Szia!

Today started out like any other day here with a simple breakfast and a metro ride to class. However today was the first day we had both morning and afternoon math classes. In the morning we learned about congruences and modular arithmetic, which is basically remainders. 

Prof. Hanson at the chalkboard showing 152^365 - 3 is divisible by 7. 

For lunch we went to a bakery and I (Will) got a cheese croissant with a baguette and I (Eli) got a cocoa-flavored pastry and some milk. Greg got a whole loaf of bread for the second time, we are starting to think that he is trying to eat his body weight in bread before we leave. After that we went to a fruit stand right next to the bakery and got bananas, apples and clementines, then made our way back to class excited to learn more number theory. 

Professor Hanson started off the afternoon session by revealing his psychic powers. We took the numbers 2 to 9 and multiplied any three together, then continued to multiply this by any of these numbers until we got a 7-digit number. Spookily, Professor Hanson was able to predict the missing digit when we told him 6 of the 7. Later in class, we might have learned how to use psychic powers too, so you'll have to see if any returning students demonstrate this kind of supernatural power. We continued the class by learning about the number system on Krypton, where Superman comes from (it's in base 7) and by learning about different bases.

After the afternoon session, most of the class went to buy train tickets for going to Vienna this weekend. That is, most of the class except for me (Eli). Not knowing of the plans to get tickets today, I went straight back to the hotel in my eagerness to work on my homework so stealthily that no one noticed my leaving. The rest of the class started gathering and using the Buda buddy system, where each of us is assigned a unique number in sequence, discovered that Eli was missing. Then someone said that Eli was in the bathroom, leading to a 5-minute wait in the hall until someone finally went in to actually check the truth of this. In the end, everyone figured out what had happened and went to get tickets at Keleti Pályaudvar, a large and impressive-looking train station.

Keleti Pályaudvar, the train station where most of the class bought tickets for Vienna

I (Eli) did get a ticket however, through the site of the Hungarian MAV Train company which sells tickets online. Excitingly, some of the pages in this process are only available in Hungarian, so this was a bit of an adventure, but in the end my tickets were bought for the exact same price as the ones at the station.

Upon returning to the hotel, a new discovery: a pipe broke, causing us to lose water tonight from 8:00 pm to 6:00 am. People planned ahead to try to ameliorate this situation, such as by storing water in mugs, plastic bottles and bowls for use later in the night. 

The terrible news

Tonight, most people are trying to finish up the two homework assignments due Thursday before our day-long trip to the city of Pécs, for which we are leaving at 6:50 tomorrow on a bus. Pécs is the fourth-largest city in Hungary and there will definitely be many things to do and sights to see while we are there tomorrow.

Jó éjt! (Good night!)

-Will and Eli