A great day...finally.

I had a great day yesterday. My first official great day in Budapest. It was great for several reasons. One, I finally got a chance to catch up with Katherine, who is now in India (and keeping a blog of her experiences there, which are bound to be at least a little more interesting than mine!). She is only a few hours ahead of me, which means that during the day I will have someone to chat and IM with. But, as much as I love Katherine, there were other highlights to my day yesterday, and I will list them here:

1) I met with Natasha Landel-Mills, the woman starting up Hungary's first known SRI fund at a large bank here. She is a fabulous British woman who will be here in Budapest for a total of four years (her husband is stationed here with the British Embassy). She is working on creating this SRI product and lucky for me, I am going to help! I could not be happier - socially responsible investing is exactly what I am interested in and to be able to learn about SRI in an emerging market, well...what more could I ask for out of this summer?

2) I went to an Independence (next) Day party hosted by the American Embassy here. The Ambassador is one George Herbert Walker. Yes, it's true...he is related to the other George Herbert Walker and just plain old George Walker (who both add Bush at the end). He seemed like a nice enough fellow and I refrained from making any comments when I shook his hand because even though it's only Hungary, security was pretty tight and the last thing I needed was to be thrown out. The interaction with the English-as-a-first-language crowd was a must!

The party was okay. It was a garden party but it started pouring rain pretty early on. Of course, it has rained at their last three garden parties but for some reason, they still have them outdoors. Ah, American ingenuity at its best! Anyway, there were hotdogs, hamburgers, ribs, pork kebabs (not very traditional but people seemed to like them), potato salad and lettuce with too much dressing - very American. There was cotton candy (blue), ice cream sundaes, brownies, cookies and Snickers bars. There was wine, o.j. and beer. The only thing missing was corn on the cob. They also had a woman sing the national anthem and the other anthem - New York New York by Frank Sinatra. She sucked but in hindsight, I think they hired her so people wouldn't stick around. Because shortly after she took to the stage, the crowd started thinning dramatically.

I met a nice couple from New York - Bonnie and Bill Bernstein (Jews, of course. I am some kind of magnet). They were Democrats, too, and we were Bush bashing to make up for our handshaking earlier. They renewed my faith in traveling Americans (especially the New York Jew variety). They even offered to help me trace my family roots. Bonnie, the woman, is really into that kind of thing. It was nice to chat with them. Even if they aren't sticking around and aren't going to make my social life here any more interesting, they at least made me feel like I was with family (very distant relatives, of course, but relatives nonetheless).

3) Peter has officially become our laundry guy. This is, indeed, a highlight when you consider that every time we do laundry we have to spend 15 minutes hanging up the wet clothes. I hate this idea and so it is much to my thrill that Peter, in his effort to be a modern man who participates in housework, has targeted laundry as his big task.

4) Peter found out he will get a free week of vacation in August and it turns out it will be my last week here (and also my birthday week)! What? A consultant getting free vacation within his first two months of work? That doesn't sound quite right. But I am not going to question it. So, we are going to go to roadtrip to Prague and Vienna and maybe even to Salzburg so I can see the Von Trapp family house!

(Is anyone actually reading this? Besides you, mom!)