Trip over, Coca Cola and First Aid

We're in Hungary!! After leaving Dallas at 4:20pm we flew to Frankfurt, Germany. After going through security twice, we arrived at our gate we all sat down exhausted from the overnight flight. I went in search of drinking fountains to fill up our water bottles, Janet found three seats and took a nap, my mom grabbed a book and Rick decided to check his email. I discovered there were no drinking fountains in our section of the airport and went back to re-join with the group. After not sleeping at all on the plane, I took a nap and amazingly fell asleep; so asleep that when my mom woke me up to tell me she had coffee for us to share I told her that I was sleeping and didn't want any (that story was relayed to me on our next flight, I had no memory of it :-)).

It was getting close to our boarding time and the gate wasn't full at all, so wanting to double check, we went to the desk to make sure we were in the right spot only to discover we were in the wrong section of the airport. We quickly made our way across the airport to arrive just in time to board our flight behind a team of grade school soccer players who were good enough to travel internationally to play. It was a fun flight with all those kids on it, everything to them was an adventure to them. Every time we hit turbulence (which happened ALOT) you would hear them gasp, and conversation would break out anytime the clouds cleared enough for the kids to see the ground. When we finally landed in Budapest the kids all cheered (I'm not sure if they were trying to thank the captain and flight crew or just excited to be on the ground again).

We made our way through Budapest and I thought I was back in Kenya. Our driver was trying to beat the incoming storm and was dodging cars and mopeds left and right while laying on the horn. I was so sure he was going to hit someone that I had to close my eyes.

After arriving and lugging my mom's suitcases up to her room, I went to go find where I was staying only to realize the storm was here. I grabbed my suitcase and walked outside only to hear this ruckus coming from "the castle" (pictured above and below) and turned in time to duck as this gigantic piece of plastic came barreling towards me. Part of the building is under construction and the wind was so strong it had been ripped off. After catching my breath one of the staff members came running towards me yelling "get in the car! get in the car!" I turned to head towards the car and ran while dodging huge pieces of bark and branches that were falling on my head, trying to knock me out :-). Once safely in the vehicle, we drove to the opposite end of camp and I finally made it safely inside a building!

As I walked into the dorm room I was greeted by 5 counselors who were enjoying their day off. They greeted me in Hungarian to which I replied "Hello, I'm Lauren".
"American?" they asked
"Igen" (one of a handful of Hungarian words I know). As soon as Hungarian came out of my mouth they got all exicted and started talking to me. I crushed their hopes when I explained I only knew English.
We all just looked at each other, then one of the girls pointed to my shirt and said, "Coca Cola in America?"
"Yes" I replied
"In Hungary" there, we had found a common thread between us and that's all it took. At that moment I was very thankful Coca-Cola is universal and knew we could overcome the language barrier.

I spend the rest of the afternoon laughing with the girls as we all tried to communicate with our limited knowledge of each other's languages mostly understanding through body language and motions we would come up with. Then it was time for supper. I sat witht the girls who introduced me to one of their English speaking friends and we were able to confirm or correct what we all knew about each other. After a meal of grilled chicken and sausage, some vegetable mix with lot of maynaisse and white bread we made our way back to the dorm where one of the girls pulled "Uno" out of her bag. I spent the next hour learning how to play Uno by their rules (I lost every game except the last one), and learned the Hungarian for red, green, blue and yellow :-). Then I taught them how to play "Go Fish" and we worked on their English numbers.

Once the girls headed off to their counselors meeting I started making my bed and organizing my stuff when another girl came limping into the dorm. Thankfully she spoke some English so I was able to ask her what was wrong. She had been walking around barefoot and had several splinters in her toe. I went to get my tweezers and offered my assistance. She accepted and as I was pulling splinters out she asked if I was a doctor. I laughed, and said "no" then giggled again. She asked me why I was laughing. I thought about it and said, "I never thought about having to use my first aid here so I think it's funny that God likes to remind me that I can use it anywhere." She seemed to understand. I had her bandaged up and out the door in 20 minutes where I finished unpacking and finally fell into bed at 9pm and slept solidily through the night, didn't even hear the girls come back into the room.

The kids come today!! Whoo Hoo!!

There's Wi-Fi in "the castle" (which I didn't know about) so I should be able to blog/email fairly regularly.