An untypically enjoyable Monday :)
Monday… Monday… I think Monday was the day of dance, but I managed to avoid dancing 
I decided I ought to make an effort to participate in some of the programme, and so I attended a lesson in Hungarian. I was genuinely interested to learn some Hungarian for obvious practical reasons, but the room was far too small to accommodate the vast numbers of people who had had the same idea, and it soon became a battle not to pass out from the intense heat. The teacher wouldn’t have won any prizes, but nevertheless I did manage to acquire the rudiments of vowel pronunication and a few basic words such as hello, thank you, and German so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
I got very excited at Monday lunchtime because I noticed that there was a book stall where it was possible to buy Esperanto books. I had been contemplating making a purchase from the EAB bookshop for several months, but was always put off by the high level of the postage. Not that the postage is extortionate, just that I kept telling myself I’d do it next month when I would allegedly have more disposable income, and so on, and so on. After probably half an hour looking at the various novels on offer, something jumped out at me that I just had to have – ‘La lada tambureto’, the Esperanto translation of Gunther Grass’ masterpiece, ‘Die Blechtrommel/The Tin Drum’. I’ve wanted to read that book for absolutely ages – my sister has read the German version and said I could borrow it, but promptly buggered off to Germany with it. My mother is currently in the process of reading the English translation, but is complaining that it’s horribly Americanised, so it doesn’t really appeal to me. So, reading it in Esperanto seemed like a really cool idea. I grabbed onto it before anybody else was able to steal it, and started waving euros about in a desperate attempt to pay. Unfortunately, the man in charge of the stall couldn’t remember the price and said I would have to come back in the afternoon. He promised he would reserve the book for me, and put it under the table, but I was a little bit sceptical as to whether he would be true to his word, because he didn’t take my name or anything. I spent the rest of the week running back and forward to the university in an attempt to catch him there, but I always seemed to miss him until pretty much the last day I struck lucky and *finally* managed to make my purchase
Having seen the open air swimming pool the previous day, my boyfriend and I had resolved to visit it on Monday afternoon. I was rather excited, never having been in an open air swimming pool before, and a little apprehensive that the water might be terribly cold. It was actually fine though; there was one pool which was especially nice and warm, and even the colder pool which we tried later in the week wasn’t too bad. My boyfriend was a little cruel and decided it would be fun to try splashing me/dunking me in the water etc, but on the whole it was really good fun and the weather was so brilliantly sunny that we were able to sit on the grass reading for an hour or so afterwards whilst we dried off
Monday evening I fell asleep rather early and my boyfriend went out on his own. I can remember waking up after five hours and thinking that it must be nearly breakfast, only to discover it was just gone 4am and he was still out, which was quite amusing He came back some time after half four and proceeded to occupy 90% of the space in my bed, leaving me lying on my side, wedged in between him and a rather hard wall and unable to move for at least an hour until he decided the stop snoring on his back and roll over. That was slightly less amusing 
Thinking about it though, I suppose that was the only time he was able to spend by himself with his friends and so now I feel terribly guilty. It hadn’t really struck me like that until some throwaway comment which was just made in the JEB forums. Funnily enough, yesterday I had decided to sign up for the IS because I suddenly felt it was very probable I would want to go, the IJK had been so fun. But now I’ve thought about it from this point of view, I actually don’t think I will go after all. Because if I try to analyse what made the week so special for me – and it was special – then it wouldn’t be the fact that I was speaking Esperanto, nor the fact that I was in Hungary, nor the fact that I learnt how to steer a pedal boat, but rather the fact that I was spending time with Babel. Don’t get me wrong – the rest of it was perfectly pleasant, and I did several things on my own; I discovered the lake and went to a museum and chose what excursion I was going on not expecting him to choose the same one – but if I’m honest with myself, I wouldn’t have attended the IJK were it not for him and even if I had, I wouldn’t particularly have enjoyed it. Yes, I coped with it better than I could have done, but every day was a challenge for me to survive, and left to my own devices I wouldn’t have the motivation to have tried. So nah, how I feel tonight I don’t think I will go to the IS; if I do I’ll be putting a dampener on someone else’s holiday and putting myself through unnecessary unhappiness.
I am, admittedly, very distressed tonight, so I’m not going to take my name off the list yet, but nevertheless…
Tags: Esperanto, IJK, Szombathely