City Living

It was just brought to my attention that I am in a Mike-style spiral, as it's been awhile since I last wrote a blog entry. I've been on a non-fiction writing kick and have had lots of Business Hungary/Where Budapest assignments lately. Also, my friends have been also very prolific in emailing me, which I love, but I have been spending copious amounts of time writing back. So, I apologize for not keeping my loyal readers updated - I just hadn't really noticed since I've been constantly writing and on my computer - just in different capacities.
Mike and my friend Jeff just visited us for the weekend, which was fun, but led to a lot of sleep-deprivation! But, I've been in the mood to go out dancing and stay up to the wee hours of the morning, so it was great.
Teaching is going well. My schools keep wanting to pile on the classes, and I am beginning to get overloaded. I always knew teaching would be a hard job, and not one I was particularly drawn to, but now I realize just how much time it takes to prepare for classes and really engage my students. So, I'm having a difficult time saying, "no" to more classes, but I think it's necessary if I want to keep up with my other interests. It makes me value teachers even more, and simultaneously exemplifies up my knowledge that teaching is not my professional calling.

Here are some other updates:

• Tomorrow I finally get to tour the famous Parliament building with a group called NAWA (North American Women's Association). I am not joining the group, but just helping with their volunteer work, which is an "adopt a granny" program, where they pair up an orphanage and a nursing home and play Bingo or go on outings like this one tomorrow. I am quite excited, and happy to have found a service project. However, I need to brush-up on non-verbal communication, as none of the youth or elderly will speak English.
• Mike went to Macedonia the week before last on a business trip for a USAID project. I am not too jealous about his travel destination, but I did realize that I don't like being left in Budapest alone at all. It can get quite lonesome and I don't like having to walk alone at night, but I don't have much choice. I have to hand it to Mike that he handled it for four months before I got here. He has to go again for a full week in November and perhaps once this month.
  
• I am going to celebrate Thanksgiving with my host family in Ireland again. They offered a free place for Mike and I to stay, and a friend I studied abroad with will also be there with her host family that is related to mine. So, it'll be just like two years ago! I'm really really excited.
  
• Yesterday I attended a press conference for AmCham on Karen Hughes. She used to be the communication director of Bush, and is now an ambassador and oversees three US Gov departments, and a whole host of other accolades like being the former head of the Republican party of Texas. Her speech was pretty interesting, but luckily it was short, because I had to write about it. I agreed with most things she said about corporate responsibility (the topic of the speech) except when she talked about the successes of No Child Left Behind, which she helped engineer. That made me want to gag and argue with her all at the same time . . . But, I refrained from putting this sentiment in my story.
• Last week I attended a conference on Marketing, so I did a big story on Google and interviewed their rep for Hungary. Now I know too much about the company, but I'm starting to build my own web site with their tools that I found out about. I now own Marisabeahm.com. It's a work in progress though . . .

O.K., that's my massive update for now. I'll write a more specific detailed one later. But I just finished one class, and I have two to go today, so I have to get going.