CHEESE: Christmas Has Everything Everyone's Super Excited; A Holiday Letter/Post

This year is one of many long awaited coming of age milestones every young adult must experience: the first Christmas without mom and dad. It's fortunate that I don't have to spend the day away from home or away from family, but I'm sure a little homesickness will come my way thinking about my brothers looking like homeless frat boys when they get to grandma's, the grandparents' dog fleeing mine upon arrival, and my parents sarcastically kissing under the plastic and glittered holly strategically placed in the same doorway by my grandma every year despite her PDA complaints. I'm sure I'll get the same food coma and poorly sung carol renditions, because Hungarians and exchange students do holidays right, still. Passing out with a food baby is different here. Everyone is just nice to you and lets you digest, instead of sitting on you because you're taking up the entire couch and trading weight related insults with you while eating even more cookies.

Instead of my deadbeat brothers, TEPO (The Ever Patient One) and GOV (Giver of Volleyball), I've traded up this year to my wonderful host parents Eva and Tamas, and kick-butt host siblings Blanka and Abel. They're beautiful people. Eva teaches at my school. The looks on my friends' faces when a teacher came up to talk to me on the first week of school was priceless. Especially after she gave me chocolate croissants. Tamas, Blanka, and Abel all spend most of their time in Budapest going to school and jobs and all that responsible type stuff. In Debrecen, where we live, it rains a lot. It's about the size of Champaign-Urbana? So not that different. Hungarian, well it doesn't really have attributes that I know how to explain in real non-onomatopoeiatic words , so I don't know how it's going. I guess I speak a little bit, but as soon as anyone asks me how much I speak I completely forget that there are sentences other than "Bocsanot, nagyon nagyon bocsanot, nem beszelek magyarol. Cserediak vagyok."

Next year I'll be back to my usual hijinks though, so if the fridge has been a little too full and the house has been a little too quiet, don't fret (cough cough mom and dad cough). So far my plan upon return is to make some major bank (or minor bank. any salary is good salary) working volleyball camps and maybe coaching a bit. I hope to bring volleyball with me to University too, though I'm too injured to play, by coaching a club team or reffing a rec league. In the fall, I'll head off to some Illinois University to double major in Theater Studies and Human Development and Psychological Services or Social Policy. Yes, the rumors are true, I am the next Doogie Howser. But serioiusly, don't worry Grandma, the market for past-their-prime-narrowly-missed-the-window-to-be-a-child-prodigy-sarcastic-theater-tech-girls-looking-to-change-the-face-of-comedy is huge. Actually, that sentence doesn't even have to be that sarcastic. Now is the time for more Tina Fey's, Laverne Cox's, Amy Poehler's, and Whoopi Goldberg's to come out of the woodwork. I want to double major so that I can help fill the void of equally valued authoritative female figures in the entertainment industry and pursue another venue of life improvement for communities spreading improved information and health education. Other than that, I guess my main goal for college would be to avoid getting an infection from communal showers or to befriend the person on my floor who knows how to use the lounge microwave?

Closing out this "letter" I want to apologize for the lack of a schtick (I know, dad always has one) and any misspelled words. If I thought playing dad in Scrabble was hard before, I can't imagine what it will be like now. My deteriorating English is also the reason for this bang-up ending. As I get more and more tired due to my irresponsible sleeping habits over school break, I do not have the eloquent speech needed for a beautiful, touching conclusion.

I can't give you guys presents right now, because shipping is a lot and I don't know how customs works, but. Mom, if I could I would give you the world and a new Prius to drive around it. I fully plan to as soon as I figure out how to wrap a planet and put a bow on it. I love you so much. Dad, first of all note the acronyms for you and mom--kind of an homage to the DCL--what what. If I could I would run around the house in pigtails being a power ranger princess, or whatever weird junk I concocted in pre-school. I can't, because I have some semblance of dignity, but if you can hold out until I'm 25 I can probably manage a tackle yelling "I'm 5x5 5x5 5x5" I love you so much. Erick, I will not give you anything because you wrap my presents in Walmart bags and eat all the poptarts. However, I will give you the empty and obvious promise of Netflix marathoning and a hug you don't want to give me. I love you so much (you fatty <3 ) Mike, you don't get on the internet right? You're like, seven. Right? I'm gonna give you all the unwanted sister advice that you never asked for. And hair gel lessons. And realistically a soccer jersey because tradition is tradition. And, I love you so much.

Grandma I'm going to make you proud we share a middle name, and find a new fancy Hungarian outfit for your goose. Grandpa, we're going to watch NCIS until Grandma accepts her fate and I will even bring my own barbecue kettle chips. I love you both so, so much. 
  To all my friends working their way through University, maybe thinking I'll bring you back chocolate: sorry. I will realistically probably eat it in the airport before it gets to you.

But, I love you all, so much.

