Steve Garguilo

So, the night I finished my last entry, we all went out together one last time and just had a great time and a lot of fun. We went to an outdoor club and were there until after the sun came up - it was just awesome. We had a lot of fun all week. Then, after a couple hours sleep, I boarded the plane to Italy.

It was a wonderful week in Hungary filled with great times with great friends!

We've done a lot this week, but it has all just been a wonderful experience. On Saturday, we went around the city a little bit more, including going up to Gellert Hill where the Hungarian Statue of Liberty resides (symbolizing the communists kicking out the Nazi's) and also an old Austrian fort. We also went to a bunch of other places including Margaret's Island, where there is an awesome musical fountain.

On Sunday, we went to Szentendre, which is basically a small town built up of old, traditional Hungarian artifacts, where we learned a lot about the history and culture of Hungary. This was also a great chance to really get to know some of the students from Corvinus (the Economics University in Budapest that the students we worked with attend) and talk to them about all kinds of topics. There are a lot of small differences, but they really aren't any different than us when it comes down to it. Sunday's activities also included a forced visit to the Marzipan (a type of candy) museum where they have a Michael Jackson statue made of Marzipan, and we also got to ride the boat up the Danube back to Budapest.

Monday was our "Field Challenge" day when we went off into the city to explore the top attractions, including the Opera, Parliament, Heros Square, Vigado Square, Fisherman's Bastion, and some other awesome sites. The views from some of these places and some of the historical information was just phenomenal. The pictures will be great. Tuesday was our first day of lectures, and we listened to a number of different speakers regarding a number of different topics, then had time to work on our presentations. We also visited some businesses/factories in Budapest such as Unicom (they make liquor). Wednesday was pretty similar as well, then culminating in delivering our presentations in the evening. I think we did well, and it was great to see what all the teams did. Thursday we visited a small business in Budapest, then gave our Field Challenge presentations as the last action of our official program for the week.

Today we went to one of the famous Budapest spas, and it really was pretty cool. All the water is naturally heated, and they way the place was laid out was really cool. Overall for the week, it was such a fun time. I really got to know not only the Corvinus students well, but also the other Penn State students. I think we all had just an amazing time together, from working together on the projects to seeing the sights to the night life, it will be hard to top this week, and we definitely formed some great friendships. We just have to try to convince all the Corvinus students to come to Penn State for a visit and a football game in September.

Tomorrow, I will be departing for Rome to meet my dad, and we're going to check out Florence, Rome, and then Dublin, Ireland in a few days. It should be another amazing week ahead.

I finished up at Penn State on Tuesday, completing all my work and saying my good-byes (including my last lunch at Margarita's Pizza for the summer) by 1:00, then hit the road for CT. I arrived in time to watch the Red Sox beat the Tigers, Joba Chamberlain blow a game against the Indians (YES!) and Hillary's campaign basically end. So, that was a pretty good day.

Wednesday I took the 5:50 train into NYC so that I could drop off my paperwork at 9:00. I then went to the Radio & TV Museum (honestly, one of the biggest wastes of money there is in NYC - neat to see and a relatively fun place, but a lot of unnecessary expenditures) and walked around the city for the day before it was finally ready at 6:20PM to pick up. That was the best news in weeks, my visa was COMPLETE.

Thursday/Friday is still kind of a blur right now. Technically it's 11:45PM on Friday, but this has all basically been one day that started out with firming up the travel plans for Rome/Dublin with my dad's travel agent, then me catching a 4:00PM flight to Frankfurt out of JFK, then a flight that had me arrive in Budapest at 8:55AM. I got yelled at by some crazy German in the Frankfurt airport, and my headphones didn't work for the movie on the transatlantic flight, but overall a pretty uneventful and easy, not-bad trip. My Hungarian teammates met me in the airport this morning and took me around the city, showed me their University, showed me a couple cool places to eat, etc. We then met up at a little cafe with some of the other students before meeting some of our other students at the bus station later tonight.

Overall, Budapest is a fantastic city so far. It's very clean, and the weather has been great so it's been beautiful. I enjoy seeing the architecture, and while their language is quite confusing, the people have been very nice. Tomorrow (Saturday) we will be meeting as a whole class for a relaxing day of events, then our program starts to get more intensive Sunday into Monday for the rest of the week.

Definitely a successful beginning to the summer, albeit a bit of a stressful one. Stay tuned for more!

So this is my first real blog entry - I don't really know if I'll be able to keep up with this or not, but this will be a good start.

I've pretty much finished up my coursework for Spring 2008 at this point, and really just have some meetings then packing/planning for my summer. I'll be leaving State College on Tuesday so that I can spend Wednesday at the Indian Consulate in New York to get my visa. Normally this could be done by mail, but since I need to have my passport to go to Europe, I'll have to go to the consulate in person - hopefully this isn't a problem.

The basic plan is:

Wednesday, May 7: Getting my India visa
Thursday, May 8: Depart for Budapest
Friday, May 9 - Friday, May 16: In Budapest for my ENGR 497 class working with my Hungarian teammates and delivering our final project and presentation
Saturday, May 17: Depart Budapest for Rome
Sunday, May 18 - Tuesday, May 20: Explore Italy with my dad
Wednesday, May 21: Depart Rome for Dublin
Thursday, May 22 - Saturday, May 24: Explore Ireland with my dad
Sunday, May 25: Return to United States
Friday, May 30: Depart for India for the summer

Sometime in between when I get back to the US and leave for India, I'll need to take care of my immunizations and take care of finishing the move out of my apartment. It's going to be hectic, but it's going to be a good summer. Junior year was a really good year, let's hope the summer is just as good. I'll try to keep this updated.