Walk, walk, walk! Eat, eat, eat!

Last Sunday night (actually it was Monday morning!) Glenn did something he has only done once or twice in the past 29 years, and that is to watch the Super Bowl.



This is pretty impressive for several reasons: 1) he is not into sports (at all!), 2) pre-game festivities began (at midnight) well past his bedtime (10:00 pm), and 3) he had to watch it on a laptop computer! He took advantage of the opportunity to "bond" with a couple of the guys here at the guesthouse. Cile talked with one of the wives from mid-night to 2:00 am, which is when Glenn called it a "night".

Most of the week was spent in language study, walking around our neighborhood and trying to find opportunites to practice what we've learned. This week we learned helpful things, such as, "I am American. I live in Budapest. I am learning Hungarian. I speak a little Hungarian. Thank you." Previously, when we would greet someone in Hungarian, they would then proceed to rattle off a string of words, and we'd just have to shake our heads and say in English, "I'm sorry. We don't speak Hungarian." It was sooooo frustrating. Little by little, we are building confidence in using what we know how to say in our heads. Cile actually put two sentences together today at church! (We hope you are praying!! This could be a slow process!)



Saturday, we hopped on some buses and trams and went venturing into town again for the day. We went back to the section of town that we visited on our second day here (while still under the influence of jet lag) to scout out the area around the clinic that our collegues use for medical care. (Also, we wanted to make sure we could find the medical clinic in case of emergency!)

Notice anything unusual about the building on the right, below?



There's an optical illusion! Can you see it?



The section that is charcoal gray is the front of the building, but the part that is pink and lighter grey is actually a building PAINTED on the SIDE of the charcoal building!

We saw lots of interesting things, such as the above building, but also lots of huge, ornate buildings such as this one below. This one is right in the middle of Moscow Square.



In the same part of town is one of the larger of the six shopping malls called Mammut ("mammoth" in English).



It is huge! It has four floors of shops, a bowling alley, and several restaurants. A little bit of everything!



I can't wait to take our daughter Kari to it when she and Jonathan come to visit. Maybe next week we can find the LARGEST mall here in Budapest, The Westend Mall, with 400 stores!

After walking through just a small portion of the mall, we decided to walk some more outside. As we were walking down one of the streets near the mall, we came upon a small store (about the size of an American walk-in closet) that had a lot of international foods in the front window such as tortilla chips and stir-fry noodles. It was neat to see what someone (whoever orders the food items) would choose to import from America, Mexico or China.

While in that little shop, we were looking in the "cold" drink machine to see if there was anything interesting there besides the usual drinks of bottled water, Coca Cola, Sprite, Coke Light, Fanta, Lipton Ice Tea (that one cracks me up because Europeans drink their tea hot) when Glenn spotted one, lone Dr. Pepper! We let our collegue who had come with us for the day buy it since neither of us are hooked on Dr. Pepper, but it was really great to see it! So many of our co-workers love Dr. Pepper so we'll be sure to tell them where we found one bottle. Who knows if they will ever get any more?!?



The days are beginning to get a little longer. After our first language lesson almost two weeks ago, we walked home and it was dark by time we got to our house at 5:15 pm. Just two weeks later, it is now light at 5:15 pm when we get home, and there are signs of spring right around the corner! Trees and bushes have buds on them. This has been an unusually warm winter for Hungary. We hate to break it to all these people; God knew Cile didn't like cold weather and wanted to make her transition a little easier. He isn't promising her that it will always be this comfortable, but she is grateful for every blessing He will give!

Szia!