My English Has Not Aged Well. It is Grating My Inner Englsih Teacher, Shredding my Dignity, and just Stinking Up the Grammatical Room

After sevenish hours of travel I think most people are a little incoherent. On and off after activities on the bus my friend Madison can attest that my sentences were not the most informative. It's not just a tired thing though. A couple weeks ago I wrote an essay with a sentence containing "blahblahblah is has have blahblahblah" and edited three times before I realized the problem wasn't that I had them in the wrong order, but rather that I had them in the sentence at all.

My point here is, if I mess up on social media and say the wrong form of a word (bear/bare two/to/too etc) I'm sorry. And probably embarassed. If everyone could be lenient with me and just mentally insert what the word should be, that'd be great. I don't know what's happening to it, or why, but anything eloquent my speech ever possesed is long gone.

Köszönöm!! Love you!

(Sidenote: my title is a cheese joke. Please tell me it's obvious enough I don't think I could bare to lose my pun skills too)

Grown Ups Buy Groceries

Central Europe is wonderful place to be! There are so many different countries and people and languages! Unfortunately this also applies to grocery stores. If you want to tour all the little countries in this area of the continent, but you're on a budget, the effect can be easily achieved by browsing the aisles of your local supermarket! It's a beautiful experience 😊

Looking past the sarcasm, food shopping is actually one of the most stressful things I've ever done. I try to prepare for my trips by translating all the ingredient names I need if I don't already know them. When I get to the aisle I need  I am very excited to be a real adult and buy grown-up foodstuffs like basil and rolled oats and chicken breasts! I know it will go smoothly because I brought my shopping list, in Hungarian, like a good girl. Unfortunately, SPAR doesn't get the memos about my preparedness and stocks food from everywhere except Hungary. So far I have seen German, English, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Polish.   Realistically there are probably more languages on the packages, since every one has three sets of directions, but I am not a linguist. If the packages aren't in a language I know and they don't have pictures, I just guess. It's an adventure! If you thought you could get away from mystery meat by escaping your cafeteria to Europe, you thought wrong.

After I have an armload of what I hope is cookie ingredients, I head to the check out. (Side note: it's worth noting here that I usually stop by the store after school. Debrecen is small, but I should never have underestimated rush hour) There are lots of nice people here, and I usually end up in line with some of them. Sometimes they're just trying to kill time with conversation while the dude at the front waits for his farm's worth of produce to be manually entered into the system. Other times it's a little old lady who understands that you speak broken Hungarian but it's okay because she's mainly interested in telling you the sale prices of every individual carton of sour cream she bought. It's a little stressful to talk to these old ladies because I know somewhere in the back of my mind that all they're saying is prices, but I can't help but doubt my understanding of the language because I struggle to understand the merits of being a human newspaper ad.

Once I make it to the front, the cashier is understandably frazzled because she's dealing with the same junk I am only she has to be efficient and pleasant during it. I can pay without a hitch usually, but for some reason I always get asked for exact  change to make giving me money back easier. I get this eventually, but only after I get the 'ugh Americans' eye roll. Then, since you've gotten your money back and the next customer needs to pay, it's a mad scramble to shove your change into your wallet, wisk your products away to a counter awkwardly where you can put them in bags, and get organized.

Throughout all of this I'm usually carrying a school bag, wearing a coat, and holding a basket laden with food, so I'm quite a cumbersome individual. If you add this to me stress sweating and the stiff kind of frozen posture I get when I'm anxious, I usually also get asked if I'm feeling alright. It's kind of embarrassing. But, so worth it when dinner/dessert is done.

(Sorry for any typos or errors, I wrote this on my phone on the train 😄)

Waiter! There's a Hair in my Soup... and Now in my Sink!

I obsess over my haircut on a good day.

I prepare for days before hand, considering each minute layer change, gathering trashy gossip mag photographs as examples, and toying with the idea of bangs for the umpteenth time. In the four (I think four?) months I've been here I haven't been to a hair salon. Hungarian is proving a little difficult, and I didn't want to march in and blabber something incoherent then end up with a green pixie because I said I wanted a carrot top  instead of a little off the top. 

So! Because it's toooooooooooootally a less risky option, I decided to cut my own hair! (sidenote: if I had a finger gun animation, I would put it here) It didn't actually go that badly (sidenote: cue applause) 

Before the cut, right out of my homework bun.

It's amazing what you can do with a hairbrush 

The first step in the tutorial I haphazardly followed is to brush all your hair into a ponytail at the front of your head. The next was just to cut straight down, and you'd apparently get layers from that. 

A fair amount of goofing off was done on my part, which is honestly unavoidable when you have a make-shift elephant trunk. I trimmed the ends a bit after the ponytail. I think it looks good (sidenote: okay it's not even noticeably different, but I'm one step further to being semi-self sufficient!) The bottom right is the end result. Ta-daaaa?