quick thoughts

-I used a clothes dryer the other day--best invention ever. Everything fits better than it has in months! Also, you get to take stuff out of the dryer and put it on while it's still warm. I love that.

-I get to follow everything I do with "haven't [activity] in months"! Which I'm sure has gotten really annoying for the people I've seen so far (namely, my family), but it's still fun. "I haven't had Mexican food this good in months!"

-There's great Mexican food back home, not to mention all sorts of other niche cuisines that I've missed.

-Denver is clearly devoted to sports. We have three regional sports networks (Altitude 1 and 2 and Fox Sports Rocky Mountain), all of which are basically Denver-centric. This means that last night, my parents watched the Avs in the family room, while I watched the Nuggets in the study, and everyone was happy. In general, we manage to get all football, basketball, and hockey games televised (along with most baseball games), and radio coverage of the above plus DU hockey and CU and CSU basketball and football. I'm really enjoying this mostly because after four months in which I got to watch one quarter (of a Nuggets loss to the Suns) while visiting Amsterdam (probably because Francisco Elson, our backup center, is the Dutch Sensation), every single game they've played since I got back has been on tv.

-It's great being home, because Denver is a little like a large small town. When I went to see "Syriana" last night with Keaty, I ran into Scott Schubert, with whom I rode the ski bus every saturday for... five seasons? six seasons? anyway, from ages maybe nine to probably thirteen or so. It was just sort of really funny, I guess, how random it was, but how, on some level, I've come to expect to see somebody I know almost everywhere I go. (I ran into an old Sunday School teacher of mine going to the library the other day) That may be one of the best parts about being home.

... in which i more eloquently reflect on the term

So I feel as though I’m now tasked with remembering everything. Every image, every nuance of life here: walking around, taking the tram or the trolley bus, ordering food in Hungarian and the little smile I get sometimes from people who weren’t expecting it out of me, an obviously foreign-looking guy. The s’s and sz’s and ly’s and ny’s and the (still unpronounceable) gy’s. The way everyone dresses, the way almost everyone looks unmistakably Hungarian, passing people on the street on cell phones saying “Komolyan?” or lilting “Sziasztok!” to a group of friends or “Tessék?”… I’ll definitely miss tessék. Having and using my mental map of the city, including three metro lines and most major tram, bus, and trolleybus routes, surprisingly many street names, and the locations of numerous coffee and gyros places. Being surrounded by buildings that are about as old as my home state, interacting every day with people who lived through a government I know only as “a historical narrative”… I can return to BP, but it would take a lot to reproduce the experience of actually living here.

I know that I’ll come out of this with endless anecdotes of history, linguistics, tourism, but I feel like I need to act to preserve the little things, the way it was to live here instead of visiting. The happiness when you time running to the tram just right, the worry when there’s an ambulance pulling up a block over and police talking to one of the homeless people you pass every night on the way home, the comfort of going to Kadar for lunch and ordering everyone a malna without having to check first or explain or anything. Being so comfortable with the forint that the dollars I stashed away “just in case” with my passport look strange and stupid and definitely not the right shape, not like money at all.

I don’t have a digital camera, and sometimes I feel like it would come in handy (although not when traveling—our trip to Romania included six people and five cameras), but how can you hope to photograph or digitize an experience? Kelly talked earlier in the semester about how she planned to photograph the things that now seem mundane, precisely because they were part of everyday life, and how can friends back home really get how it was living here without the little things? I don’t think having a camera or pictures of Harom Testvér Török Etterem will be enough, though. Although I think that writing some stuff down over the course of the semester has given me a chance to record some lowlights as well as highlights, the vast majority of my semester is still unaccounted for.

Thus I’m left with an exam in less than an hour, followed by trying to do everything I’ve been meaning to do all semester (including some Christmas shopping, which I’ve been meaning to do all month) by 8:15 Thursday morning, when I begin the long, exhausting day of travel that lands me at home at 6:43 Thursday night (remember, I gain eight hours). We’ll see how much I can get done.

Since I won’t have Internet access between now and then, see everyone later. Except Hungary, which, I promise, I’ll come back to. And I’ll practice my Hungarian first, too.

