seriously imploded and so I moved all of them to the new "pictures" folder.
So, when my computer reverted back to its old self this morning (except I don't have any sound again), I lost everything that had been created or saved during the short-lived random freak-out episode.

What's double funny is that I just packed all my flash drives because in going to Balatonlelle, I'm sure there won't be regular internet access, so it'll give me a reason to categorize all my stuff - now that I've lost my pictures and my music (which I'm way less concerned about, except that I lost the hard to find Hungarian worship songs that I paid twice what I usually pay for music... grrr...), I only have documents to move around and organize, so we're talking way less time and I could probably do that while waiting for my ride tonight.

hmmm... life is funny.

Last post in Budapest for a while...

My computer imploded today. My huge praise report is that I lost no documents or pictures or even that video I made of me ordering coffee! As of now, the only losses are my internet bookmarks, which are sad, but really, maybe it was a way of simplifying the number of things on my "to-do" list.

At any rate, I will be packing my computer up tomorrow and I will be traveling to Balatonlelle to work on getting a camp ready to open. So excited! Hopefully it's good and at the end of the week, there will be a camp that's ready for kids to invade!

Prayers, as always, are much appreciated.
Peace!

*~*~*

One of the most asked questions (second, in fact, to "what's the weather like?") has been "what's the food like?" I have covered this topic on a couple different occasions, but really, it's one of those things that I can't say enough about. Food has a huge importance in everyone's lifestyle... flavor, quantity, quality, appearance, background... you name it and someone can go into great detail about their food situation.

I recently found this quote about the great market halls of Budapest.
... "I’ve found that there are more stands selling meat than grocery or any other product. Draw the conclusion and you’ll understand the health problems of Hungarian society. Meat with meat and some more meat. Veggies? Sure, give me some potatoes!"
It's funny 'cuz it's true.

Anyway, I want to introduce you to 2 traditional Hungarian foods: gulyásleves and kürtőskalács.

Gulyásleves (goulash soup) is traditionally cooked over a fire in a giant cauldron and it's usually only made for huge crowds and celebrations. I've only had it traditionally cooked twice and both times were at village celebration days. Beef, tomato and paprika are the base ingredients. Some add potatoes, some add onions and peppers, some add other veggies... all it all, it's a soup (WITHOUT pasta, as many Americans make it) and you eat it with bread.



Kürtőskalács (Chimney cake) is another traditional festival food, although many have started marketing this for everyday gastronomy. It is made from flour, milk, sugar, butter, egg and yeast - make it into a dough and roll it out into long strips, then wrap the strips around an oiled roll thing. Then, you paint it with more oil and roll it in more sugar... then roast it over some hot coals, turning it to roast evenly. When it's brown, you take it out of the warmth, roll it in a topping of your choice (chocolate, cinnamon sugar, coconut, crushed poppyseeds, or walnuts). Then take it off the roll thing and let it cool - then enjoy!

Protests, Flooding and Relocation

So, this has been quite the month.

Protests: The political system has been pushed into hyper-drive with the recent election outcome. The Jobbik party has organized several demonstrations and protests that have been relevant to my life. One of them was against the camp along the Balaton Lake that is for Roma children. Today they are having a large demonstration in a park near my flat which is preventing my evening plans from happening. Boo! :( Jobbik, if you don't remember, is the FAR RIGHT political party with radical ideas and many of their political demonstrations could easily lead to violence. Makes for an interesting night, I suppose, but I think I'll try to stay as far away as possible.

Flooding: I have a meeting tonight with my pastor. I just found out I'll have no problem meeting him, but it would have been a problem yesterday evening. You see, because it hasn't stopped raining FOR AN ENTIRE MONTH!, we had flooding in the metros. Awesome, right? Yeah, unless you're one of the 3 million people here in Budapest and use the metros on a daily basis. On a flip note, it looks like it's supposed to be a beautiful weekend - yay! :)

Relocation: It's happening. I'm relocating to the lake on Monday. I will be there from Monday, June 7 through Tuesday, June 15th. Then I will come back to Budapest for a night or two, then go back to the Balaton area on Wednesday or Thursday for another week. Should be a good time and I'm really looking forward to having my morning coffee on the lake! :)

*~*~*

Gypsy Houses in Romania

At first sight, I thought I wasn't understanding Gábor correctly as he explained what these houses were. Then, when Gyüri re-explained, it was the exact same thing. Allow me to share with you the story I heard (twice) and am still amazed at.

In an attempt to show off their wealth, quite a few gypsies in Romania started building HUGE houses. They are characterized by their extreme size, bright colors (if they're painted) and shiny roofs. However, they are all left unfinished to varying degrees.

There are a few probable reasons for this.
A) they run out of money before they can finish it.
B) they decided they really don't want to live like Gadje (non-Roma)
C) they don't want to pay the taxes on it (you don't have to pay taxes if you don't finish it)

Any one of those (or combination thereof) would be sufficient reason from the looks of it... check it out!

