Got a trophy!

This week was both busy and entertaining:

• Our office signed two teams up for today's 4th Annual Ablon Business Run through City Park. It was a 10km race, with the first person running 5km and the other two splitting the difference. I came down with an awful bug yesterday, but ran the 5km leg for our women's team anyway. I PR'd (~22:30!! 7:15 miles!!) and our team got 2nd place in the "Finance, Business Services and Real Estate" women's category (and 8th out of 130 women's teams overall). We got to stand on a podium to accept our trophies and little spa packages. Our entrance also got us two free hot dogs and a beer after the race. Naturally, I took this perfect opportunity to tell my co-workers about my visit to the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4, 2006.
• I got involved helping Hungary for Obama plan a big music event that took place this Thursday. Turn out was great, and we registered a lot of people to vote. One of the organizers bought me a palinka shot afterward for manning the ticket booth for so long. :) The coolest part for me was that the Obama campaign sent a special letter for the event (thanks Samir!).
• I'm signed up for the US Embassy's email listserv and there's been a fair amount of activity recently. There were multiple demonstrations today in Budapest, representing minority groups and very right political parties. All of these demonstrations were marching to almost the same location - right outside the Parliament Building. The email warned that there might be violence, and I heard walking out of the race that the protestors were fighting with the police.
• If you have an apartment in Budapest, you pay your utility bills at the post office. You bring in a little slip of paper each month and they take care of the rest. I went before work a few days ago, and had been somewhat concerned beforehand. Could there be a worse place to be a foreigner? People at the post office are in a big hurry and don't want to be there in the first place - any hold-up could really tick them off. But luckily enough, I paid my bills and mailed my absentee ballot request without a hitch - phew! I really haven't had any bad experiences being a foreigner since coming here.
• Went to my first ice hockey practice in a little bit and my teammates were impressed at my Hungarian. I started learning some slang - "kiraly" means "cool" (I had known that it meant "king"). At one point, my coach asked me how to say "flip over on the ground" in English - I then realized that "somersault" makes absolutely no sense as a word.
• Clinch the division, Cubs!!!