Egesegetekre és Viszontlátásra!

this may be a tough one to write

So I got home last night from watching Arrested Development with Toby and Joel (and don't worry, Rachel, we'll watch it in the spring, too), and I realized that in *sigh* (a complicated sigh) less than three days, I have to leave. Ok, that's misleading: I realized that all of the thinking I'd been doing while walking around, going to and from places had been about how soon I'm leaving, or, more accurately, about everything except directly addressing this... it's like a weight hanging over my head, like a huge exam for which I'm unprepared, only afterwards things won't be good-done, they'll just be... done.

Anyway, I'm writing an introduction because I'm introducing the two hours I sat at my computer last night (which didn't really feel like two hours), writing and trying to get those thoughts out, onto an electronic substitute for paper. I'll spare you the bulk of that writing, but I do want to try to express something difficult/complicated, and I'd hate to waste what I did instead of sleeping yesterday, so here goes:

Going home ridiculously soon, I guess it’s only natural to feel a little, well, off, because of the rather substantial change that takes me from a mathematics exam in Budapest on Tuesday morning to home-cooked dinner on Thursday night (thanks, mom!). This, though, feels more significant than normal change-of-situation anxiety. It, in fact, doesn’t feel like anxiety at all; it’s more of a let-down feeling.

My best guess is that it is over, the, frankly, crazy year that started with declaring major(s) and took me to Washington and then Europe, which when I think about it sounds pretty impressive in retrospect (not to toot my own horn) but I feel like it happened to... someone else, like I can't look out and see the forest that is My Life and Things That Happened to Me for all the trees like "Shit, I need to buy some more Kleenex."

Here's the problem, though: the more I want to try to verbalize what it is, exactly, that I feel, the more trite it sounds. I get to wondering about how must I ‘really’ feel, because I can’t possibly have such un-profound (in the sense of cliché or “conventional wisdom”) thoughts about what’s happening to me, I mean, aren’t I special? Am I or am I not doing something extraordinary? when this is the best I can come up with.

I guess it all boils down to this idea that the whole seven months of running around the eastern seaboard and then the continent of Europe is… finished, done, something to look back on instead of forward to.

Part of the problem is that I’m not sure I’m ready—I’m still finding new places and things and people (even new people in my program), and it will all be... undone by my going home. That that going-home feeling, in which everything is fundamentally the same, and which before has been so welcome and a respite from college and whatever else, has… backlash, I guess, side effects, maybe, of not being able to show everyone how different you feel and how different you are—they all just say that somehow, it looks like you’ve grown taller, even if you are twenty and according to the pencil marks on the wall you basically stopped growing a couple years ago.

In any event, I feel like I’ve gotten the chance to do a lot of growing of late, and I’m just not sure how I could possibly communicate that eloquently (which may be why I’m posting this on the internet so everyone can just read it, which may in fact be the bluntest way I can imagine to get something across).

Ty always held to her opinion that my studying abroad was a vacation. I had, until, say, last night, believed her to be incorrect, but something changed my mind. No matter how much bitching I do about math, I have to admit that there’s a strong element of “vacation” to living in BP. I realized this walking to Toby and Joel’s for dinner: snow was falling, and I passed a sidestreet down which there was a gorgeous Catholic church, which for all its glory has to have some kind of architecture word to describe it, just sort of set back in the neighborhood (and dirty, which makes it seem more authentic because everything here is dirty) with a lit-up tree out front; on my left, the street ended at the Danube, with some distant lights from the Buda side making a faint glow through the snow and low clouds. It was, simply, gorgeous. But more so because it was so… commonplace; it’s not the Basilica of St. Stephen or anything, just a neighborhood parish on a little street, near buildings with Kinai Gyorsbufek, Szolariak, Gyogyszertarak. That something so… foreign, different, remarkable could just be and feel ordinary amazes me. I really liked that about it, that I managed to get really comfortable here, that BP has felt like home after visiting other places, so much so that even hearing everyone speaking Hungarian to each other waiting in line for the planes at Moscow and Amsterdam made me really happy and excited (and led to me conversing, badly, with strangers in Hungarian)...

