Cake Pops: Art?

This post started out as me trying to put up pictures of my notebook doodles, because as the school year progresses they get more and more elaborate. However, I get super annoyed super fast with the formatting on Blogger, and the doodles are all weirdly shaped, and not really quality enough for the effort. But, I had all of these photos of my sketch book. I bought it hear in Hungary the first month, a couple weeks into school, because I was feeling so, so homesick. I've loved watercolor ever since I bit the bullet and took an art class my senior year, but I usually hide my sketches away.

But, this blog is about my exchange. It's about what makes me happy here, what I do day-to-day, and what I've accomplished over the year. So, if it's cool, I'd like to share my sketchbook with you, because it's becoming surprisingly commonplace for me to have it with me and be filling it up. Whatever's in it are mostly products of free periods, missing America, and happy afternoons waiting  to watch X-Factor with my host dad. 

(If I had a better camera, I promise these would be pretty. I mean, I don't really think a photograph can ever capture the paints' variation of color the way one sees it in person, but. Maybe at some point I'll ask one of my friends to take better pictures)

Puszi!

there's a psychological test where they watch how you draw a tree; if you draw one with fruit you're generous, if you draw one with no leaves you're sad, etc. etc.

I like this photograph more, but the colors have a different effect in the first.

inspired by an interview from Eartha Kitt, who commented on the lack of colored angels in religious art

okay this one is a doodle, but it actually fit in the formatting and I didn't want to move it and college apps are so stressful when you have no concept of the passage of time because your days are just blurs of language

My English class has been tracking my progress. It started out as a tree because we were talking about the psychology test, and each period it gets a little more of the LSD aesthetic 

Oktober 11th is my name day here. Grandma always let us each icecream for breakfast. I'm a cornball and thought about tigger couches and videogames and milkshakes all day.

Bisque Post: Wait, Aren't You Supposed to Have a Spare Tire?

I would not mind that I am gaining weight if people would stop making it their business.

While I may never wear low waisted jeans or be satisfied with the tailoring in my collared shirts, not once have I doubted that I am a solid individual. It would be hard to forget that I'm built sturdy--I bear the shoulders of a linebacker and am usually throwing myself around like I'm invincible. Looking past my body though, I am clever sometimes, can usually find a good pun if you give me a second, and always bake enough cookies to share. These attributes are intangible evidence of my solid structure.

I'm not just singing my praises in the first paragraph though, I swear. The point I'm trying to make is that there is much more to me, and in fact to everyone, than their body type. This should be an obvious statement, right? One tooted by feminists everywhere. If this is such a widely accepted fact, why then have no less than a dozen complete strangers felt it their job to warn me about my weight? From the time I found out I was coming to Hungary, people I didn't know or were vaguely connected to told me to "take my fat pants with me" "get ready to get fatter" and many variations on "what are you going to do about the weight you gain?" Today, at an event centered around a cooking competition a random man warned me not to eat too much because I would *insert your preference of explosion onomatopoeia and hand gestures*

I like to think I'm pretty adept in social situations, but what do you even say to that.

I would like not to become a barge during my exchange. In a perfect world, the organic fruits and vegetables along with the walking and volleyball would slim me down. But, what's wrong with gaining weight? I'm healthy, I can still probably do more sit-ups in a minute than you, and most of all I'm happy. Being fat does not effect my ability to learn the language here. It does not limit my ability to illicit peals of laughter from my classmates. It doesn't even really harm my volleyball playing. But, do you know what does stop me from speaking Hungarian, what keeps my wordplay theoretical, and keeps my dives inches short of a dropped ball because I was too worried about how my shorts fit? Every sentence I hear questioning how I can be so confident now, and how I'm going to stay confident as my face fills out and my figure gets plumper. Every moment I'm in the middle of something and I get stopped to hear warnings about my impending fat-splosion. Every stupid cautionary tale I have to endure about the white bread Hungarians like, or how many dishes involve potatoes, or if I really want to eat a kakao csiga. Spoiler alert, yes, I do want to eat that kakao csiga, because in all likelihood I just had a ninety minute volleyball practice and didn't really eat breakfast this morning. Also have you seen kakao csigas they are heaven.

Trying to make a long rant concise: It is not my fat that is keeping me from success and happiness, it's the people who care more about it than they do about me. I can guarantee you exchange students have more interesting things to talk about than how many kilos they've gained--why not ask about those things instead?

