do you have 100 forint?.....a trip to the grocery store

For those of you who know Amanda Preisler who did a grocery store post....this won't be that funny.  She wrote that post soon after coming to Hungary her first year and there is NOTHING like first year impressions in the hands of a funny skilled writer like her.  Fair warning.

I love grocery shopping here in Hungary.  It's fun. You never know what you will find.  You never know what you will NOT find either.  It creates opportunity for you to be creative with your menus.  I'm getting ahead of myself though....did you bring your 100 forint coin?  You know, the one you always keep in your wallet or car so that you can get a grocery cart?  Oh, you didn't.  Here you can borrow one from me, don't worry you'll get it back and can give it back if you don't forget and pocket it first.

Good, you got your grocery cart, fantastic.  If you brought a car to get the groceries home great, if not, how are you taking it all home?  Did you bring enough reusable bags for everything?  Are you buying laundry soap?  Should have brought your rolling cart.  Yes.  You at 28 years old have a grandma rolling cart to go to the grocery store.  You live fairly close to the grocery store but still, lugging laundry soap and milk gets heavy no matter how far you go.  Take the rolling cart for more that two bags, maybe three of groceries.

You've finally made it in the store, with your cart, you've exhibited self control and not bought coffee or a treat at the bakery in the grocery store, you're doing great so far.  Next, vegetables and fruit.  Unless they're prepackaged or sold individually, you have to bag, weigh and tag the food in the produce department.  If you don't and take it up to the cash register they will tell you to go all the way back out of line to weigh it and run all the way back up to the front of the store....in Hungarian.  Good Luck if you forget.  Don't forget.

Get the Interspar grocery store song stuck in your head...it's really one word that gets stuck but still, "Innnnnnteeeeeerrrrrrrrspaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr" for DAYS.

Here's what you need to remember:

-the word for ground or whole spices
-the names of the spices
-pray there are pictures of the spices on the packages just in case
-remember the word for liver, you don't want that again.  (in my defense it was a breaded liver -sandwich already made.  I do know what liver looks like)
-remember that cream cheese is not cheese cream, it's more like butter cream in this country....still confusing but go with it.  It tastes like cream cheese but the name 'sounds flipped' to your wrong American ears
-there are 10 eggs in a package...the container looks short, the eggs will be brown, there may be a feather on the eggs.  Rinse the eggs when you get home.  But they are fresh, tastier, yellow-orang-ier than in other places where a pale yellow egg passes for grade A.
-remember almonds for granola, you've been out of homemade granola for weeks, no more, you make great granola.

Can't find matches...this was a problem with A.P as well if you remember from her post.  Matches are more important than you think when you have to light the stove top and oven with matches every time. Truth is, just this month AUGUST 2013  I found matches at the Interspar!  I know right?  Where were they the whole time?  Probably next to the coffee filters that seem to disappear each time.  You must be loosing it to NOT find matches at a huge grocery store.  I usually get them at the mini-market or at the hardware store.  I end up buying in bulk and looking like a pyro because of it.  BUT I bought matches at the grocery store and they were right up by the front cash register.  You look shocked at this discovery, the clerk looks at you funny, but they do most of the time.  You are the palest person they've seen all summer, you and your blonde hair stick out.  It's obvious that you are not Hungarian.

Bag your groceries, pay the cashier, hope you can see the price numbers on the screen because even though you know your numbers, she said it SO FAST!!  Bag the rest of the groceries and start your walk home.  Eat the turo rudi that you bought for the walk home.  For you who don't know what a turo rudi is, I'm sorry.

Enjoy your groceries, fill the fridge, eat cereal or popcorn for dinner. Absolutely.

The mug that lives across town....

 I have a mug that lives in my best friend Y's house.

It is probably my favorite but because it lives somewhere else, I don't use it on a regular basis.  The mug is a Polish Pottery Bubble Mug and it's one of my favorite patterns from a pottery shop named Andy's.  If you're familiar, it's the pattern with the big red dot or starburst, if you're not, go google it. :-)  The mug fits perfectly in my hands and hasn't stained from the copious amounts of coffee I drink which says a lot for Polish Pottery.

A couple of years ago I knew that spring that when I returned in the fall, I would be living out of suitcases while the rest of my life was in boxes under Y's stairs.  It was then, before I even left for the hard summer that I pulled out the mug and put it on the shelf in her kitchen.  When I returned, my boxes and my mug were right there for me along with a guest bedroom made up and a welcome sign made by adorable two and four year olds on the chalk board.

When I returned that fall I had finished raising support to join staff with Campus Crusade for long term status.  I had been gone from Budapest about 5 months, 3 more than usual and was returning 'late' into the year after school had started.  (It wasn't super late, but not getting there 'on time' was very hard for me)  It felt like I set my bags down, took a shower then went straight to school.  In reality I probably had a couple days or a weekend, then I jumped in.  It had been a hard summer with multiple trainings and meetings, but it had been fruitful and I was finally back.

(by the way, please don't read any complaining into this story, housing quirks are just a fact of living overseas.... no whining intended.)

I ended up staying with Y and her family for about a month.  When I had left in the spring, I didn't have a place to stay and the place that I had found during the summer fell through, so I was back to square one.  It ended up taking about a month to find the new place and then move in.  During that time, drinking coffee in my mug, sitting at Y's table was the home and familiarity that I needed.  They were incredibly gracious and I always feel at home with their family.

And now, the mug still lives there.  I didn't move it back to my house...even though I've actually moved again since.  I think about it every so often, than maybe I should move it over to my cupboard and use it more regularly, but then I never do.  Y and her family use the mug and it makes sense that they do, it lives in their cupboard after all.  I end up being over there 2 or 3 times a month or more anyway, so I get to use it enough.  Until she tells me to take it back with me to my apartment or something happens and I don't live over here any more, the mug is staying put.

You see at Y's, the mug is exactly where I need it.

I needed the friendship and family that it represents.  It's the time spent talking and discussing theology, culture and God.  It's laughing at and with Y and D's children, watching movies and endless SyFy channel or BBC marathons during the Hungarian winter.  It's praying over so many things with a cup of good coffee or tea.   I may not keep a toothbrush there, but I do keep my favorite mug in a cupboard across town.

It seems right that my favorite mug lives with some of my favorite people.

I changed the name of the blog.  Seeing as I wasn't posting very often, not many people will care why, but for the two of you who might read this still, here's why:

A couple years ago the B-families played the 'drill Becca for her birthday game', it's my favorite.  One of the questions was, if I ever wrote a book, what would it be about and what would I call it?  The general answer was pretty simple, I would call it 'A Life in Boxes' or 'My Life in Boxes' and it would be a collection of travel essays and musings...of sorts.  Since this is as close as I'm going to get to that, I decided that 3 years later, I should change the name of the blog to my pretend book title and blog more, chapter by chapter, essay by essay.

Now why was/is it going to be 'A Life in Boxes'?  Initially it started because I'd moved a lot the past few years and my possessions, my boxes, my life was in several peoples crawl spaces and I was living somewhere else at the time.  My life was in boxes and the life of living internationally means that parts of you are everywhere....makes sense right?  So that's why and now you know.  That reason still stands and makes more sense now than it did even three years ago.  While we're supposed to live more or less cohesively in all spheres of life, there is always a part of me that is different in each box, in each sphere.

 Yes, that sounds very waffles vs. spaghetti and yes, I have read that book.  I know that the boxes analogy breaks down and I won't get bogged down in the terminology....it will make my brain explode, but there you go and talk to you soon.