I guess this doesn’t fit well with “vacation,” does it? Maybe it just means that things are more complicated than vacation/not a vacation, or maybe it means I can’t organize my thoughts coherently. In either case, there’s a lot of beauty here, and I’m going to miss it (I have a feeling months will pass when everything will make me want to talk about BP and everyone will get sick of it, and something makes me think won’t it be funny if I end up doing this particularly, inadvertently, to Sophia, just because I think we always end up talking most when I’m caught up in something). But a vacation, because of the difference, and the beauty, and the sense that there's really no comparison to this semester among all the things I've ever done before.

I’m also, frankly, not so keen on going back to PO in the spring. I know that Rachel and Steph and I have talked about getting out more, living LA, exploring, etc, but it’s not enough for me for some reason right now to get really excited about. Generally, though, I’m most afraid that all of the new and variegated experiences I’ve had in the last seven months (the miles, the people, the food, the schedule) will somehow not at all change the way I will be at Pomona—in a sense, I will have managed to regress to a me from before these things. Possibly, what I’m afraid of is that, after this amazing series of trips, I’ll get back and be the same, that this reverse metamorphoses or regression is nothing to be worried about because the progression didn't happen in the first place. I don't want to be overly bleak or dramatic about it; it's just hard to know how, and if, you yourself have changed. Logicians have demonstrated that I cannot prove my own sanity/existance/uniqueness, and I'm starting to think that this is true in a more-than-trivial/mathematical sense.
***
Back to things written this afternoon:
On a tangent, I'm really looking forward to using the kitchen back home. Toby taught me how to make galuska last night, and I think I'm going to practice some actually techniques, instead of "throw everything into a skillet with a little oil and some spices" or "throw it on the grill and brush with a little oil and some spices." Exciting times to be in Denver, I'm sure, if we're friends and you like eating.

sick again...

just in time for finals. boooooo. didn't make it through classes yesterday before going (/being sent) home, only here today for a presentation (on history education in Hungary during/after Communism). The vague plans i had for this weekend have turned into a burning desire to sleep. We'll see how this affects my performance on exams.

... in which I steal someone else's good idea

namely, rachel's list of "things I won't miss so that I can get myself in the mindset of going home." I've been doing a lot of thinking about my now-imminent return to Denver, and I'm still on the fence about being excited about it. It still feels like I'm still getting comfortable here, finding new places to go, learning more about the language, seeing the occaisional tourist destination, when in reality it's been basically four months and it's time to go back. As well, after this summer (when I interned with the Dept of Justice in Washington DC), which, though it's so easy to forget for some reason, also happened since the last time I was at school, and the autumn in BP combined, I'm not really excited about the prospect of insulated home life, home-from-college routine, and the eventual return to a college that clearly doesn't want me or may of my friends back that badly (since they couldn't house me, threatened to not let me register for classes, and took weeks to set up an email forward from my pomona acc't to gmail)... this all sounds bleak.

thus, this list of things I actually won't miss:
1. the "beds" and "pillows" we're supposed to use. These most closely resemble permanently folded-out fold-out couches, except that they're smaller than twin beds, are terrible as seating, and extend to the ground, so you can't store things under them... the bedding consists of a too-short duvet in a cover that somehow always slides off awkwardly in the night and a set of pillows (one twice the size of a normal pillow, the other a too-small quarter). All of this stands in sharp contrast to my attention-lavished double bed at home with the pillowtop (or the double-sized futon at school with the memoryfoam)...

2. not understanding what anyone's saying most of the time, even when directly addressed. Although I guess I've gotten used to it, not being able to overhear anything (unless it's one of about six easily recognizable words) is a little maddening, and not understanding people's direct questions or comments is worse. Not understanding what the random old people on the street are screaming at you? Actually scary. (although this last one has only happened to me two or three times, it makes an impression)

3. not having any income, which distorts my sense of how much things cost; it's easy to compute relative cost, but $4 dinners add up over time, particularly when you no longer are coming fresh from the memory of six hours of drudgery being met with a work study check for forty dollars.

4. doing math an unforseen number of hours a day. This has been fun, genuinely, but I definitely feel like my writing, my vocabulary, and my social skills are slowly being eroded.

5. lack of Internet access (or, more specifically, the network at school). i have nowhere to go for any of the myriad petty timewasting things i get through the internet (Arrested Development, pornography, music, etc), because I feel like time spent on a computer in a public place should at least appear serious.