Hungry for Brigitte Quotes

This edition of Hungry for Brigitte Quotes  is brought to you by the 11IB class at TAG, who have no patience and are always wondering when the next post heavily featuring them is going to be up.

"You have the y-factor, as in why did you come here" --Gabor

"I'm waiting for the day I get married and can change my name"--Claire-Charlotte Fix

"I don't eat vegetables because they can't defend themselves"--Vale

"Brigitte Sue sounds like a mermaid name" --Claire-Charlotte (sidenote: this wins for best compliment I have ever received)

"I would like formal ice cream"--me, because apparently there's a formal word for ice cream

"I hope most of the classmates are clever enough to be normal"--my Hungarian tutor

"My mother buys satan sausages"--Vale

"Next day there will be new skin!"--Claire-Charlotte (sidenote: I kind of what this on a motivational poster now)

"No in this case I will just not do it. Sleep is the most important thing in my life"--Eva, after I said she would go to bed very late because she had to grade papers

"How do you say I want to cry?"--Jennifer

"When I am an adult and earn my own money, I want to buy some Shetland pony"--Claire-Charlotte

"Plant by day, animal by night" --I don't remember who said this, but this quote sums up pretty well how well the exchangi bio study session went


Bonus Fun: After being here two months (!!!) there are lots of awkward moments where I hear part of a conversation, then have to backtrack and figure out why I understand it.


Puszi!

~~Thanks for being a good sport Claire-Charlotte <3 ~~

Pour Some Sugar On Me! By which I mean in my coffee. Which I'm going to need to get through the morning: why your exchange student is so tired

It's been a long couple of weeks. Wonderful, and not especially physically taxing, but long.

 In high school, I became accustomed to the ever present exhaustion that is trying to get your life together and fix your GPA. No matter how much sleep you think you're getting every night--and my classmates can back me up on this--you're never fully rested and you're always ready for bed. I can't articulate why, but school is draining. Even through the ups and downs of my 4-5 years at Uni, though, one healthy habit never left me: when I got home, I was always able to catch twenty sum minutes of respite. It may not seem like a big deal, but even just twenty minutes away from school can give you the energy to get going and pick up where you left off.

When you're an exchange student, it's not like there's a lot of pressure on you to perform well in school. I mean, I've already graduated, so my grades don't matter. Most Rotary kids are in classes taught in the native languages of their countries, so they can't really be held responsible for not understanding. But, that doesn't mean exchange students aren't trying to understand and/or trying to learn. Our main task on arrival is to pick up the culture as fast as possible. Basically, it's our job to study the language, all day every day instead of math or history or biology.  As an exchange student in an immersion program, there's no twenty minute respite to get to. In our home countries, we can get away from school. As an exchange student, school doesn't really end. At least, not for the first few months. So, as an exchange student, I'm always tired.

It's important to note that being tired doesn't mean I'm not excited to be here! It doesn't mean I'm stressed even. It's just frustrating to want to know something so bad, to want to impress teachers and peers and host families with new sentences, in my case to prove that I'm not some American dependent on worldwide English fluency and that there's something in this head other than hot air. To want all of this and still know that only time and patience can give you language competency  is a game of mental red-light-green-light that I would not be sorry to see end.

With all of this in mind, I would just like to express how in awe I am of all the multilingual people I know. All the students here in Hungary that are able to switch from Hungarian to English and back again just for me; all the students I know in America who speak English with friends, something else at home, and study another foreign language in school; all the people who come to America not speaking English and teach themselves from TV and magazines and whatnot. I don't know how you do it. Forty-five minutes in my German class is enough to total me for the day. I understand some of the German, even less of the Hungarian, and sometimes students explain something to me in English. I don't answer questions much because what comes out of me is usually a jumbled mess of broken German grammar, inserted English words that I don't know in German, and then Hungarian apologies. As I like to say "Es tut mir leid! Ich habe zu viele Fremdsprache in mein Kopf!" But, it's worth being exhausted all the time, because everyday I can have a better conversation with the lunch ladies. Every day I can tell my host mom one more trivial thing about school. And, every day I'm a little less embarrassed of what I know.

So, basically, don't worry about your exchange student if they're tired! It's pretty normal. Coffee is always appreciated though, and so is sugar, because it's probably gonna be a long day.