I should
probably keep up better with the blog, so I don’t always have to play catch-up.
But I think catch-up blogging is the way it’s going to be.
So, after
deciding to stay in Wednesday night, I felt so refreshed and ready to go on
Thursday! I had two classes: Services Marketing and Corporate Social
Responsibility. These are probably two of my favorite classes! Each class has
two one-hour and 20 minute lecture with a twenty minute break between each. It’s
a little different, but I think the break in between helps a lot. My Services
Marketing class has about 40 students in it, and then we split up into smaller
groups for the second half of the class. In my smaller class, only eight of us
were there and six of us are all really good friends. That made it a lot of fun
and super personable with the teacher! My Corporate Social Responsibility class
is hands down my favorite. There are about 25 of us and our teacher rocks! We
got into class on Thursday and she said, “okay drop your things, we are going
to the corridor for a short game.” All of us were like alright this is cool. So
we got up and went outside into the hallway, and she started asking yes/no
questions. The ‘yes’s’ would walk to one side and the ‘no’s’ would walk to
another side. We did this for a while as she asked random questions about where
we are from, if we’ve volunteered or given to charity, if we have
boyfriends/girlfriends, if we speak English as our first language, etc. We were
all really confused, but we went with it. The last part was questions based on
a scale. So between two pillars, one being 0 and the other being 10, she asked
us first about what we thought about the financial ethics of our home
universities, and then next asked us what we thought about our own financial
ethics. Interesting questions to think about. We then went back into the
classroom and started discussing why we did that – she wanted to have a lead-in
into the discussion of discrimination, and hiring people based off of
discrimination. She said that she started asking us personal questions and
asked if we thought that was fair. It was pretty cool. This class is definitely
going to get me thinking. We also discussed the Ford Pinto case; for those of
you who don’t know what that is, it’s a pretty controversial subject. Back in
the seventies, Ford knew that if their Pinto car got in an accident, it would
immediately blow up. Ford had the idea to install a rubber lining in order to
keep the car from blowing up. They did a cost benefit analysis and it was ‘cheaper,’
in a sense to not install the rubber piece. They even weighed the cost of
paying the families of those who would die in a Ford Pinto accident. So our
debate was whether this was right. We talked about the social cost, and I brought
up the point about Ford losing brand loyalty because they decided to take the ‘easy’
way out. There’s one girl in our class who literally goes against anything we
say or what the teacher says; it’s fun because we just get to debate with her
the entire time. This class flew by and the discussion could have lasted
another two hours. Love the class! And sorry to get all school-focused on y’all.
I guess I’m just happy to be back in class.. never thought I’d say that.
So my
schedule for classes is finalized now. I have two classes on Monday:
Advertising Management and Tourism Management&Marketing for a total of 5.5
hours of class. I have one 2-hour class on Tuesday called Resources of
Viticulture; my flatmate is taking this class and it’s all about the process of
wine-making. I didn’t go this first week because I just added the class
yesterday, but we’ll see how it is! Corvinus University has a building on the
Pest side and the Buda side. All of my business classes are on the Pest side,
but the wine class will be on the Buda side. I have no class Wednesday, and
again 5.5 hours of class on Thursday, and then no class on Friday. I was trying
to get no class on Friday and Monday, so that I could travel longer on the
weekends, but I am happy with the classes I’m taking.
On Friday, I
went to tour the Buda side with four of my guy friends here: Laurent (from
Belgium), Niels (from Holland), Rafael (from Brazil), and Alex (from Canada). We
walked around for probably four hours – I looked out my window and saw that it
was finally sunny for one day, so I decided to only wear a light jacket. Bad
mistake. I was freezing, especially when we climbed to the top of a hill that
overlooks the Danube river. So we first started off, crossing over the chain bridge:
(again... I apologize for the side ways pictures. I still can't figure out how to rotate them on here. I think when I take them with my nice camera, they are a much bigger size so it rotates them this way. What a pain.)
This picture is also on the bridge that we crossed on our way over to the Buda side.
Once we got to the Buda side, we could've taken this up a little ways, but we decided to walk.
This was a smaller hill (I'll talk about the bigger hill later) and this statue was a the top of it. When we got up there, the military men were walking through the area and so we stayed and watched them flip their guns and yell out some random calls in Hungarian that I couldn't understand.