On the other hand, once I leave, it'll probably be a long time before I can casually ask "anyone want to go to Prague this weekend? No? How 'bout Slovenia? Szeged?" In fact, once home, it will probably be a long time before I talk to anyone else who knows where Szeged even is.

sam

ps i just finished my Hungarian language final (an oral exam). My strategy was basically the same as it has been with this blog: tell funny, self-deprecating stories about how I can't say anything very well in Hungarian and how this is compounded by the fact that everyone here thinks I'm a stupid American who wouldn't know how to say anything anyway. It worked.

... in which I feel surprising amounts of stress

... which will hopefully be cured this afternoon by a visit (with Cathy, who's visiting) to one of Budapest's famous spring-fed baths. Why stressed, you ask? Well, to be honest, a lot of reasons.

1. Too much math. Midterm last week, midterm this week, three or four finals the week after. And I'm feeling about at capacity for math learning right now.

2. Conflicting feelings: I'm starting to really look forward to going home, having a good meal, a warm comfortable bed, family, familiarity, etc, but at the same time, it's so close and going home means that this semester will be finis, which isn't something I'm entirely prepared to think about. It just feels like it shouldn't be anywhere near over with yet, and I'm not sure what I can do to spend the remaining time the "best" way--do I try to travel more, or do I stay in BP? If I do travel, should I try to see Prague/Slovenia/wherever else, or should I see more of Hungary? And if I continue worrying about this, shouldn't I be spending this time doing more math?

3. That god-awful housing draw thing at Pomona. There were apparently like 40 or so free beds for the 117 people coming back from leave. Cathy was like number 30 or so in the lottery and deferred, since she didn't have a roommate lined up; I was number 74, and am living in the depths of south campus with a sophomore (Noah Simon), but at least it's someone I know. I don't even know what Rachel is planning to do (number 105), or, rather, what Pomona is going to do with her, and I feel very lucky I managed to get that 11th hour save from Laurel (which was random, but very welcome). Needless to say, the lead-up to this, and now worrying about how things will end up for everyone have both prompted some serious college-directed irritation.

4. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/international/europe/06rice.html
I can't deal with this. Also, that Postcolonial France history class I took spring of freshman year? Disturbingly relevant. And it has been, frankly, since we were studying France's legal response to alleged torture in Algeria the week the original Iraqi prison torture scandal broke. Here that, administration? You've become the people you hate: the French political administration (circa 1968).

5. (open question) What should I do with my life? and why can't I mentally picture myself as an adult, which I'm sure would help with the whole "career search" thing?

sam

ps: amsterdam was interesting, but the highlight was (not the libertarian social culture, or the drugs, or the amazing tilty buildings that look about to topple into a canal, or the used book shops, or the red light district) seeing Mark and Steph again. I think there's going to be a LOT of catching up to do this spring.

... in which i go to mockba

(or, as it's called in Hungarian, Moszkva). Um, actually, I'm in the midst of a very busy week. Finals are all too close, and my friend Steph is in town (we go to Amsterdam on friday), so it's been tough to find time. Briefly, though, Moscow was absolutely amazing. Tremendous. Words alone may not describe--gestures, for emphasis, are necessary. Rachel and I managed to take care of what has apparently been called the "holy quadrilateral" of Russian cultural experience, dacha (country house), banya (sauna in which you beat people with birch branches), vodka, and myasa (meat), in my first 24 hours in the city, not to mention Red Square, blini (fabulous crepe-like things), and an opera at the Bolshoi (which didn't make much sense) (all of which took place in the first day). I promise to include more details, but as a whole it was like no place I've ever been, and no trip I've ever been on, and I didn't even get robbed (ripped off, maybe, but not actually stolen from).

Also, Russia seems to be a country in which you have to know the language to get around; although I didn't get more than a half-dozen words or so, I did manage to learn how to at least pronounce stuff, allowing me to get around the extensive (ten lines) metro system on my own. A million thanks to Rachel, who I'm sure still feels amazed that I made it (the feeling is mutual), and who basically had to order every meal I ate and the ticket to every museum/"reggae" concert/ferris wheel we went to--except Lenin, for which there are no tickets, but I'm out of time. More soon.

sam

ps she wrote the whole trip up on her blog--claremontlove.blogspot.com--which may be useful if you're impatient.