Events 8/24-8/26

So, it's been a busy week and a half, settling in. I'll try to go through it as best I can. My pictures are inconsistent, I'll try to intersperse them when I can.

The flight (8/24-8/25):
Grand Rapids -> Detroit -> Paris -> Budapest
The flights were fine. The threatening thunderstorms didn't end up impacting our flights, so we made everything on time, even with only an hour layover in France.

I watched Zootopia on the inflight entertainment while crossing the Atlantic; surprisingly good. I watched a few other shows on my laptop, but had to conserve battery power on my laptop, as there were no charging places (not even for my phone!), annoyingly. I got maybe an hour or two of sleep.

We landed in the afternoon in Hungary on Thursday.

Thursday 8/25:
After we got in, we got travel passes (public transportation), and then took something like taxi vans back to the dorm. Edit: We went out for dinner with Professor Kim, on Calvin.
Most people stayed in that night, but I went out with the few people who did, for just an exploration trip. At the time I was exhausted, but wanted to get out and start exploring. It was great.

We went to the parliament building by bus. It was beautiful, all lit up.

Even cooler, you may notice white specks in the background. They're bats! There were hundreds, probably eating the bugs attracted to the lights. Giant picture incoming.

After that, we watched the river for a while, and then walked to and crossed a bridge. We passed a bar, built into one side of the underside of the bridge. Some of the other students noted it to come back. On the other side we got on a tram and headed back.

Friday 8/26:

Friday morning we got an orientation by Judit Nagy, of Karoli, who gave us an introduction to our living quarters and our arrangements here. I'll make another blog post to detail those.

After the orientation, we went out, to do a couple different things, like exchange money, have lunch and things. I forgot my travel pass, and got separated from the group, but I bought an individual ticket, went to our destination, and was able to find everyone again. After lunch, while getting more tickets, everyone else left, and I wandered alone. It was okay, but it would've been nice to not get separated. I went back, and ended up walking a couple km just for fun.

Then, Professor Kim, the Calvin professor leading the trip gave us his own orientation, laying down ground rules for the trip. One that might surprise you is that intragroup dating is not allowed; breakups would be rough with everyone still doing things together, and Professor Kim doesn't want to deal with the drama.

We were then thrown a welcoming pizza party by some students from Karoli, it had some interesting pizza toppings, and a lot of awkward talking. I slept long and deep that night.