Language barriers

I'm struggling with the Hungarian language. It has 14 vowels... enough said. I decided not to take Hungarian for the entire semester; rather, I'm going to take a class called Hungarian Arts and Culture. The interesting thing about being in a culture with a language so vastly different from ours is the way in which we compensate. All of the students I'm with find ourselves slipping into Spanish or French depending on what we took in high school. Since we know that English is not an option, I guess it's inherent to try the language that we speak that's not English. People say things to me and I'll reply with Si instead of Igen. Instead of saying bocsenat for excuse me, I'll say perdoname. So strange.

I'm in the process of figuring out what classes I'll take. After talking to students who were here last semester, I've (maybe) decided on taking Number Theory, Combinatorics, Topology, and mayyyybe a class called Real Functions and Measures. Then I'll take the Hungarian Arts and Culture class in addition to the math. The weird thing is that I ended up without class on Fridays, and if I don't end up taking the Real Functions class, I won't have class on Mondays either. There are students here who plan their schedules around not having class on Friday, I was just lucky enough to have had it work out coincidentally.

We have a welcome session and party this afternoon. I think it should be a very good time because we got to talk to the professors and ask questions.