Finally a free moment to post!

So it's been a little busier now that the Chaperoning has started. I have to get up, early, get everyone else up early and make sure no one's lost. Have we misplaced anyone yet, you ask? Um...yeah, actually. No more than about 4 hours into the trip 3 of the boys were 'misplaced.' And, since they had just gotten here, they didn't have maps, money, anything! Way to start chaperoning on the right foot...they made it back to the hotel eventually, though.

But BJ (the other chaperone) and I haven't lost anyone since, so I count everything as going just fine. The place that we're having most of our seminars while in Budapest is incredible! (So far we've had seminars on the Hungarian language, one on higher education, and one on US-Hungarian relations, more or less.) Those former Flinns reading this won't believe that there are 16 computers for us to use (we had ONE that worked sometimes before) in a swank new student center that was built for all the students in Hungary to use. It's actually in a renovated palace, and part of it looks like this:

Anyhoo, I promised several people I'd post pictures of the city, and fortunately we went on a walking tour yesterday so...first we have the First Communist McDonalds. It opened in 1987 and was the first ever to serve the Big Mac in a communist country. The communism in Hungary was not as strict as it was in many other places, and the area that this McDonalds is in is where people from all over the Soviet bloc came to buy things like blue jeans and nylons, from what I hear.

There's been much economic development since I was here last (note the big student center we're using), but also more graffiti. Strange. I asked a Hungarian about it, and she said 'well no one understands it anyways, and it's colorful!' This is inside of a reeeally nice market that no one uses anymore. Mostly Budapest is not like this though! This was special. I've also seen some stencils around, if there are any good one's I'll post them!

We also walked by the old Conservative temple, which is very beautiful and marks the beginning of the old Jewish ghetto. This area of town is now really hip, with nightclubs and bars next to the Orthodox temples and wig shops.

What does this mean? Suggestions?

Today we also went out of town to the Pazmany Peter Catholic University Faculty of Humanities campus to hear about Hungarian higher education (which is going through many changes in order to make it better mesh with the rest of Europe's educational system) and also to see the campus, which was designed by a famous Hungarian architect in a very organic style. When you're inside the buildings they give the feeling of being outside. Or that's the idea. This is the concert hall:

And this is the same hall from the outside:

And here are the people I'm chaperoning interacting in a very college-brochure fashion with some of the Hungarian students at the university: