Where did we leave it? Oh yes...
1) My Birthday
My mom and I decided to start the day with English breakfast - yes, I miss living in England that much - at my favorite restaurant. As it usually is, however, they'd run out of sausages and the rest of my sausageless breakfast was ice cold and my toast had fossilized in the making, so it didn't quite live up to my expectations, and you guys, I'd been dreaming of that breakfast for years. And although it might not seem that bad as of now, this was just a foreshadowing of the impending disaster.
Me and da food.
I don't know when taking photos of food became my thing, but at least it looked good.
After subtly wrapping my toast into a napkin, we took off to see the Sziget Eye, a rip-off of the London Eye in central Budapest and a best alternative I found to a theme park, since the theme park in this city has been notoriously closed down, with all its rides taken to the wasteland and melted into tramway tracks (I'm not even kidding, Budapest looks like a bombing site because of all the tramway extensions). Though based on my experience the last time I was there, it was all for the best. We bought two overpriced tickets, politely smiled when they mistook us for tourists, and living up to that, took photos we will never look at again, of the city we see every single day. After that, we had overpriced ice cream, my mom went home, I met up with one of my friends, and we went to Starbucks to study for our finals.
Moi.
I guess since I won't look at the photos, you guys could. Sorry for the bad colors, taken through glass and I couldn't bother with editing...
Boring Ferris wheel.
And thank goodness we did, because while we were peacefully sipping our vanilla frappuccinos on the leather couches, a F%*!@&G HUGE hailstorm had hit Budapest. And it hit it hard. There was pebble-sized ice everywhere. The streets were flooded. The wind was tearing out umbrellas from people's hands. Everyone was frantically searching for shelter. It was the apocalypse. After waiting half an hour in the tram stop for the storm to die down, however, I decided that I was either walking home or freezing on the spot, so I took off my platform sandals and walked (swam?) home barefoot. Yay.
2. Finishing High School
Part 1 - Finals: Ugh. If you didn't know already, in Hungary, school leaving exams have two parts: one written and one speaking test. Our class had three days to do the speaking tests, with thirteen people - including me - on the first one. And since with a very faulty reasoning they declared that the best come last, I was the very last person taking the exam that day, meaning that I was in school from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., frantically trying to revise everything I'd learnt in five years and thus probably annoying the poor parents who volunteered to make sandwiches. Soz mom.
When it was finally my turn, I had to draw two envelopes, and both of them ended up being the number 14, which is my lucky number so I thought I was all set. And, I mean, partly I was right, but although I did do well in Literature and History - my analysis of post-modernism in contemporary Hungarian short stories and my explanation of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was spot-on - I completely bombed Grammar and Linguistics, as I could not say a word on the types of compound words. My teacher kept saying that "I must be tired" because "I knew it on the test". Just for the record, we were never tested on compound words.
But I guess her confusion with what she had and hadn't taught only worked for my advantage here, as I got almost maximum points. As I found out, the lowest percentage I got for a leaving exams is 90% (History writing was a b*tch), which is a crazy good percentage, especially since our marvelous government (notice the irony) made leaving tests extremely difficult this year, so that no one will get into university
Fraaaahndz after we got our certificates (high school diplomas?) and an unsolicited copy of the Constitution of Hungary.
More fraaaahndz.
Me leaving the school building for the last time ever, holding my 6"
shoes that I couldn't walk home in.
Part 2 - Senior banquet: Basically a huge and fancy dinner, which marked the last time we spent together as a high school class. That's it really, there's not much to say about it. It was held at an all-you-can-eat cafeteria. Some people were overdressed (ahem, me), some people were underdressed (ahem, Zsolt and his Bermuda shorts). I wish it had been more memorable, but it just wasn't. It was the last couple of hours we ever spent together as a class - and of course I cried, but as we all know I always cry - and it was quite underwhelming and anticlimactic.
I had no good photos of the banquet, so here's a rare selfie you guys never wanted to see. And yes, that's my bra strap.
3. Weekend Getaway
My dad decided that for the last time before I leave to the US of A, we should spend some quality time together with his family, and determined that the best place for that would be Győr, a city northwest Hungary. It was meant to be two days of water parks and hot tubs, but yet again - as it always is - that didn't happen. Instead, we spent our time walking around town, eating bad pizza wrapped in blankets, playing squash without knowing the rules or how to even use the equipment, and taking photos of potato bug statues in the middle of nowhere. And midst all that, even a random dog started following us around. FUNFUNFUN
This is how you abuse the "Exaggerated colors" filter on your camera.
That moon there is why I should have taken my tripod with me.
Potato bug statue. #sointeresting
My dad, verbatim: "Lilla already wasted an entire roll of film on the storks."
A church and power lines and the "Exaggerated colors' filter.
