Last week I spent my first Thanksgiving away from home. Seven American and one Canadian teachers got together in Gyor, Hungary (west of Budapest) to celebrate a holiday with food! We did our best to make dishes from home. There was no turkey, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie. We did have homemade noodles (thanks to me), mashed potatoes, stuffing and apple pie! I know we all missed our families but we had a great time being with good friends and stuffing ourselves full of the most American meal any of us have had in months! We even went around the table and gave thanks; it was mostly that we had each other!
I attempted to make homemade noodles for the first time according to Grandma Rosie’s recipe. There was flour everywhere and I traveled 4 hours by train with noodles for twelve, haha! Though they weren’t as good as either of my grandma’s ever made them, or Uncle Milton, they weren’t bad for my first time at the rodeo (I don’t think I cooked them in enough broth). People ate them and even took seconds so they couldn’t have been terrible. None of them had ever had noodles like this before, which is a completely foreign idea to me, I mean what is Thanksgiving without noodles? Also, as I was leaving to catch my train the mail man came with a package for me. Who was it from and what could it be? I had mentioned how I missed pumpkin flavored things in an e-mail to Aunt Sharon about a month ago and apparently she felt my pain. She sent me pumpkin fudge and the timing was impeccable. It was a perfect addition to our Thanksgiving meal.
Wednesday night I stayed in Budapest in route to Gyor. I got to meet up with Amy Atwood, close family friend, in the city for dinner! It was so good seeing her, as it had been quite some time, and really cool that we could meet up in Budapest of all places! She is traveling with a friend’s family. I enjoyed a great meal with them and really enjoyed getting to see someone from home, even if only for a couple of hours! I stayed with my friend Celia in the city and we headed to Thanksgiving together the next day.
On Friday Celia and I headed back to Budapest. Due to late trains and missed connections I ended up staying in Budapest on Friday instead of heading back to Nyírbátor. We decided to head to the Christmas market and I’m glad we did! There were stalls set up in the square with food, hot wine, crafts, hats, etc. and it felt like Christmas! We walked around for a while and got food, but mostly just enjoyed the generally merriment! That night we watched Home Alone, more Christmas spirit, and went to one of Celia’s friend’s place. It snowed in Budapest on Friday, the first snow, and it was quite a first snow. I’d say there was probably an inch or two on the ground. It was good packing snow, so we had a little snowball fight.
Saturday I made my way back to Nyírbátor and got ready for the teacher’s ball. It was retro themed so there were many bouffant hair-dos in the room. We had been practicing for a little more than a month to do a dance and I think it went brilliantly! I had so much fun at the ball. The atmosphere was much like a wedding reception, without the bride and groom. We danced away the night to retro Hungarian music, let’s just say my feet hurt a little bit today!
I posted new pictures under the "Life as a Magyar" link!
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