Heroes Gate & Fruit Soup


Heroes Gate
When I went to bed Sunday night, I had one item on my agenda: go to immigration. The secretary scheduled it for the afternoon, so I thought the morning would be somewhat free. When I woke up in the night, I saw that I had a message from my tutor. She wondered if we might meet in person to discuss the schedule. I proposed meeting at the fountain around lunch time and discussing it over lunch. Two hours before that appointed meeting, my American colleague sent me an email asking if we might get together later that morning. An hour and a half before lunch, he took me on a tour of Szeged, exploring streets I had not explored yet, and showing me a World War I mural, Heroes Gate, that had been plastered over before World War II and then restored in 1990. 

Afterwards, I met my tutor and we had lunch at a "Greek" restaurant that had some of my favorite Lebanese foods. They had sandwiches in pita bread and wrapped in tortillas (which they called tortillas) on the menu. My tutor said something about wanting fruit soup, which I pointed out was on the menu. It was delicious: peaches, blackberries, grapes, and cherries in a beet red soup. I need to train myself to take pictures of these things, even though I promised no more food pics. 

After lunch, I went to the office to meet the secretary and get all my papers put together. She was a little nervous because it was her first time to lock things up.  We stopped by a small photography shop so that I could get some passport picture made, then we went to immigration, where the numbers were all out of order  (my number was 81, but 84 and 82 were already being served. We waited about 10 minutes for my turn. I was prepared to pay the fee ($60), but found out I had a paper from the Ministry of Education which said the fee could be waived in my case. 

I'm crashing orientation this morning. My tutor told me at lunch yesterday that she had orientation this morning at 8:30. She checked with the leader and it was okay for me to join, so I guess that technically, I'm not crashing, I wrangled an invitation. I need to get going. We'll have tutoring after orientation, a meeting with the coordinator for the grammar courses this afternoon, and then dinner with my American colleague's family tonight--an opportunity to explore another area of town. 



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