Illegalis!

After perusing M's blog (http://auraticoutmoded.wordpress.com/) I feel a bit remiss about my absence in the blogsphere, but I shall do my best to remedy that in the future.

What is new? My classes are *almost* sorted out. For one reading course I am missing a textbook and a regular time to meet; for the other I have both but I lack any assignments, despite the fact that I'm supposed to go in and meet with the professor tomorrow at ten. [After setting the time I realized that I should have as few Friday classes as possible -- Fulbright takes us out once a month on Fridays -- so I might try and get that moved so as to skip as few classes as possible] I have another class (taught by a German woman doing her CS postdoc. Her virtual native fluency is refreshing) without a time set... It might also be Friday, unfortunately. She wanted to start this week but I haven't heard from her yet.

Getting back into the work grove is challenging, by which I mean I have yet to do it. I tried on Monday to lock myself in my office (literally) and read over some notes. I did -- which isn't to say that I understood them much better -- and I also napped on my floor, which made the place seem more like home. Maybe I should get a garish orange carpet, too.

Apart from school, I spent three hours yesterday doing part I of becoming a legal resident. It was pretty typical bureaucracy, appropriately complicated by the fact that in the entire office maybe two people spoke English. To me this would seem counter-intuitive for an office set up specifically to deal with foreigners, but who am I to judge? I thought the woman pushing my papers was going to cut me when she looked in my passport. Regulations were changed in January, so I didn't have to get a multiple re-entry visa, and apparently my passport wasn't stamped very well in the airport, so they couldn't find any record of my entry into the country. My documents were man-handled and there was a lot of sighing and angry Hungarian (I caught the word "illegális"), but in the end they just had me sign an affidavit. I laughed to myself thinking that I was probably the most benign illegal alien ever ("I just want to study and inject money into your economy!").

When I told my professor about this later he got very upset and found a PhD student to go back with me next week for round two.

A funny thing I've noticed about some Hungarians (namely this professor) is that their emails come across as very terse and formal, but this is by no means a reflection of their demeanor in person. I talked to Judit (Hungarian now ex-girlfriend of another Fulbrighter. She goes to ELTE as well, so we've been hanging out. She's super sweet!) about it and she said, "Yes. I read emails from Americans and they are like love letters! So long and detailed."

Other than that, my Hungarian as a whole is making little progress, but my store of dirty words grows greater every day. I also learned how to say "What is the difference between __ and __." The word for difference is különbség, and "ség" is not to be confused with "segg," which sounds pretty similar to an American but means ass. Some day when I'm feeling punchy I'll intentionally mispronounce the question just to get a rise.

Last night in Szimpla I was hanging out with some Hungarians and we started talking to this Irish vet student.
Irish guy: You speak really good English!
Me: Thanks! I'm American.