I woke about daybreak and saw that the world was again white. I rolled over and slept in until 9:30. Spent some time trying to search on the Internet for weather forecasts that will tell me when this snowy spell will end.
Yesterday I got to T-Mobile and got a cell phone. The menus are in English, but the welcome notices from T-Mobile come in Hungarian. I got the phone and a minutes card for 9990 forints. To compare, nice handbags in the Arkade sell for about 6600 forints. I guess it is like all cell phones, one must play around a bit to figure it out. I have noticed all cell phones in Hungary ring with a very melodius tone, so I spent some time trying to find something that will fit into the culture.
From there I walked to the Arkade. I got some hot chocolate. Hot chocolate here is not quite like US hot chocolate. The best way to describe it is that it is much thicker, and of course, comes with some glorious whipped cream on the top. Then I went down to Interspar and got some groceries to keep me going for the next couple of days. I got brave and bought some tyukpastetom for a sandwich. I wasn't sure what I had purchased until I got back to my Hungarian dictionary. It is chicken pate/paste. I've had similar things in Poland. This will be great, particularly if I soon carry home a jar of pickles to go with a sandwich like this. By the way it suddenly dawned upon me that szendvics is sandwich. So now I have about ten good words in Hungarian!
Returned and finally connected with my landlady. I learned where to put the trash and how to light the stove. And what will happen if someone pushes the buzzer for my flat from the door bell area on the street -- this I wanted to know because I'm expecting guests for coffee tomorrow afternoon. My landlady teaches American culture and literature, but I'm uncertain if at a high school or at the University of Pecs.
Spent a lot of time yesterday downloading pictures and writing a couple of blog entries about my experiences in Budapest. Even though it was snowy yesterday, I decided to go out about 4:30 for a bit and walked down to --gasp! -- McDonalds for a szendvics. The food is good, the French fries are perfect, and it's a place I can easily go as an unaccompanied woman. I like how the McDonald's in many Europe cities are two story buildings. One gets above the street level and can really see out into the city. I spent some time looking across the square, trying to decide what building I was to be at Tuesday evening at 5 PM for a reception by American Corners opening an exhibit here about American Presidents. At least one of the officers from the Cultural Affairs section of the US Embassy will be here, too for that.
On the strategy if one has lemons make lemonade, I spent some time looking at what is special about walking around on a snowy evening.
Here is an advertisement being projected onto snowy Kiraly Utca. It is to make one notice there is a hotel set off Kiraly. Pecs is full of little courtyards that have shops and restaurants. Too bad you can't see how this design whirled in the snow. 
The National Theatre is about 3 blocks from my flat. This is a picture of one of the side doors to the theatre. It will be interesting to see at a later time what created the blue light on the inside. I've been watching carefully for an announcement of something of interest to me at this theatre. Wouldn't you know it, the thing on the schedule that I really want to attend is not at this theatre, but at a different one that is 20 minutes away by bus!Well, the snow has stopped. I think I'll read for awhile and give people a chance to shovel just a bit, and then wander off to see something in Pecs.
Happy Super Bowl Sunday in the US. I'll be sleeping when this all starts. Tomorrow I'm out the door at 8:15, so it may be later in the day before I connect again with the Internet to find out what happened.
If you haven't done so, please take a chance to read the two blog entries below about my experiences in Budapest. It was a very wonderful time.
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