Day 5: Hangin' with Hungarians

Most of today was not especially exciting. We learned about our classes and finalized (ish) or selections. Apparently the standard courses load is five courses but from what I heard a lot of people signed up for more with the intent of dropping some in the future. I ended up signing up for Hungarian Language, Combinatorial Optimization, Data Mining, Networks, Quantum Probability and Quantum Logic, and Hungarian Music. I will probably drop either Quantum or Music.

I was considering going to the Superbowl party at AIT later which would involve getting there before 11 when the bus stops running, shenanigans until 3-4 am and then sleeping over at AIT. On the way back to my apartment, however, I met a small group of people from the program two American students that I knew and two Hungarian students that I didn't. The Hungarian students invited us to see a concert so we got food at a Turkish fast food place where I got a gyro with chicken because lamb was not an option -sad.

At the concert hall we met up with a friend of the Hungarian students who was part of the AIT program last semester (or maybe last year) and was going to be studying away in the Netherlands this semester. Tickets were only 1000 Forints ($5) for students though we had to stand. Apparently the concert was a Bartók marathon so it had many short performances all day.

Afterwards they took us to a pub and we hung out for a while. I don't know their names exactly, but a first approximation is Jordy, Alec, and Vincent. Vincent recommended a rose wine for me which I enjoyed. Apparently it was a good choice because it came from Lake Balaton.

The Hungarians we hung out with were all apparently physics majors together but Jordy and Alec defected to the math track. They were impressed that I knew about Peano arithmetic, thanks FOCS!

Things I learned today:
-My landlord is person from AIT
-Hungarians are non-ironically into the "Ladies first" thing

-How to say some of the numbers between 0 and 10. 8 and 9 are still a little iffy for me. Though I got to practice when we played cards.

- Hungarians use two types of decks of cards: French cards, which are the standard poker cards, and Hungarian cards which don't contain the numbers 2-6. 

-Hungarians also play B.S. but with the slight variation that you only play one card at a time.

-The hair style where men have no hair on the sides and rather a lot of hair on top is a thing. I call it a fat mohawk.

-If you can do jam, you can do palinka