Magyar

In case you are unaware, the Hungarian word for "Hungarian" is "magyar." I started Hungarian language school yesterday, and boy is it a difficult language. My primary issue is that the letter sounds are so different from English. For instance, consider the following examples:

Hungarian letter - equivalent English pronunciation
s - sh
sz - s
c - ts
cs - ch

And there are more! Also, each vowel has a short and long form (indicated by a forward leaning accent mark) and "o" and "u" also can have umlauts (both short and long). Fortunately studying German has helped me a lot with the umlauts. Still, it is a bit over whelming with so many differences, but I am slowly getting the hang of it and hopefully it will soon start clicking. The nice thing is I get plenty of practice. I find myself walking down the street and practicing my Hungarian by pronouncing the names of streets, restaurants, and stores. I had to smile when I was in the store today and I was able to understand my total when the cashier said it in Hungarian and I was able to politely say "thank you" in Hungarian.

The language school doesn't give much homework, so we (the students) are pretty free in the evening. Last night we got together to celebrate someone's birthday. It was fun to just hang out (previously we have only gotten together to explore the city). Slowly but surely I am learning people's names and where they are from/ where they go to school. Funny story about that: One of the girls in my section of the language school (there are four sections) is from Grand Rapids! When we figured this out, there was lots of excitement, plus a little bit of "small-world syndrome" (at least for my part).

I think that is all for now. I have been doing some exploring, but it has mainly been around my apartment - looking for restaurants, ATMs, etc. I am planning on visiting some bigger sights this weekend, or maybe sooner. Either way, keep an eye on facebook for more pictures soon.