Milestones

Language Learning Milestones

This morning in the wee hours, I woke up with a song playing in my head. I only know one word to the song, but I sang it over and over:  Megnyugszik. This first Hungarian word to sink deep into my consciousness means, "she calms down" according to Google. If you change the e to an a, it means, "she rests." Other misspellings cause more dramatic changes in meaning. If you change the e to an a and drop the second g, it means bunnies. If you drop the second g, it means, "She gets bored." 

I found a YouTube video with the instrumental version of this song I learned at church. It is originally an English song, so its not surprising to find the English lyrics. (See the end of the blog)

Today, I went to the market by myself for the first time.  If success is measured by the vegetables I brought home, then I was successful.  If for actual verbal communication during these four transactions, the vendors get an "A" for their support. I understood "4" when asking about the price of the tomatoes, but could not figure out how much to actually pay after the tomatoes had been weighed. I understood "5" when buying the plums and started to hand the vendor 500 forints. He held up a 50 forint coin. I don't remember what I understood about the cost of the spinach except that it was under 1000 forints for a kilo. I was frantically looking through all the pockets in my jacket, pants, and purse trying to find my coin purse and visualizing retracing my steps to find it. I had a larger bill that I tucked away in another pocket. While the vendor was asking the neighboring vendor to make change, I found the coin purse exactly where it should have been. I did understand the vendor when she said  'keres,'  which means to look for something. The banana vendor made it easy. He typed the number on his calculator and showed it to me.

One month in Hungary

Yesterday marked one month since my arrival in Szeged. I celebrated by buying an inductive cooker. Today, I cooked my first meal in this apartment: eggs, potatoes, tomato, and spinach. I also had some bread and cheese.

This coming week, I will be getting into a weekly routine. My blog will also, most likely turn into a weekly event rather than a daily or bidaily event (it was already trending in that direction), so I will begin sending emails ot text messages to remind you when the blog has been updated. 






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