I arrive at the dorm

Well, my sleep schedule seems to be normal now, just in time for the seminars to begin. So that's nice.

My foot also doesn't hurt any more. Taking it easy seems to have paid off quickly.

I just realized that I haven't shown any pictures from the top of the hill I was staying on. Here are a few I took this morning.

I then went down to the Turkish bath. Again, I had a wonderful time. Sundays are coed, with bathing suits. This, I think, was unfortunate, because it meant that tourist couples could show up and the locales mostly stayed away. I was trying to figure out why the tourists changed the atmosphere so much. I mean, one thing is that there were a number of British and Germans clearly more interested in checking out each other in skimpy bathing suits rather than in enjoying the baths. But also, I think, they weren't really trying to relax. The first time I was there, there was a real sense of calmness and serenity. The tourists seemed to treat it more like playing frisbee on the beach. Fun, but not relaxing. Anyway, I managed to find some quiet spots and really decompress. Then I paid an extra $4 for the "Super-Massage."

Anyway, one nice thing about having the bathing suits is that I felt like I could take pictures without seeming creepy. So here they are.

After the bath, I took a bus and a train to my dorm. And I couldn't find it. Ugh. And, of course, my rolling bag broke. So I was a bit lost on the outskirts of Budapest, which look a bit like a cross between suburban America and a public housing project. Luckily I had saved a bunch of documents on my computer and eventually found one with more detailed directions to the dorm. It seems quite nice, like a modern American dorm with a cafe downstairs (first bad coffee I've had yet). My roommate is a Pole here for the course on globalization.

So yeah, now I'm just going to try to get a lot of work done before class starts tomorrow. I probably won't update this as much, as I expect them to keep me quite busy.

-- David