Stalagmite? Stalactite?

I'm still alive! See! I dunno what's been up, but every time I've sat down to write a post my mind has been a virtual wasteland. Seriously. I see the brambles and tumbleweeds blowing between my eyes!

It's hard to be interesting and witty when all there is to your day-to-day existence is classes, reading for classes, preparing presentations, and writing papers. But, Tuesday was my presentation for our thesis seminar. We have to give a presentation of our general ideas about our thesis - topic, references, research questions, the works. Nerve wrecking? Yes. But mine went really, really well. So I'm quite happy about that!

Today, as a reward for suffering though this past week we had a trip to some caves (the Szemlő-hegyi Caves and the Pál-völgyi Dripstone Caves) out in the Buda hills. It was neat because it's not really a tourist attraction, but more of a local thing (let's be honest here, it's one of those things you take 2nd grade classes to - so it was perfect for me!). And it was really really cool. Instead of telling you more about it, let me just show you some pictures:

woo! i heart caves!

This wast the "Fairy Tale Cave"

You can't see it in this pic, but there are

8 stalagmites - 1 large, 7 small...

"Snow White & The Seven Dwarves!"

The "Cheese Rock"

I thought it looked like either a skeleton

or the little one-eyed guy from Monsters, Inc.

No one else saw it, am I crazy?

Some of the formations were just so pretty!

Fortunately this was one ladder

we did not have to climb!

Some of the caves were full of these formations

which looks like little stacks of pebbles all collected.

It was a really awesome affect from the dripping

waters of the cave!

Can you see the witch's face?

The caves had one downside they drip. A lot. All over you. You'd be standing there, minding your own business, admiring Mother Nature's handiwork, and then *SPLAT!* A giant drop of stale water, intent on becoming a stalagmite, has landed square on your face. I mean, I know I was in it's way, but still - my jacket was pretty damp by the end of the second caves (and out shoes were wet too, but that was more a cause of the melting snow that's still around in the hills than the caves). And then it was sprinkling outside on top of that! I guess we were just destined to spend the day damp around the edges!

And on our way back into the city we stopped at a bakery - the best bakery in all of Budapest. It was crazy inside! People were lined up pretty much almost out the doors (and apparently it's that way every hour of every day that it's open!) and there was absolutely no order for how you got served. So in the traditional Hungarian fashion, we shoved (lightly), snaked, and squeezed our way to the counters and ordered in the very non-traditional Hungarian fashion of pointing and gesturing wildly at various delicacies. People travel from miles around to get cakes and pies, and every other known desserts from here.

One of our organizers was telling me that around Christmas you have to order these traditional Hungarian Christmas cakes about a month to two months in advance if you want them for Christmas - it's that popular/famous. So, I selected two delicious looking desserts and an ice cream cone. The ice cream was amazing. I don't know about the desserts yet - somehow I have self control (who knew!) and they're sitting on my refrigerator for a snack later. I'll be sure to take pictures of them and write a review later - but I have no doubt that they'll be amazing (Actually, we went to another desert place this week too - so I'll be sure to tell you about that as well!).