Next we walked over to this beautiful church on the Buda side. I was so mesmerized at the architecture and color.
After we went to the church, we walked through a bunch of ruins and saw buildings that had been destroyed during war. Pretty neat history.
After that, we got to the castle. I saw the castle the first night I was in Budapest, but it was cool to see it during the day.
After we saw the castle, we took a bus over to the hill that you can climb up and look over all of the Pest side and the Danube river. When I am standing at Corvinus University on the Pest side, and I look out across the Danube, I can see the hill. I've always wanted to climb it so I was happy we got to do it! This statue is at the top. There's also a few little shops at the top, too.
After coming down from the hill, we were all FREEZING and hungry. We stopped at this cute little soup/sandwich shop by Corvinus and got some food. It was already around 4:30pm, so afterward we all split our own ways. On my way home, I actually stopped at a second-hand thrift store that I saw the other day and absolutely loved it! I got three new shirts. How I am bring everything home? I have no idea. Maybe I'll just have to leave stuff here. Or buy another cheap suitcase. We'll see. After that, I went to look at a gym that I may get a membership at. It's really nice... kind of small, but it has a swimming pool which is a definite plus. Today, I am going with my friends to try another gym to see if I like that one better. It's closer to my place, so that may be a plus.
I got home after our Buda tour, made some dinner, and then got ready for my friend Helene's birthday party! She had everyone over to her flat, which was a lot of fun! Later that night there was a famous DJ playing at a club called Aquarium. The tickets were supposed to be sold out, but me and five other friends decided to just check. They still had tickets! So, we got tickets and met up with the rest of our friends who had gotten there just before us! It was so so so much fun! It was so crowded and the music was so loud; very fun night! We have to coat check at every bar/club here, so when I was about to leave, my friend Jason and I walked over to coat check and I couldn't find my coat check ticket anywhere. I always worried about this happening. It was such a tiny piece of paper... bound to happen. So I literally dumped out my entire purse on the counter and looked through everything five times. Couldn't find it. It was already 4am and I was leaving early. They told me I'd have to wait until everyone left. I was like honestly that's ridiculous. So then this manager guy came out and I described my jacket in full detail, and they finally brought it out. They made me sign a bunch of papers, which is understandable, and then I was able to leave.
Saturday I met up with my friends to find mustaches for the mustache party last night. Our friend Cyprien's birthday was last night and the theme was mustache. Ben found a costume store online, so we walked to it and couldn't find it anywhere. Finally we asked people and managed to find it; a little hole-in-the-wall place that we had to walk down four staircases to get to. Super sketchy. We banged on the door and a lady opened up saying they were closed. We were so upset because we just needed mustaches for the party and she wouldn't let us in... not even for five minutes. So sad. All the shops close around 2 or 3pm here on Saturdays. Not sure why, but I guess that's the culture. So after that we walked around a bunch of touristy shops and tried to find anything that looked like a mustache. People bought pencils and magnets and string, but I decided not to get anything. Nobody ended up using it anyway - they just drew with lipstick red mustaches on their faces. It was snowing while we were walking around, and I was freezing again, so we all decided to try hot wine. That's a thing here. It taste like spiced cider with cinnamon in it, but it's wine. It was actually really really good! Didn't think I would like it. I don't think it's just a Hungarian thing because a bunch of my European friends said they have it, too - especially around the holidays.
The mustache party was a success. Very funny. Some guys actually shaved their facial hair and just kept a mustache - hilarious! Other guys had drawn on mustaches, some girls drew mustaches or found fake ones. And then Mimi (she goes to USC) found pink glasses that had mustaches attached to them - those were probably the best! After that we all went over to a bar named Instant, and I only stayed for about an hour. I was so so so tired - story of my life. Other people stayed until 6am. I don't know how they do it here. Today has been a lazy day, but a good one. I was able to blog and post pictures on facebook. I'm about to make lunch, go to the gym, and then relax tonight before a long day of classes tomorrow.
If you've made it to the end, thanks for stickin' along. I know I write very detailed and ramble too much, but that's how I like to write. Until next time...
xoxo
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