A recipe and a friend :)

I wanted something sweet last night and started looking through my cupboards. I found bread, ketchup, rice and some assorted spices and chocolate powder. The only thing I had that was sweet was sugar. So... I quickly realized how often I've had sweet rice for lunch at the hospital and thought "Voila! I can make sweet rice!" Perfect.

It turned out so good, I wanted to share it with you. Be aware - it really does take about 30-40 minutes if you keep the temperature below medium (on a 1-9 scale, with 9 being the hottest - I had it at cooking at a 4).

GERMAN SWEET RICE

1 c. dry rice
2/3 c. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 c. water
3 c. milk
2 tbsp. butter

Spray a 2 quart saucepan with Pam. Add dry rice and water. Cook over medium low heat until most of water has been absorbed. Add milk and continue cooking slowly, stirring frequently.

Remove from heat while rice is still rather soft. Add sugar, butter and salt and mix well. Should be cooked in last 30 to 40 minutes before serving.

If rice becomes too stiff, add a small amount of milk and heat through. Pour into bowl for serving, sprinkle top with sugar and cinnamon.

...

I would ease up on the milk (maybe 2.5 cups) and I added cocoa powder, cinnamon and vanilla to the mix when I added in the sugar. FINOM! DELICIOUS!



*~*~*

A Day in The Life of Gábor

I made a new friend this last weekend on my trip into Romania. Because I took a LOT of pictures of him doing things throughout the weekend, I didn't figure I needed to take any of me doing these things - Gábor could just walk you through the festival for me. So, without further adieu, I present Gábor and Mera Days:

Gábor came along as a driver. We took two vans full of future volunteers and a children's band (I wrote about the Romano Glaszo band a few posts back...) Here, we took a break just inside the Hungarian/Romanian border.


So glad we didn't drive that thing! There were SOOO many horse carts throughout the village. It's the sound I woke up to and the sound I went to sleep to - the clippety clop of horse carts going by. It was a little surreal - like stepping back in time :)


"downtown" (I say that in such a way because it's a VILLAGE), there was a little market, where you could buy all kinds of homemade treasures. Gábor went jewelry shopping for his daughter... and snack shopping for his ears :P


making kürtőskalács - a Transylvanian specialty.


kürtőskalács = love.

Discovering Communism by Remembering Communism

I'm still in Budapest and a little frustrated at this point, but instead of touching on that, I'm giving you a post through pictures of Memento Park in the outskirts of Budapest



Communism: something US natives know nothing about... good idea, but it never works...

Because I know very little about communism, I decided that something I really SHOULD see before I leave Budapest is the part with all the old Communist statues and mementos. One beautiful Monday afternoon, we did just that. Enjoy learning through my lesson.



The Red Star that represented Communism - The Pentagram is said to represent the five fingers on a worker's (the center of socialism) hand.


Many of the statues were dedicated to just normal people because the real heroes of Communism are the common blue collar workers. Many of the following have no real faces or description because of it - they were meant to encourage the public to picture themselves as the heroes.




This a memorial to Béla Kun, a Hungarian Communist Revolutionary.
Random fact: when this was still standing, it was called Béla Motel by the local homeless people because it made a great rain shelter :)


this plaque was funny to me. Some guy worked in a factory. :)


This is a Martyr's Memorial - not sure what the complete story is, but it looks like half-man, half-ape... weird.


Kristin (an American English teacher in Újszász, Hungary) and I used our amazing Hungarian skills to translate this plaque: "Thank you for freeing up our time so we can play badminton."
I'm fairly certain that's not REALLY what it says, but that's as close as I can get you :P did I mention that we went through the park without a guide or booklet or anything?


This is the Buda Volunteer Regiment Memorial - it kinda speaks for itself, and yet I have no further intelligent insight to give you.


This is Capt. Miklós Steinmetz. He is the one that ordered the ultimatum during the Battle of Budapest - Hungarians and Germans surrender to the Soviet Army or they'll eat all your gulyás and páprika... or something like that.


Pioneers:
a) what some people refer to our Wednesday night program as (it's "Explorers") at Home Acres Church in Kentwood, Michigan
b) the children organization operated by the Communist party, with headquarters in Budapest.
thank goodness we're out of the "Red Scare" of my home church would be in a little trouble :P



The Republic of Councils Monument... or as Hungarians refer to it: "Miss, you dropped your kerchief!"




The Hungarian Fighters in the Spanish International Brigades Memorial


The Workers' Movement Memorial


This is the Liberation Monument (not to be confused with the Hungarian Statue of Liberty which currently stands over Budapest)


Stalin's boots. A giant Stalin once stood in Budapest's city park. On October 23rd, 1956, the beginning date of the Hungarian (failed) Revolution against the Soviets, this statue was sawed at the knees. Crowds were there to witness this giant dictator brought down. The boots themselves are taller than me, so you can understand just how big the actual statue was (8 meters).