November (+) what I forgot.

 What did I forget?  The last week of October.  It's really a very important week for Hungarians.  They celebrate the revolution of 1956 on October 23rd.  It's Hungary's biggest political holiday.  Never you mind that the revolution failed and that Imre Nagy, whose statues are all over Hungary, was executed by the communists.  The Hungarians are very good at revering their fallen heroes.

 We witnessed three different public observances of the day here in our fair city.  Many will claim the the revolution started as a student movement right here in Szeged.  We enjoyed seeing the old veterans in their various uniforms. 

 Of course, October saw a few Halloween happenings.  It's totally not Hungarian but missionaries tend to carry the Halloween spirit with them wherever they go.

 This was a young single adult party in Budapest.  Yes, we used the same easy costumes we did last year.  Our resources are limited.  

 Here is Andrea with a couple of our YSAs from Szeged.

Our little Békéscsaba branch did a Halloween party too.  I made the spider pinata.  I was very pleased with it but glad to see it whacked to pieces so we could finally get it out of our apartment.

 November 1st was All Saints' Day.  We took the missionaries out to the cemetery to see the candles and decorations.  Here we are with Elder Snyder, who is Nathan's friend.  We met him before our mission.  He joined us for Thanksgiving when he and Nathan were both in the BYU marching band.  It is a small world to have him sent to Szeged to be with us again.

 We and our young adults, along with other branch members, have been working hard to finish 75 blankets for a children's hospital in Szeged.  Service is one of the mandates of the young adult program.

 This is an accidental picture.  We take a lot of accidental pictures of the sky or the sidewalk, etc. but I liked this one.

 We went to Debrecen, about 3 hours away, for a CES conference for young adults.  On the way we stopped for lunch in this famous Inn in Hortobágy.  It's been in operation for a couple hundred years.  We made a point to stop in Hortobágy to buy a Hungarian whip for my birthday.

 This is the Debrecen town square in front of the Great Reform Church.  We went up the tower on the left side.

 The Reform church is more starkly functional than any of the Roman Catholic churches we have toured.  These stairs up the tower were almost treacherous.

 Here's the whip we bought.  I'm actually not very good at this yet.

 More blanket making.

 A farewell lunch for a couple of missionaries moving on to other areas.

 Andrea wanted a picture of some common products.  That's the biggest milk carton (1 liter) available.  Vanilla comes a a tiny bottle.  Baking powder is in a little envelope and all the eggs are brown.

 Some things are big though.  These loaves of bread weigh 6.6 pounds each.

 We used them to make huge French toast for breakfast on Thanksgiving Monday.  Thanksgiving is not a Hungarian holiday.  The missionaries all worked as they normally do on Thanksgiving Day and then had an extended preparation day on the Monday following so that they could celebrate Thanksgiving.

 We have 6 sisters in our zone,

And 10 elders.  It was such a pleasure to see that they all had a proper Thanksgiving feast.

 Just some interesting Szeged architecture.

 Under the category of strange things that we have seen:  About 10 young men with hunting horns played a charge as other young men and young women wearing animal skins on their backs raced down the street in the middle of town.

 There they laid down on the ground to be poked and swatted lightly with sticks.

 We showed the pictures to our young adult friends and they don't know what was going on either.  I think it was an initiation into a hunting, or hiking, or outdoors club of some kind.

In November we had visits from three other senior couples.  Here we are having lunch with two of them.  They figured out that if we were going to host them on a trip to Szeged, they had better get down here before we leave.

Have a wonderful Christmas,

Love,

Tom and Andrea