Budie, Budie, Budie, Budie, rockin everywhere.

Hey y'all!

So, Budapest.

First things first, the purple team had YET ANOTHER loss on Wednesday. our record is 1-6-1. And now we are to the playoffs. Needless to say, I think this week will be the last for the purple team. It was still a blast and one of the things I will miss the most about Rome.

Now to Budapest. We got in on Thursday night, and I first had to exchange my money, 59 euros, for 13,000 forints. That was cool. Soft currency= cheap stuff! We had a cab ride to our hotel because it is absolutely impossible to figure out Budapest's public transportation by looking on wikitravel. Try it. I dare you. But the cab wasn't that expensive, and it was a lady cab driver! She was funny. I asked her how to say thank you, and she giggled when I said it to her. We were in love.

Our hotel was actually an apartment with a kitchen and balcony! va bene!

On Friday we did the typical Budapest thing and went to the baths. It was an experience. After first successfully getting there on the metro, we had a lovely view of a plethora (this word is in my vocabulary solely because of Aaron) of completely naked, fat, and hairy 80 year old men. The baths were interesting. There were warm and cold ones, people making out, old people, young people. We didn't stay for long, and Dana and Alex wanted to take advantage of the cheap massages, so while they did that, Manak and I went to the swimming pool. They had a neato pool that had jets so it flung you in a circle. I know it sounds dangerous, and it was, but it was fun.

After the baths, we set out exploring Budapest. We went to a few bakeries, some shops, and finally to the Market Hall. They had a two story market with tons of vendors of all sorts of foods and knick knacks. It was cool. I bought a "secret box" and I'm pretty content with it. I also had goulash (completely different from the Minnesotan goulash that I know) and potatoes! My friends all say they don't know how I don't have diabetes because I get a baked good at every store we stop at, not to mention I eat tons of all foods. God must really love me. (In other news, I've lost 3 kgs!) Don't be jealous.

We made use of our kitchen on Friday night by stopping at the grocery store and making our own dinner. We made spaghetti with the most disgusting sauce I've ever had. Dana picked it. Thanks to Alex (who I called Xandra for most of this trip) we had good cheese bread from the bakery. It wasn't a total loss. It was a good night.

On Saturday we got up and watched some America's next top model dubbed in Hungarian. It was so funny. Then we set out to find what Xandra had been raving about the whole weekend, the Chain Bridge. Not a huge disappointment, but not spectacular. oh! I should have mentioned. For those of you who don't know, Budapest is actually two cities, Buda and Pest. Pest is more business-y and Buda is more old-world, hilly and nice. So our hotel was in Pest. And our first glimpse of Buda was from the chain bridge. Buda was by far better than pest. We took the stairs to the top of a large hill. Xandra wanted to take the elevator, but I persisted. We will all have amazingly sculpted behinds when we return.

Buda was cool. It had older buildings, and it felt more european. I liked it a lot. After Buda, we wasted some time at the market until we had to go to the train station to leave.

At the train station, we first had to FIND our train. Uffda. After finding it, we thought we were in the 2nd class part. It was nice! Too nice I guess, because we got kicked out and sent to the REAL second class part. Enter your image of scary Eastern Europe. Not THAT bad, but parts of that second class looked like a Holocaust train. A cute old Hungarian lady let me and Alex sit by her, and her daughter told us where to get off. I love them.

At the airport I heard from 3 hungarians about the Polish plain- incident. Big news there. I wasn't particularly interested at the time.

Hungary was a success. Today Dana and Anna and I went to IKEA! It was a blast. Looks exactly like Ikea twin cities. I got a hotdog and a cinnamon roll. (it took me three tries to spell that: role? roal? rowl?? Italian everywhere is getting to me).

I'm going to get the most out of Rome in these last three weeks. (less than actually!) I miss you all and I can't wait to be home. I really really really want to go to Applebees, so somebody get on that. Thanks.

Shout out to Mary L DeMaria, hottest lady ever!

Love you all